Our challenge was to develop and practice capacities for public innovation applied to the development and adoption of new and better forms of democratic participatory governance to increase democracy.   During 2023, we both finished our analysis of the 2022 edition of our main Participatory Governance program (Tavarandu) and implemented a new edition, already incorporating some of those learnings. For this reason, the following are the 2022 and 2023 top key insights:  #1 Local government are key actors in public innovation and democracy. Thus, the direct bond between government and citizens, the local government opens a major opportunity for improvement of participation, engagement and, therefore, strengthening of trust and social capital in the community.   The training and facilitation process with the local government officials allows to install capacities for it, although public will be still a challenge.   During 2022, the program was effective in generating learning on participatory governance and social innovation. 80% of the participants who completed the evaluation process incorporated the knowledge of participatory governance and social innovation.  During 2023, improvements were incorporated in the training, and the two local governments who participated –Pilar, Ñeembucú department, and Natalio, Itapúa department- presented a good evaluation of the skills and tools developed. Data collected in the evaluation is still under analysis, but a good signal is the incorporation of participatory tools in activities outside the scope of our program, which was the case in Pilar, where they used participatory tools learned through this program in the disaster and risk management during recent floods. Moreover, this year we combined the training and practice into one experience: municipal officials trained in participatory governance and later facilitated themselves with our help, the citizen laboratory activities with fellow residents from their communities.  A lesson we learned in 2022 was further validated through our work in 2023: political and institutional leadership with will and commitment to promoting democratic innovation is paramount to launch and sustain participatory governance initiatives. Our choices for territories used this to prioritize where to implement new training for municipal officials and citizen laboratories, and considering the many other barriers we faced throughout this complicated electoral yea, the support from the local leadership made it possible to develop the program, project and initiatives that came out them.   A challenge remaining in this area is how to scale from the participatory governance tools incorporated in the local government trough the trainings and Citizen Laboratories experiences, to a deeper and sustained citizen participation in the design and implementation of public policies and public agenda.   #2 Public tools to facilitate citizen participation are key, so as relating the participation to tangible and affordable changes. The leadership of the local government and local civic organizations allows the process to be successful, guaranteeing the plurality and diversity of the actors.   The Citizen Laboratories led in 2022 –in Encarnación and Edelira, both in the Itapúa department- and in 2023 –in Pilar, Ñeembucú department and Natalio, Itapúa department- showed that an open and dynamic space, with proper tools and methodologies, can co-create solutions to community's problems, and apply them successfully.   A participatory governance institution very mentioned by participants in the 2022 was the Municipal Development Council (MDC), which represents a strategic opportunity for participatory governance in territorial planning processes, within the current regulatory framework coordinated by central government institutions.   In 2023, the institution wasn’t very mentioned, and the efforts made to link the citizen Labs to the MDC could not be successful, regarding the change of the national government authorities and some institutional changes that take place afterwards.   The training in participatory governance with the local authorities, combined with practice through the facilitation of citizen laboratories, gives both the institution and its members better tools and abilities to develop participatory processes with the citizens. Also, it gives the trained team better confidence in themself, the methodology and the participatory process. A mid-term evaluation is key to measuring the impact of it. Moreover, as we observed when mapping touristic routes in Pilar, the quality of the tools is fundamental: maps without proper references, for example, hinder the possibility of mapping the right or missing information as participants tend to fill in the gaps they observe in the tool, even if the information is already available in other official maps.   A remaining challenge is how can we integrate the participatory governance tools and methods we tested and developed into the new and emerging institutional designs that are promoted by the new government. Working with the Planning Secretary, now in its new institutional shape within the Ministry of Economy and Finance, may be a way to re-explore.  #3 Hybrid interaction can catalyze participation, but face-to-face interactions remain key.   In 2022, both during the training and the implementation of the citizen laboratories, face-to-face interaction remains key. Citizen engagement needs to be hybrid, adequately combining both face-to-face and digital platforms. We observed this in both the cities we worked on this year: in Natalio, connectivity issues made it difficult to provide mentorship to municipal officials through virtual means; in Pilar, collaborative mapping needed face-to-face mapping in physical maps that was later on digitalized.    A challenge remaining in this area is to promote and sustain main alliances that can bring experiences and processes together, and thar can catalyze the citizen participation, both in a virtual and presential way.  Also, taking care of the people and communities we work with emerged as a key need. Virtual interaction can sometimes be a distance between and with the local actors, if there is no presential interaction and activities taking place in the territory.   To maintain a strong communication and interaction is key and taking care of its wellbeing in the process.  #4 There are still some authoritarian characteristics remaining in the organizational and institutional culture that represent barriers to public innovation and participatory governance.   An organizational and cultural verticality persists that places the will of the institutional political leadership, the mayor, as the determining factor that enables or disables democratic innovation initiatives.  Promoting and supporting a committed group of people that can work as a steering committee for participation and co-creation processes, where both officials from the local government and citizens from the community are integrated, with the approval of local authorities, shows to be a way of promoting new leaderships and countering this barrier.     The lack of a strong political will to create binding spaces for participation can be seen in the fact that most used instances are still those of consultation and accountability, rather than those of effective co-construction of processes, such as, for example, the elaboration of participatory budgets.  Taking this fact seriously is key to designing and developing a successful approach that can lead to the promotion of participatory governance and public innovation.   The process depends too much on the local government leadership and openness. A need to link and build a synergy between traditional and innovative local government officials emerges as a lesson learned.  Also, a main challenge is to navigate the tension between the institutions, mainly the local government, and the citizen organizations and participation.   In the Citizen Laboratories in 2022, we developed two different models that presented some insights. On one hand, the Encarnación Lab had leadership of the local government, with local citizens organizations. The tension between them was strong, and the facilitation role of the AccLab and the consultant team was key to solving the issues and moving forward with the project. On the other hand, the Edelira Lab was led by a producer's association, and the main participants of the Lab were all workers committees from the association and around, with the support of the local government, but the lead of the association. There was no tension between the participants, and the problem identification and solutions implementation flowed smoothly.   In 2023, both Citizen Laboratories in Pilar and Natalio were led by the local government team, as part of our adjusted design for the 2023 intervention that linked training with practice into a combined experience by which municipal officials co-facilitated the activities of the Citizen Laboratories. Although the experience was very rich in capacity building for the local government, the need of protecting the participatory process to keep it as inclusive and open as possible sometimes created tension with the need of protecting and sustaining the trust of local authorities in the new (and often risky) participatory processes and tools that they were introducing in their communities. Dynamics of breakdown and repair within this tension happened in both places, sometimes putting participants at risk of either not knowing how to contribute properly to the process, or not being sufficiently cared for in their wellbeing as the process took place in inadequate environmental conditions just for the sake of completing the activity.   Navigating this tension requires strategic, assertive and empathic communication, and an institutional design that promotes significant and binding participation of all groups, organizations and citizens, beyond the authorities' preferences, always with an ethics of care toward the wellbeing of all participants.    #5 The capacity of making change happen catalysts citizen participation and trust, promoting social capital. Due to the variety of participation offers, there is challenge in mobilizing citizens to effectively participate in governance and communitarian actions.   Our observations and data from both the Citizens Laboratories developed in 2022 and 2023, as well as the Civic Technologies Hackathon in 2023 and its subsequent Civic Technologies Internships, showed that the key to citizen motivation and mobilization is the capacity of making change happen, linking their participation to tangible and direct results, even more so if it these results are observed in a short term.    The experiment developed with young students in Natalio, measuring trust of youth in the public government through a public goods game, was the first experiment developed by the AccLabPY that is validating in part the hypothesis that arose from our Social Capital study and learning loop from 2020, where the participatory governance portfolio started. This hypothesis established that public goods have a direct impact in reducing social vulnerability through trust.   To analyze deeper this direct relationship and its possible implications is a new path now opened. The public goods game showed a ludic, innovative and effective way to do that, involving a group that is usually excluded from local social and participatory innovation initiatives. This represented also an innovation for the AccLab team itself, getting out of our comfort zone working mainly with the same institutional actors.   Also, to promote and deepen the participation of beneficiaries throughout the learning loops R&D activities that the AccLab conducts is a new challenge that we need to focus on, with the need of making these participatory forms or R&D more visible and stronger.  

As the handover process, the main public to whom the actions were orientated were the local and national governments, the social civil organizations, the academia, other cooperation agencies and the CO.   Based on that, we focused on three main areas, with good results and some challenges this year.  Working out loud. We developed a working paper regarding the exploration of participatory governance in Paraguay that took place in 2022, another working paper with the lesson learned in the first edition of Tavarandu in 2022 in Itapua –published both in spanish and soon in english too-, a toolkit for the Citizen Laboratories Hechakuaa, based on the design of the Labs and the experience made in the first edition, and several blogs presenting diverse dimensions of the worked done in 2022 and 2023, like the experiment that took place in Natalio this 2023. These documents were spread through UNDP web and social media, as well as one-to-one WhatsApps messages and emails. Also, the several activities that took place in this 2023 edition of Tavarandu were communicated to the audience through UNDPs social media.   Public policies. One of the main goals is to handover abilities, capacities and methodologies to the local and national governments for public innovation and participatory governance. With the national government, especially the Secretary of Planning -that was the main partner planned for this intervention-, many actions could not take place, because of the change of government and the fusion of the Secretary with the Treasure. With the local government, both from Pilar and Natalio –where the second edition of Tavarandu took place-, good steps were made in that pad, with training to the public officials in public innovation and participatory governance, and the implementation of the Citizen Laboratories, with the leadership of the local governments' teams. Ideas to traduce these experiences and methodologies into local laws came out in Pilar during the process.    CO Portfolio. Within UNDP, we are in the process of getting the program packaged and transferred to different projects and initiatives, so that it can be implemented as part of their activities and that it can be presented as a UNPD Product, regarding the new business model that is taking place in the CO. In this year, we transfer the Tavarandu methodology to 3 projects, 2 that are already to be implemented, and 1 in design. In the three projects to be developed, one is to support the Electoral Justice with some of the tools we are developing within this learning plan (public good tames to promote civic education and trust measuring) and a Citizen Laboratory to increase youth participation. Another is to develop Citizen Laboratories to increase electromobility and promote a just energy transition. Also, another UNDP project is being developed to become the execution agency of a World Bank infrastructure loan. Tavarandu is being integrated within this proposal as the methodology to integrate citizen engagement into the infrastructure projects of this loan. 

Participatory governance and public innovation are relatively new areas in both the academic and public policy spheres. The lack of qualitative and quantitative data led to the need for innovative types of data that can face these gaps and generate trustful scientific evidence.   Based on the knowledge and strength of the AccLab Team, we choose these types of data that combine both quantitative and quantitative methods, generate knowledge bottom-up and combine macro and micro approaches for a more comprehensive analysis.  These types of data could generate control groups and comparative approaches, to measure the impact of the activities and processes developed.  Also, the oficial available data is mainly concentrated in the macro sphere, and the learning loop approach works bottom-up, to identify and catalyze the community-led solutions. In that sense, the chosen type of data allows us to face this gap and build new data based on the people and communities' experiences.  

The methods were implemented in several phases of the activities developed this year, to promote and catalyze participatory governance and public innovation whit different stakeholders, such as communities, citizens, local governments, academia.   In the Citizen Laboratories, to identify the needs and dreams of the community, and to define them to implement the selected actions, different methods took place to achieve a better result: sensemaking, ethnography, co-creation, data visualization and participatory design.   Through the combination of these methods, the participants of the Laboratories analyzed the reality of their community, and identified the main needs on which they could work on.   Based on the problematic identified by the citizens in Natalio and Pilars Laboratories, we use Community Asset Mapping, collective intelligence, visual thinking and mapping and solutions mapping to create and implement the action plan design by the community. With the combination of these methods, we create an approach that could be tangible for the participants and could lead to a prompt and visible change.   The key innovation methods combined result in a more holistic approach and a deeper outcome. The Toolkit containing the Citizen Laboratories methodology from 2022, and the documents from the Citizen Laboratories 2023 present this combination.   Furthermore, we used a new key innovation method: gamification. To measure the impact of the Citizen Laboratories, we developed a game based on trust, called the Public Goods Trust Game, in which students participate and, through the game, we could measure the level of trust in the local government, and compare a group of students how participated from the participatory governance and public innovation training, and a control group of students how didn’t. This experiment was done in Natalio and is projected to be done in Pilar next year in 2024.  

The experience developed this year in the learning loops take took place in this frontier challenge brough us some insights that emerge in the process, and represent key elements to be taken for the 2024 action plans to be developed:  Conflicts and interests are real, and they need to be considered both in the design and in the implementation  Institutionalized participation is a need, and moving forward to it will catalyze the citizen participation  Mass media and social media can help us work out loud, achieve and mobilize more voices and actors  Plurality and diversity of voices is crucial to the participatory process and the sustainability of the results  Make change happen is the key to engage citizen participation  Prompt response to the needs is crucial for the motivation and satisfaction of the participative process  Artificial intelligence can bring tools to automatize process, gain time and concentrate the efforts in the main priorities.