In democratic governments,
citizens need to consider themselves able to take part in public decisions and
to feel represented in their institutions. A policy is public when it
integrates the various sectors of society in its planning, execution and
verification. Therefore, a reliable government needs the collaboration of
reliable citizens. This annex describes a concept called integral citizen observatories
(ICOs). Its purpose is to set the guidelines to establish this
document as an effective tool for citizen
participation. This is consistent with the customer/citizen focus of this document.
ICOs identify, define and document
the needs of citizens in order to strengthen their participation in, and the
transparency and accountability of, local government. It facilitates
collaboration between customers/citizens and their local government by generating
comments and proposals on and solutions to public issues with a common
language: the diagnostic system presented in Annex A.
In principle, ICOs defend the
public interest by generating reliable information based on hard data about the
performance of local authorities. They are organized according to the 39
indicators of Annex A and work by measuring and
verifying the performance of local governments from the perspective of society.
Figure C.1 shows the proposed structure.
