Open Government in times of COVID-19 in Costa Rica

Costa Rica, April 7, 2020.- Today, a series of online training for local governments began under the project "Improving municipal government services through innovation and local networks."

The month of open virtuality offers the possibility of developing dialogues to search for solutions to overcome the challenges that municipalities face, as well as proposing means to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus.

The objective of the virtual training series is to promote open government actions in times of COVID-19 and virtuality.

This series of webinars aims to present experiences and challenges of governments, discuss effective methodologies, offer digital tools to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus in localities and facilitate spaces for dialogue to better understand the role of local government in times of pandemic and recession.

The implementation of Open Data policies in the municipalities helps to improve the services to citizens, and at the same time, allows identifying tools that are vital for municipal empowerment.

The webinar series includes the following topics and objectives:

Tuesday, April 7: “Empowerment of local governments to mitigate the coronavirus.” Objective: To publicize the City Listener and Blockchain Certificates tools as means of municipal empowerment to mitigate the coronavirus and its rapid spread.

Thursday, April 16: “The experience of the Municipality of Esparza in its live process of opening public data. Learnings and good practices. ” Objective: To share the challenges, progress, and achievements of the Municipality of Esparza in terms of Opening Public Data with a collaborative approach, in order to be a point of reference for other municipalities.

Thursday, April 23: “A more efficient and agile municipal government: CoLABora Methodology to simplify procedures focused on users.” Objective: To share the experience of the coLABora methodology in the pilot project simplifying the patent process in various local governments of the Greater Metropolitan Area of Costa Rica.

Thursday, April 30. "The role of local government in times of pandemic: effective communication and listening to the private and entrepreneurial sector." Objective: To recognize the role of municipalities in supporting the private, commercial and entrepreneurial sector in times of pandemic and recession.

Among the participants were officials from Argentina, Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico, and Paraguay.