PC’s involvement from the start of the process has already had a great impact. The chapter has enabled the input of citizens into the bidding process, which represents the first case of citizen participation in the decision-making of a municipal administration in the country.

The municipality and PC have signed a “Transparency Agreement,” with the latter undertaking to submit recommendations on how to organise the public procurement for local rubbish collection in the most efficient and transparent way, and to monitor the whole process.

One of the recommendations made by PC was the involvement of a public audience in order to discuss and agree the terms of reference, during which citizens would have the opportunity to submit observations, questions etc. The audience was held in May and around 200 citizens attended. Not only was public participation in the audience very constructive, but the municipality addressed all the suggestions and remarks presented by the citizens, and incorporated several of them into the terms of reference.

The remarks made by the citizens reflect their concerns on several aspects of the contracting of the service, for instance the budget allocated to the service and the length of the contract. These concerns led to the terms of reference being significantly modified to include such details as drain cleaning as part of the service, providing more wastepaper bins in public spaces (including their maintenance and emptying) and specifications on how the service would be provided to areas which can become impassable with heavy rain.

Both PC and the municipality issued reports on the public audience. They can be viewed in Spanish here (report by Poder Ciudadano) and here (website of the municipality).

The agreement is part of PC’s programme “Transparency in Public Procurement,” which seeks to bring transparency into the commercial relations of the public and private sectors. Some of these tools have already been implemented in other municipalities and at the national level, for example in the acquisition of school books by the Ministry of Education.