We care of your opinion

In the Autonomous Community of Valencia, Spain, the General Board of Citizenship and Integration – Regional Ministry of Immigration & Citizenship, a new form of communication among citizens and municipalities has been implemented. The utility of this method is getting through the preliminary round. The Community of Valencia carries out the project in order to prove it and chooses 3 pilot-cities, one for each province: Alcoy, Benicarlo, Paterna.

The main aim of the project is to improve every aspect of citizens’ daily life since municipalities act in order to guarantee services, help, and answers for citizens. This is the project’s mission.

The project is known as the Buzón Ciudadano. Be involved in the Buzón Ciudadano is as easy as clicking and filling in a form. Once the form has been sent, citizens will get an email in order to activate their accounts. Once the account has been activated, they will be able to take part automatically in public administration processes. Each citizen will be entitled to ask for questions, queries, petitions and make suggestions to be debated in the town halls. That gives town halls the opportunity to mediate whenever citizens make their interventions.

The use of specific tools related to the promotion of innovation, such as blog elaboration or emails’ service facilitates to keep the contacts since everybody feels free to say what they want and if it’s really possible to implement that, the municipality is in charge to do it. For example this is the case of Bibliobus, one citizen needs a bibliobus which circulates around the city. The municipal cabinet studies the proposal and then gives an answer as fast as possible. This is the way the municipality answers to the citizens either if it’s affirmative or negative.

The regional board has subscribed a chart of best practices about active citizenship in the local and autonomic administration; this is the first document to be signed between the autonomic and local administration in the autonomous community in order to facilitate and increase the active citizenship in the public management.

Municipalities will be able to act almost directly and there will be no need for citizens to wait until next election’s round for having their suggestions to be taken into consideration. Other town-halls in the community have already applied for this project and if this experience is successful, it will be spread all around the Community.