Good Practices and Innovations in Public Governance 2003-2011

2008 Category 3: Spain
for Citizen Participation (DGPC). The Mission of this new institution was to promote
citizen participation in monitoring, formulating and implementing policies of the
regional government and of Catalonia’s local authorities.
By fostering, studying and spreading values and practices related to political and
social participation, the new institution would enrich the quality of Catalonia’s democratic
life. The new Directorate was established in December 2003 by a legislative
act endorsed by a coalition of three parties who formed the government in Catalonia
after 23 years of a single party government.
The strategies adopted to promote greater citizen participation at the local level included
the following:
1. Institutional strategy
• Setting up an institutional structure (Promoters of participation:
the different departments of the Catalan Government and Public
Administration);
• Bringing “users-clients” on board by affirming that, through citizen
participation, the Directorate can add value to other departments’
projects; and by eliminating part of the costs associated with the
introduction of participation in public policies; and
• Demonstrating through pilot projects the positive effects of new
participatory methods.
2. Civil society strategy
• Using and combining multiple criteria to identify who should participate:
extension, inclusion, intensity, representativeness and diversity;
• Paying particular attention to the territorial dimension: meeting
participants in the places where they live; and
• Adapting the participatory procedures and processes offered to the
diverse needs of social groups.
The stages of development and implementation included:
• Design, 2004: Deciding what constituted participation and what did not. Differentiating
this concept from others that are related to it, but are different
from it;
• Experimentation stage: Efforts to convince other Public Administration bodies
of the value of participation. A number of pilot projects were introduced to
help overcome initial doubts;
• Implementation;
• Consolidation: Since 2006 many government departments have come to DGPC
to request its services; and
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