Public policy formulation, when done in collaboration and openly, bringing different actors to the table, generates better results than if it were done by a few people behind closed doors between government offices. Listening to other people's ideas and understanding their points of view opens up new perspectives and helps us to design better public policies. But it also adds steps and makes more complex a process that is already intellectually demanding for those who, in addition, operate under the requirement that the process happens in a short period of time.

In this blog post we tell you how the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Mexico collaborated with the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (AMEXCID in Spanish) to design a multi-actor consultation methodology and test the hypothesis that the additional effort to carry out an open and participatory process of public policy design has an added value and leaves the people involved in the process more satisfied with the work done. 

The status quo

The learning stems from the development of a special program derived from the National Development Plan 2019-2024, the International Cooperation for Development Program (PROCID), the programmatic pillar of the Mexican System of International Cooperation for Development (CID in Spanish). This defines the priority issues on which the country wishes to collaborate with its allies in the international community and particularly in Central America, both as a donor and as a recipient, as well as the role it aspires to play in the global development agendas in the short, medium and long term, in order to move towards the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Efforts to convene different actors in the framework of forums and workshops to hear their views and integrate them into PROCID are not new. AMEXCID, which together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) is responsible for drafting the document at the beginning of each new federal administration, usually organizes such consultations by inviting CID specialists, civil society actors and academia.

However, despite the fact that these spaces serve to sensitize those who design public policies and provide them with diagnostic elements, in the end, the drafting of PROCID has always been done behind closed doors among civil servants. This was standard practice until, in late 2019, AMEXCID requested UNDP's support to design an innovative multi-actor consultation process to inform the development of PROCID 2019-2024. The trust placed in UNDP opened the door for us to get involved and learn in the process.

Towards the design of open public policies

At UNDP, through the AMEXCID-UNDP Cooperation Program, in collaboration with the Accelerator Lab and together with a team of academic experts in CID, led by Dr. Gabriela Sánchez Gutiérrez of the Research Institute, Dr. José María Luis Mora, we set ourselves the task of designing an agile methodology for multi-actor consultation based on the principles of Open Public Policy Design (DPPA in Spanish), that would include elements of collective intelligence for PROCID's feedback.

The principles of open public policy design are: curiosity, to dare to challenge assumptions and test them through experimentation; collaborative and networked work, to reduce the distance between those who write public policy and those who give their opinions, inviting everyone to work in a more horizontal way; and digital involvement, to open new channels through which opinions are gathered, taking advantage of new technologies and not limiting themselves only to physical spaces for interaction.

These principles are, first and foremost, an invitation to policy makers to change the paradigm. The approach encourages them to question their assumptions, to be humbler about their role in the process and to be open to the possibility of learning in new ways. All this leads to the design of more participatory public policies informed by a wider range of visions.

Multi-actor consultations as a challenge to the status quo

From the first time this vision was presented to AMEXCID, our counterparts welcomed and recognized it as a step in the right direction. However, given the limited time available before the deadline for submitting the final draft of PROCID to the corresponding authorities, it was decided that the methodology would focus on the principles of curiosity and collaborative and networked work, leaving digital involvement for later phases in the management cycle. AMEXCID highlighted the importance of following up on the implementation of PROCID and thus, digital involvement was proposed as a tool to detonate, in a subsequent collaboration, the continuous dialogue with the actors involved.

The first step was to conduct a focus group with CID experts to define the most relevant issues to be discussed in the multi-actor consultations. The actors that were convened were defined by AMEXCID, and included representatives of civil society, the private sector, local governments, parliamentarians, academia, international agencies and organizations present in Mexico and units of the Federal Public Administration (APF).

The focus group began by identifying PROCID users. Both those who consult it and use it to work (AMEXCID itself and the international cooperation areas that are part of the several government ministries, for example), as well as the population groups it seeks to impact. We worked on the basis of the question: for whom is it written, even if they never read the Program? This activity was complemented with a representation of the journey that the users make in their interaction with the Program. The objective was to rescue the assumptions that the group had about PROCID's way of operating, in order to discuss them.

The next step was the multi-actor consultations, which represented the first consultation exercise for a planning document at AMEXCID based on the DPPA principles. AMEXCID shared with us the comprehensive draft of PROCID, and with it we organized a workshop in which, for two days, a diverse group of actors had the opportunity to reorganize the objectives and lines of action of the program in a participatory and pluralistic manner. Participants contributed both to the substance, proposing new objectives and lines of action, and to the form, making suggestions for changes in the wording to ensure the internalization of a rights-based approach.

Upon its publication in the Official Gazette of the Federation, PROCID 2019-2014 will set a precedent in the elaboration of programs derived from the National Development Plan in Mexico. We know that this is only a first step. UNDP's aspiration is to demonstrate that the inclusion of more actors in the design of public policy contributes to maximizing its impact. In other words, the benefit of designing public policy in an open and collaborative way is greater than its cost.

Thanks to this activity, AMEXCID's planning team now has new tools and skills for the development of public policy in an open and people-centered way. Do you have experience in open and people-centered public policy design or do you know of other methodologies that can be useful to improve government management?

Write to us, we want to know more!