Mexican municipalities often face challenges in developing trust among their citizens who are skeptical of government institutions and their ability to deliver for their constituents. In 2023, as Mexico began to prepare for its June 2, 2024 elections, Mexican municipalities understood that they needed to take steps to foster citizen trust in their elected officials and political process. Recognizing both the opportunity posed by the elections and the mandate to demonstrate that democracy works for Mexico, municipal governments in Chihuahua and Guanajuato, in partnership with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), set out to implement more transparent, participatory, and inclusive policy design processes. 

In conversations with partners on the ground, the municipality of Chihuahua indicated that they could take steps to make its public procurement process more transparent and accessible to citizen oversight. By increasing transparency, the municipal government could be more accountable for how it spends taxpayer money and accountable to citizens. NDI trained staff from Chihuahua’s Internal Control Organ (Órgano Interno de Control, OIC) on a methodology to consult with citizens about how best to incorporate public participation in monitoring the state’s use of public funds to deliver services and root out corruption. To help foster participation, citizens recommended providing stipends and academic credit to citizen volunteers and training program participants to conduct technical audits of public procurement processes. The OIC incorporated these suggestions into a new Citizen Observer Program (Programa Observador Ciudadano), which launched in June 2023. In recognition of the success of this program, the Citizens for Transparent Municipalities (Ciudadanos por Municipios Transparentes, CIMTRA) awarded the municipality of Chihuahua a 100 percent rating in municipal transparency, mentioning the Citizen Observer Program as a key factor in this success. This was the first time that the municipality had achieved a perfect score under CIMTRA’s municipal evaluation, and continues to hold the perfect score due to their citizen participation processes.

NDI and its partners in Chihuahua and Guanajuato also decided to take a more systematic approach to improving transparency and accountability by setting out to develop Open Government Action Plans (OGAPs) as part of their membership of the Open Government Partnership (OGP). Despite being part of OGP for over a decade, no municipality in Mexico had previously developed and implemented an OGAP, a process designed to help civil society organizations “shape and oversee governments.” Throughout 2023, NDI helped the municipality of Chihuahua and municipalities in Guanajuato develop OGAPs that met both national and international standards for the first time, with a special focus on using participatory citizen consultation processes to develop these plans.

After developing an OGAP with input and consultation from a variety of civil society organizations and citizens throughout Chihuahua, the municipality presented its plan (the first OGAP in Mexico) in June 2023. This OGAP laid out three priorities for the municipality to become more responsive to and inclusive of its citizens: prevent violence and improve the police system, improve conditions for the creation of new businesses in the municipality and provide support for rural sections of the municipality. NDI worked with the Chihuahua municipality to develop its monitoring and evaluation system for the plan which was assessed in May 2024, when the commitments were scheduled to be completed. Progress on the first two commitments was assessed at 90 percent. This system will allow the municipality to improve their development and implementation processes for future OGAPs and afford the citizens of Chihuahua a further opportunity to encourage their local government to consider their priorities and needs in the policy planning process.

Similarly, NDI worked with the Institute for Access to Public Information for the state of Guanajuato (Instituto de Acceso a la Información Pública para el Estado de Guanajuato, IACIP) to advance transparency work in nine municipalities. NDI provided training on open government tools and methodologies as these municipalities sought to implement OGAP development processes that involved citizen consultations. The municipalities of Apaseo el Alto, Apaseo el Grande, Coroneo, Juventino Rosas and Yuriria have completed and publicly presented their OGAPs, which included a combined total of 15 commitments for those municipalities. These commitments addressed training for entrepreneurs, strengthening citizen participation mechanisms available, better engaging citizens in evaluation of municipal services and improving material available on municipal websites.  Municipal officials in Guanajuato shared the following on NDI’s assistance: 

“NDI’s methodological rigor, previous experiences and engaging training sessions provided us with the tools, methodologies and capabilities to undertake this process. An entity outside of the municipality was key to kick start the OGAP development process as it provided extra support and accountability for us to do this.”

“NDI’s support and the newly generated capacities among public officials in the municipality ensure that if the time comes to develop a new OGAP, we will be able to do so independently.”

In democracies worldwide, elections often serve as a moment of maximum political enthusiasm and involvement for voters, civil society organizations, and government institutions. Over the past year, Chihuahua and municipalities in Guanajuato have demonstrated how local governments can leverage these opportunities for civic engagement and citizen input to create systems that are more accessible and accountable long after voters go to the polls. By capitalizing on a sense amongst municipalities that they needed to demonstrate the effectiveness and responsiveness of local government, NDI was able to empower civil society organizations and government agencies to make changes to existing systems and establish new programs that will raise the baseline of democratic engagement and access to government services for Mexicans for years to come. For example, of the six participating municipalities that are implementing OGAPs, four of the mayors (Apaseo el Alto, Apaseo el Grande, Chihuahua and Coroneo) were successfully re-elected in the June 2024 elections.

Authors: Sofia Ginard, Program Officer for the Latin America and Caribbean team and Katy Mudge, Senior Advisor for the Latin America and Caribbean team

NDI’s engagement with this program is implemented with the support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) program.

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NDI is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental organization that works in partnership around the world to strengthen and safeguard democratic institutions, processes, norms and values to secure a better quality of life for all. NDI envisions a world where democracy and freedom prevail, with dignity for all.