Open Government Partnership: the Government of Aragon’s expression of interest

Expression of interest from the Government of Aragon

There are several important reasons why the Government of Aragon (GA) has a strong interest in joining OGP. On the one hand, we are a territory that has over 1.3 million inhabitants, is scarcely populated and rapidly ageing (22% of the population is aged over 65). Our population density in certain districts is a demographic desert (<10 inhabitants/km2), while the city of Zaragoza makes up over 50% of the total population.

This depopulation translates into 77 Aragonese towns with fewer than 40 inhabitants that are directly governed by means of an open council, representing 74% of the towns governed this way in all of Spain. This territorial idiosyncrasy makes it difficult for all Aragonese collectives to exercise full citizenship and constitutes a challenge for their participation in public policies and the integration of Open Government principles.

Nevertheless, we have been working intensively on integrating currently under-represented collectives into our democratic system, particularly the youth and child population (Open Kids Project), and people with reading comprehension difficulties (Easy Government Project). Given this territorial and social situation, digital governance is a priority topic of interest that we would like to further our knowledge in, to make it easier for our citizens – affected by depopulation and democratic under-representation – to participate. The website Aragón Gobierno Abierto [Aragon Open Government] of the GA provides online citizen participation tools such as the citizen editor or prior consultations. In addition, to reduce the gap that digital governance can cause, we created the Easy Government project in 2019.

We believe that joining OGP is an opportunity to, on the one hand, get to know and implement new Open Government practices with our priority focuses: depopulated rural areas, under-represented vulnerable collectives and polarisation on social media; and on the other hand, to share the Aragonese experience.

Support letters

Full aplicattion letter President of Aragon

Aragon Full Application Letter of Support

Thematic areas	Legal regulations	Projects
*STRATEGIC PLAN*	Plan Estratégico de la Dirección General de Gobierno Abierto e Innovación Social, 2020-2023
*PARTICIPATION AND COLLABORATION*	LEY 8/2015, de 25 de marzo, de Transparencia de la Actividad Pública y Participación Ciudadana de Aragón ORDEN CDS/354/2020, de 18 de marzo, por la que se da publicidad al Acuerdo de 26 de febrero de 2020, del Gobierno de Aragón, por el que se dictan instrucciones sobre la consulta pública previa en el procedimiento de elaboración normativa a través del Portal de Gobierno Abierto del Gobierno de Aragón	Citizen participation: Public Services Design: https://www.laaab.es/2019/11/programa-de-diseno-colaborativo-de-servicios-publicos/ Child Participation: https://www.laaab.es/2020/06/open-kids/ Citizen participation processes: https://gobiernoabierto.aragon.es/agoab/participacion Citizen participation School: https://www.laaab.es/2019/10/escuela-de-participacion-ciudadana-nuevo-curso-2019-2020/ Volunteerism: https://gobiernoabierto.aragon.es/cvol Social Innovation and cocreation of public policies Frena la Curva: https://frenalacurva.net/ Social Impact Academy: https://www.laaab.es/2020/01/inscripcion-social-impact-academy/ Libros que Unen: https://librosqueunen.org/ Ventanas que Unen: https://www.ventanasqueunen.org/
*TRANSPARENCY*	LEY 8/2015, de 25 de marzo, de Transparencia de la Actividad Pública y Participación Ciudadana de Aragón Orden de 26 de octubre de 2015, de la Consejera de Ciudadanía y Derechos Sociales, por la que se establecen instrucciones sobre la tramitación, seguimiento, control y registro de las solicitudes de acceso a la información pública	Active Transparency: https://transparencia.aragon.es/ Right to Access: https://transparencia.aragon.es/content/derecho-de-acceso-la-información-pública Easy Government: https://transparencia.aragon.es/GobiernoFacil Transparency Council: https://transparencia.aragon.es/CTAR
*OPEN DATA*	Acuerdo del Gobierno de Aragón de 17 de julio de 2012 por el que se ordena el inicio del proyecto de apertura de datos públicos	https://opendata.aragon.es/
*ACCOUNTABILITY*	Ley 5/2017 de 1 de junio, de Integridad y Ética Públicas Ley 6/2017, de 15 de junio, de Cuentas Abiertas de Aragón LEY 8/2015, de 25 de marzo, de Transparencia de la Actividad Pública y Participación Ciudadana de Aragón	Government Plan: https://transparencia.aragon.es/content/plan-de-gobierno-ix-legislatura
DIGITAL GOVERNANCE		Blog: https://www.laaab.es/Open Government Platform: https://gobiernoabierto.aragon.es/agoabFight against Disinformation and ‘fake news’: Hateblockers
*NETWORKS*	Comisión Sectorial de Gobierno Abierto Reino de España Conferencia autonómica de participación ciudadana Red de entidades locales por la transparencia y la participación ciudadana	Red Iberoamericana de Laboratorios de Innovación Ciudadana Frena la Curva

Expression of interest from the Plataforma del Tercer Sector en Aragón

Plataforma del Tercer Sector en Aragón [Third sector platform in Aragon] (PTSA) is composed of seven social entities that directly and indirectly represent around 300,000 people in Aragon. These include people with disabilities or in situations of social vulnerability, as well as those who care for them in their immediate environment. In addition, the PTSA represents volunteers in the region. We aim to improve society through social action and it is estimated that our activity constitutes 1.45% of the region’s GDP.

The specific objectives include establishing governance relations and the joint creation of social policies linked to the collectives we serve. To this end, we perform actions that give a voice to people with difficulties and channel their demands practically. One of our priorities is to provide people who are in a fragile social situation with spaces to exercise their right to participate, using a geographically- as well as person-centred approach, and enable them to participate in decision-making in the same conditions as other citizens. However, these collectives are currently under-represented in traditional participation processes, as these are not adapted to their physical or reading comprehension needs, for example, making them simply spectators of the decision-making process.

In this regard, we have been supporting the Government of Aragon (GA) since 2019 to redefine citizen participation under accessibility and adaptation criteria to suit the capacities and competences of each citizen, specifically by means of the Easy Government project. This is the line of work that motivates us to want to form part of GA’s application to OGP. We would like to access knowledge of other similar experiences and access different governance resources that focus on people in situations of social vulnerability. This will improve our work and enable greater participation as well as joint creation of public policies by people in a situation of vulnerability.