Local Information Systems: Strengthening GADs for Planning and Territorial Management

(The note contains graphics in Spanish)

Information is an essential element for institutions that promote conservation and sustainable production. It is a means to generate knowledge, empowerment and facilitate national and local decision-making.

PROAmazonía promotes coordination between institutions for monitoring planning, territorial management and land use through web platforms. Local Information Systems (LIS) open the door to achieve these goals as they focus on establishing the institutional foundations of information management, which are disseminated on their web pages and other media.

In July 2015, the Technical Secretariat – Planifica Ecuador[1] issued[2]the Local Information Systems standard addressed to GADs. An Information System is the organization and relationship between people, data, activities and materials required in a GAD (Autonomous Decentralized Government) to implement its Land Use and Development Plans (PDOT) and disseminate its results with citizens through accountability and other media.

The technical standard groups the competences and other attributions of the GAD into three components: Territorial (Planning), Citizen Service (public services) and Financial Administrative.

When a ministry requests information from a GAD, it generally happens that the data is delivered in a dispersed, separate and even duplicated manner. While LIS support the delivery of organized and updated information

The following scheme defines the commitments of both PROAmazonía and the team – GAD, the process is carried out individually and collectively (workshops in provincial platforms) by the provincial technicians of the PROAmazonía Policy and Institutionality Component; while, the GAD Team receives, processes and validates the information from their institution according to the methodology and tools that will improve its processes and comply with the technical standard issued by Planifica Ecuador.

The proposal to strengthen PROAmazonía, addressed to the GAD, focuses on organizing information in relation to the internal and external activities carried out by the GAD, the forms of support are personalized because each GAD has a unique reality in its planning, services, skills and staff activities. The support includes four phases that will be completed until December 2021: Information gathering, LIS structuring, operation and maintenance.

Currently, we are in Phase 1 (information gathering) by carrying out the following activities:
Political management with authorities: Willingness of the GAD authority to accept the support proposal.
Formation of the GAD Technical Team: a technical representative for each direction of the GAD and headed by the planning director.
Workshop to define tools and commitments: statistical and geographic information matrices, roadmap to collect information.

In the following quarter (April-June) we will hold technical meetings to review the collected information, prioritize, classify and advance with phase 2 (structuring the LIS), finally, from July to December we will advance with phases 3 and 4, emphasizing the tests and regulatory mechanisms (ordinances, resolutions) that will maintain LIS over time.

Thanks to the acceptance by authorities of the GADs (Mayors and Prefects), PROAmazonía has deployed its technical teams in 5 provincial GADs and 16 cantonal GADs to strengthen the LIS with an average of 15 technicians for each GAD, in permanent interaction until we achieve our goals in this year 2021.

In addition to these great achievements, the zonal coordinators 3, 4, 6 and 7 of the Technical Secretariat Planifica Ecuador are also interested in analyzing the tools and methodologies of PROAmazonía, so we are in close coordination to provide the necessary support.

The support we offer through PROAmazonía has been accepted by the GAD, this commits us to continue working from various approaches that include: advice to the review and structuring of the LIS in each GAD, processes that will serve in the future so that the institutions (ministries, GAD, NGOs) have the same language and work together to avoid deforestation, promote sustainable deforestation-free production and thus improve the quality of life of its inhabitants.