The Diputación de Alicante has reinforced in this mandate its commitment to Transparency allocating historical figures in the institution to this matter. The main advance has been the launch of the first line of subsidies for city councils, which, in two years -2021 and 2022-, has had a budget of 850,000 euros. The effort made is aimed at implementing projects of transparency and citizen participation in the municipalities of Alicante.
In this mandate, starting in 2020, important agreements have also been made with other administrations on transparency that have significantly changed policies in this area with actions that extend not only to the Diputación itself, but to the entire province .
In relation to the investments in transparency that appear in a report prepared by the Court of Auditors based on data from the year 2019, indicate that it refers to Electronic Administration, not to Transparency, and that it has been made with information extracted from a year that does not it was neither planned nor approved by this corporation, whose mandate began in July of that year.
With regard to this mandate, it should be noted that, after a first stage of designing objectives, in 2021 the first grants in terms of Transparency and Citizen Participation were approved and executed for a total amount of 393,036.16 euros. With this, it has been possible to develop and execute a total of 66 projects in municipalities of the province of Alicante. This year the subsidies have increased to reach 450,000 euros, 12% more than in the previous year. In the procedure, which is currently underway, 133 applications have been received from municipalities and associations interested in this call for aid from the Provincial Council.
In addition to developing a new line of grants, transparency actions have been extended to other fields. It highlights the boost that the celebration, last January, of the I Transparency Congress, organized by the Diputación with the aim of promoting debate and the exchange of ideas and experiences in this matter, has meant.
Within the framework of this commitment to putting transparency at the forefront of action and public management, the Diputación de Alicante is the only one in the Valencian Community that has opened a participatory consultation process to draw up the bases of the aid, attending to the suggestions and proposals from the municipalities. This pioneering action has served as an example and has been a source of interest on the part of other administrations interested in continuing to advance in this field. The opening process to the municipalities has also been extended this year with the Transparency Service preparing a digital information guide that explains all the steps necessary to complete the processing of the aid, from the presentation of the subsidy application to the ultimate justification.
