Arantzazulab and Tolosa Town Council present an innovative representative deliberative process

[This text has been translated with Deepl/Google translate]

Arantzazulab and Tolosa Town Council held today at Gandiaga Topagunea (Oñati), the headquarters of the Arantzazu Social Innovation Laboratory, the launch of a representative deliberative process. The aim of the event was twofold: on the one hand, to launch a representative deliberative initiative promoted by Arantzazulab and Tolosa Town Council. On the other hand, to sign the collaboration agreement between both entities. The event brought together different stakeholders both in person and via streaming: Representatives of Tolosa City Council, the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, the Department of Public Governance and Self-Government of the Basque Government, various local councils and local public bodies, the three universities present in the Arantzazulab research collaboration area (University of the Basque Country -UPV/EHU-, Mondragon Unibertsitatea and University of Deusto), members of the different governance bodies and stakeholders of the Arantzazulab ecosystem, and various social stakeholders (TMeLab, Agirre Lehendakaria Center, Eusko Ikaskuntza, Aztiker, EIBE Elkartea, Tolomendi, Debagoiena 2030, the advisor Julen Mendoza, Deliberativa, etc.). The event, which began at 10:15 a.m., was broadcast live via streaming on Arantzazulab’s Youtube channel. The broadcast was widely followed.

The event was opened by Naiara Goia, CEO of Arantzazulab, who explained the framework of the project and the connection with Arantzazulab’s mission: “What we are going to set up in Tolosa is a deliberative practice with the aim of involving citizens and civil society in public decision-making, and contributes to putting collaborative governance into practice in institutions. This is a first experimental initiative at the municipal level to show the positive influence that these processes have on the relationship between public institutions and citizens. Afterwards, ways of replicating and disseminating this experience in other municipalities will be analysed. In short, we want to deepen the new forms of collaborative governance with citizens, making it more inclusive, giving a leading role to citizens in public decision-making”. In this line of action, Arantzazulab has this year signed a collaboration agreement with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to promote the use of public deliberation and the civic lottery, as well as to establish the conditions for institutionalising representative deliberative processes in public decision-making. In this sense, the OECD will collaborate with the City Council of Tolosa and Arantzazulab by contributing its knowledge on the subject and experience based on multiple international experiences of this type.

The project to be carried out in Tolosa aims to initiate a representative deliberative process with local citizens on a given challenge or public problem by Tolosa Town Council. A special feature of the process is that a broadly representative group of people selected by civic lottery will be involved in the process, guaranteeing the diversity of Tolosa residents among the participants. This group of people will weigh the evidence, deliberate to find common ground and develop recommendations on policy issues for the public authorities. All of this will be structured according to the criteria and guidelines of these processes. For its part, the City of Toulouse is committed to respond to the recommendations resulting from the deliberation process. The initiative will begin in January 2022 and will run until spring 2023. Thus, the process will last approximately 15 months.

Round table and phases of the process

After the opening, the event continued with a round table discussion with the participation of Olatz Peon, Mayoress of Tolosa; Naiara Goia, Managing Director of Arantzazulab; and Mauricio Mejía, member of the OECD’s Citizen Innovation team, who participated telematically from Paris. The speakers provided detailed information on the process and explained the role of each of the stakeholders involved in it. Naiara Goia, Director General of Arantzazulab, highlighted the reasons for promoting a process of these characteristics and recalled the starting point of this initiative. For her part, Olatz Peon, Mayoress of Tolosa, explained the possibilities and challenges that the process offers Tolosa Town Council: “When we talk about governance, we are talking about democracy, participation, community and cooperation, in other words, the axes and pillars of herrigintza. That is why it is important for us to be able to participate in a project of this type, and beyond strengthening new models of governance, we will be able to respond in an effective, participative and consensual way to the daily needs of the citizens and to the future challenges we face as a town, by implementing new, more modern and innovative strategies”.

Likewise, Mauricio Mejía, representative of the OECD, detailed the main phases of the project to be carried out in Tolosa: “In January we will design the process and define the specific question to be deliberated on, which must be posed in clear language that can be understood by the diversity of citizens, and which will be linked to a specific public problem. This will be followed by a civic lottery for the random selection of citizens. In terms of phases, as in all representative deliberative processes, a group of people, representing the diversity of the community, will analyse the information, deliberate to seek consensus and develop concrete recommendations on public policy issues for public authorities.

On the other hand, those attending the event also had the opportunity to ask questions about the project to the speakers. The event concluded with the signing of the collaboration agreement between the two project promoters. In this way, the mayoress of Tolosa, Olatz Peon, and the Managing Director of Arantzazulab, Naiara Goia, signed a collaboration agreement between the two institutions. Both expressed their satisfaction at the start-up of the process, underlined the opportunities that the project represents and stressed that the model of collaborative governance that “this country” needs must be based on a “common project”.