Tenerife (island)

https://cabildoabierto.tenerife.es/

Island consultations

The Cabildo (Island government) de Tenerife is a fairly large administration with a lot of responsibilities divided over different policy domains, such as Culture, Sports, Agriculture, Climate and Environment, Transport and Roads. For the participation team at the Cabildo, the island administration is similar to a provincial government (diputación).

Citizen participation is practiced within project development by some of the respective departments within the Cabildo, while others do not. Hitherto the Cabildo has used the platform mostly for public consultations on upcoming regulations, rules (normativos) and ordinances. These public consultations are required by national Spanish law.

Other types of consultations have been carried out, but the participation team at the Cabildo has not rolled out Consul as they would have liked, fully utilizing its functionalities.

Current use

The team at Cabildo de Tenerife has conducted public consultations with closed and open-ended questions about many different regulations and ordinances. They dealt, for instance, with the Regulation Governing Temporary Shelter Services for Women, Adolescents, Girls and Boys Who Are Victims of Gender-Based Violence in Tenerife. Gender-based violence is another policy area that plays out at the island level, instead of at municipal level.

Another example that happened on Consul has been the Participatory Diagnosis of Actions for Education for Sustainability by Social Sectors, put forward by the Cabildo's department that deals with sustainbility and environment issues. The issue at hand was to understand the current situation and future potential of education for sustainability in Tenerife, through a participatory process involving several key social agents who would help the Cabildo understand the current situation and make proposals for the future to improve coordination on this issue at the island level. Since the Diagnosis is legally distinct from a Regulation or a Ordinance, implementing a public consulation on it was not required by law, but an initiative by the Cabildo itself.

The participation team at the Cabildo recognizes that there is still work to do when it comes to convincing all the departments to implement participatory processes and use the Consul platform. One way it is doing so is to create and circulate a brochure internally, highlighting the advantages of using the platform.

Challenges

The Cabildo recognizes numerous challenges surrounding its participation project. The number one challenge concerns size and proximity. Municipalities are the administrations that are closest to the citizens and that have their citizens who live in relatively small territories. The Cabildo is perceived to be more distant, which is why participation still relies on face-to-face methods more than it does on digital methods.

To confront this challenge, the Cabildo participation team recognizes, it needs more attractive topics. Topics that directly impact the lives of inhabitants, within its policy areas, such as sustainability, elderly care, road and highway construction, and gender violence policy. In these areas the Cabildo has strong powers of its own.

Another challenge is that young people find the platform somewhat difficult to use; according to them, it has to be as quick (and entertaining) as social media. Although it's not a real comparison given the different objectives and functionalities of a social medium, it is leading the Cabildo to rethink their participation strategies making them more attractive to young people.

Finally, a recurring challenge is the lack of staff dedicated to citizen participation, both in the Cabildo's departments as in the island's municipalities who would like to work with the Consul platform.

Collaboration with local councils

Cabildo de Tenerife works closely with the island's municipalities, of which there are 32 (see map above). It is also giving direct impetus to start working with digital participation through multi-tenancy.

Multi-tenancy is a feature of the Consul platform developed by the Cabildo de Tenerife. It enables users to host several platforms within a single installation, considerably cutting hosting and maintenance costs for end users. It doesn't stop there, the Cabildo assists with configuring the platform and it even provides training courses to public officials in order to familiarize them with participation concepts and processes, and with the use of the platform.

The objective is to make it easier for Tenerife municipalities to use the tool and have another channel to interact with citizens alongside face-to-face channels. The municipalities like the multi-entity project because it has many advantages for them. They don't have to worry about any contracting, they don't have to maintain or develop the tool, they just have to learn how to use it.

Two municipalities have already taken advantage of the Cabildo's service and went live this year: Buenavista del Norte and Santiago del Teide, and next in line are El Rosario, Candelaria, Guïmar, Tegueste and San Cristobal de la Laguna respectively.