Promotion of the citizens participation in Aragón

The past day 21 of October, ASAEL attended to the conference on citizen participation in the Government of Aragon, as representative of the pan-European network, PEP-NET.

In Aragón, the citizen’s participation is still in a first step. Its activities started in 2004 in the framework of some activities of the regional Government related to the water resources and the environment. It is in the year 2007 when their activities are developed as General Directorate and as transversal action addressed to promote the new culture of citizenship participation in the governance of Aragon.

This conference has shown the necessity that the procedurals of eParticipation work. Thus, this conference has tried to show how not only the administration but also the citizens should have the administrative and technological tools to make easier their interactivity between them. They must be provided with mechanisms to allow the collective building of general interests.

This new concept transforms the traditional public activity from a delegated responsibility into the politicians and the administration to a collective responsibility. Talking about participated democracy means talk about democratic innovation through the building of responsibility and confidence bonds.

The democratic innovation starts promoting the values that support all this process. It continues with the training of the citizens and the civil servants, the promotion of the good practices and the investigation.

The public administration has a new responsibility: providing the citizenship suitable, accessible and flexible information tools. These instruments will make possible to share values and democratic practices with all the society.

And the result of this innovation must be taking better decisions which contribute to the improvement of the public Policies.

The improvement in the decisions, the arise effectiveness and the reduction of the conflicts will increase the confidence and the credibility of the public actions, both technical and administrative.

The final result of this conference is the sensibilization of the citizens and the representatives of the local administration in the benefits reported by the citizen’s participation and the participation, especially for the citizens of the rural areas.