Tenerife (island)

https://cabildoabierto.tenerife.es/

Island consultations

The Cabildo (island government) of Tenerife is an administration that manages many responsibilities spread across different areas of public management, such as Culture, Sports, Agriculture, Sustainability and the Environment, Transport, Roads, among others. The Cabildo's citizen participation team points out that the Island Councils have similar functions to the Provincial Councils on the mainland, with the difference that their scope of action is the islands rather than the provinces.

Citizen participation is practised as a management model in the development of projects by some of the Services that make up the Cabildo. Until now, the platform has been used mainly for public consultations prior to the implementation of regulations (normative) and ordinances that are mandatory under Spanish national legislation.

Although other types of consultations on plans and strategies have been carried out, there is still a long way to go to take full advantage of the functionalities offered by Consul.

Current use

The Tenerife Island Council team has used this tool to conduct public consultations with both closed and open questions on different regulations and ordinances. Among the most recent regulations discussed are, for example, the one regulating temporary shelter services for women, adolescents, and children who are victims of gender-based violence in Tenerife, and the one regulating the modification of the Island Council's electronic administration regulations. Outside the scope of regulations, another example of a consultation that took place in Consul was the Participatory Diagnosis of Actions for Education for Sustainability by Social Sectors, promoted by the Cabildo department that deals with sustainability and environmental issues.

The aim was to understand the current situation and future potential of education for sustainability in Tenerife through a participatory process involving several key social actors who would help the Cabildo understand the current situation and formulate proposals for the future in order to improve coordination in this area at the island level. Given that the Diagnosis is legally distinct from a Regulation or Ordinance, the law did not require a public consultation on the matter, but it was an initiative of the Cabildo itself.

The Cabildo's participation team is aware that there is still work to be done to involve all services in implementing participatory processes and using the Consul platform. As part of the dissemination and promotion strategy it is preparing, it will distribute a digital brochure internally highlighting the advantages of using the platform and offering advice on proposing, designing and implementing participatory methodologies, among other actions.

Challenges

There are still numerous challenges surrounding the participation project in Tenerife. The main one has to do with the scope of the Cabildo's powers and its proximity to the population. In this regard, the island is divided into 31 municipalities, some of which are small, with fewer than 10,000 or 5,000 inhabitants, where people feel much closer to their local council and further removed from the Cabildo as an institution that covers the whole island.

The Cabildo encourages citizen participation in person because it is very important to establish the foundations for citizen participation in the territory and to reach as much of the population as possible, but at the same time it is also promoting participation through digital methods to broaden its reach.

To meet this challenge, the Cabildo's participation team is also aware that more attractive topics that are closer to the citizens are needed. Consultations, within its island competences and which directly affect people's lives, include, for example, sport, sustainability, care for the elderly, the construction of roads and motorways, gender violence, agriculture, culture, etc.

Another challenge is to involve young people, who are more accustomed to interacting on social networks, which are fast and immediate. Although it is not possible to make a real comparison between these networks and a website for citizen participation, given the different objectives and functionalities of both media, the Cabildo will analyse its participation strategies to make them more attractive to young people.

Finally, a recurring challenge is the lack of staff dedicated to citizen participation, both in the Cabildo and in the island's local councils.

Collaboration with local councils

The Tenerife Island Council works closely with the island's 31 municipalities (see map above) to promote citizen participation through grants, participatory networks, training, and the promotion of municipal digital participation by launching the multi-entity project in CONSUL. Multi-entity is a feature of the Consul platform developed by the Tenerife Island Council that allows several Consul platforms to be hosted on a single installation, significantly reducing hosting and maintenance costs for end users.

In this way, the Cabildo has found a more efficient way to facilitate the use of the tool by Tenerife's local councils and to provide another channel for interacting with citizens, in addition to face-to-face channels. In this regard, the Cabildo assumes, on its own servers, the hosting and maintenance of the municipal participation portals, their creation and prior configuration. It trains local council staff to familiarise them with the concepts and processes of participation, the different functionalities of the platform and its use and management.

Local councils do not have to worry about contracting, developing or maintaining a tool; they only have to learn how to use it. This makes it an attractive project that is generally well received, but, as mentioned earlier in this article, one of the major problems is the lack of personnel in public administrations who specialise in citizen participation. In this sense, it is one of the difficulties that arise in providing content and keeping municipal citizen participation websites active.

So far, three local councils have taken advantage of the Cabildo's service and have become operational in the last year: Buenavista del Norte, Santiago del Teide and Candelaria. The next on the list are expected to be El Rosario, Guïmar, San Juan de La Rambla and Tegueste.