Eight founding countries and civil society addressing the need for greater voluntary openness of governments to citizen participation created the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in 2011.
The OGP proposes a new paradigm of public governance, through a renewed political architecture that promotes citizen inclusion in decision-making for sustainable development, access to justice and the construction of effective and transparent institutions.
In 2016, the OGP initiated the Subnational Pilot Programme, composed of 15 regional and local governments. One of them is the Madrid City Council, which uses MediaLab Prado to develop its actions.
MediaLab Prado (MLP) is a citizen laboratory and cultural centre administered and managed by the Madrid City Council, conceived for the development of the social production of open cultural projects.
MLP has an international projection due to the social innovation it brings together different disciplines in projects that provide solutions to citizen problems, and the user profile used by this laboratory: high level of education, 20-50 years and mainly technological skills.
Originally, MLP depended only on the Culture and Sports Area of the Madrid City Council and the company Madrid Destino, which manages the cultural performances of the capital, and MLP had practically total independence in its performances. However, since 2016 it has formed part of the strategies of the Government Area of Citizen Participation, Transparency and Open Government which develops important tools for citizen participation (Decide Madrid, Participa Madrid, Participative Budgets, Co-legislation), based on an open-source system called Consul occupying the main attention of three of the six MediaLab Prado laboratories (ParticipaLab, InciLab and DataLab), thus becoming a government laboratory.
In this study case, it is taken into account that the current Madrid City Council Government was born from the 15M, appreciating the institutionalization of a social movement with its consequent limitations and modifications. On the other hand, citizen participation is promoted and provided with a technological tool, appreciating that technology itself has possibilities, limits and risks.
Researchers: Margarita Rodríguez Ibáñez & Manuel Hidalgo.
