Strategy for a Learning Society

Local Development

I. Introduction

The worldwide tendency towards promoting local and sub-national development has taken root in El Salvador in recent years. The Municipal Code was amended in 1986 to award greater autonomy to local governments; governmental and non-governmental organizations and institutions dedicated to promoting municipal development have emerged[1]; and there is a commitment to increase financing for local development out of the national budget. The Code also legitimized the creation of town caucuses and village consultations as channels for citizen participation.[2]

Local management capacity still varies widely among regions and townships, in terms of both material resources and human skills; overall, local capacity for participatory, visionary, and productive co-management remains relatively weak. On the one hand, recent legislation guaranteeing that 6% of the national budget would be distributed among local governments has been difficult to implement in practice; on the other hand, the lack of a historical tradition of autonomous local management, together with the consequences of the devastating civil war, require an immense individual and collective effort for technical, technological, and infrastructural improvement. In order for this effort to make the best use of the relatively few resources available from national and international support, local development strategies must revise their goals and methods in the context of the changing national and international situation.

El Salvador, with just over 20,000 sq. km. in size, currently has 262 incorporated municipalities which, according to some analysts, is an outdated form of organization.[3] According to the 1992 population census, the municipalities can be classified in five basic groups, as seen in the following table:[4]

GROUP	POPULATION RANGE	MUNICIPALITIES
GROUP	POPULATION RANGE	No.	%
1	Over 100,000	8	3.1
2	From 50,001 to 100,000	12	4.6
3	From 25,001 to 50,000	24	9.2
4	From 10,001 to 25,000	69	26.3
5	From 0 to 10,000	149	56.8
	TOTAL	262	100

II. Local development objectives related to a learning society

In the context of learning society characteristics, local development strategies seek to leverage participatory and multisectorial use of technology, communications, and information in order to enhance possibilities of acquiring new knowledge and disseminating further local information, as a way to improve the quality of life, in an effort linked to the national, regional, and world context.

III. General assessment

Since the peace accords were signed in El Salvador, new processes of development and democracy-building began to take hold, and they have had a noticeable effect at local and municipal levels. At times these processes have raised new questions and, as expected, in many cases the answers are not yet apparent. However, certain types of dynamics have begun to take shape:

Following the profound human and material devastation produced by 12 years of civil war, the postwar reconstruction process has helped provide solutions such as rebuilding bridges, roads, and infrastructure in general; at the same time, little attention has been paid to rebuilding the complex web of human relationships, and to healing the social wounds left by the war, which continue to hinder participatory local management and improvements in technical skills and innovative capacity.

The tradition of centralized power in the national government is giving way to decentralizing processes which strengthen communities and municipalities; although at times this has meant taking on greater responsibilities with fewer resources, it has also forced people to seek creative solutions to their problems and needs.

The lack of proper zoning policies and incentives for economic decentralization constitute serious obstacles to true decentralization, since almost all political, economic, and financial resources and services continue to be concentrated in the 14 departmental seats, which exacerbates inequalities between cities and rural areas, between large urban centers and smaller municipalities.

New national and local development processes promoted by civil society organizations, such as the National Development Commission (CND) and its participatory exercise to build a National Plan, along with efforts by governmental and non-governmental agencies to promote conflict resolution, participatory local planning, improvements in technical and administrative skills, and outreach to national and international institutions, have all generated higher hopes for local development.

Growing municipal and local autonomy has sparked participatory processes which strengthen civic organization at the local, municipal, and micro-regional levels, supporting citizens as protagonists in development and encouraging the maturation of new leaders; at the same time, this implies the need for citizen control of those who govern them, participation in decision-making processes, and individual commitments and responsabilities vis-à-vis local and municipal development.

New processes are benefiting more equitable relations between men and women, and there is greater women’s participation in development processes, and in all professional and activist areas.

Efforts are being made to break with past traditions of political expression and participation channeled only through political parties, and to replace them with broader, participatory development on the basis of sector, profession, community, association, etc.

Economic globalization threatens to widen the gap between those countries and localities which have developed sufficient skills to participate on the world stage, on the one hand, and those who have yet to learn how to identify and leverage their own competitive advantages, on the other.

The revolution in information and communications technologies (ICTs) offers an important opportunity for development, as it permits unlimited and interactive access to information of all kinds, a development without precedent in history. However, not only are there enormous limitations in terms of infrastructure, budget, and human capital, which make it difficult for local communities to adopt such technologies, but their use also requires more local protagonism, both in terms of creating information to support developmnt objectives and learning to select and utilize outside information.

IV. Principal problems

The principal problems related to knowledge and learning which constitute key obstacles to local development processes can be classified in two general areas:

Deficiencies in the creation, systematization, and dissemination of local information, which involves, on the one hand, translating knowledge into information products, and difficiulties in the exchanges necessary to constantly enrich the creation and use of information resources, on the other. The direct consequences of this problem include the inability to project local goals and realities to the nation and the world, and limitations in learning possibilities among local residents.
Difficulties in locating, obtaining, assimilating, and applying external information, not only in terms of statistics and reports, but also useful experiences from other municipalities and communities.

Main causes:

The manifestations of the problems mentioned above vary considerably among municipalities and communities, but their causes can chiefly be found in the areas of culture, institutional relations, and resources.

For example, even when there is awareness at the local level of the importance of obtaining and applying external information to leverage local development, the weak tradition of local autonomy limits understanding of the complementary importance of generating and dissemination local information. Furthermore, traditions of centralized authority inhibit the development of a culture based on the fluid exchange of information among sectors and hierarchies. Nevertheless, the relatively recent practice of participatory planning methods in many municipalities is creating favorable conditions for resolving these issues. Furthermore, the creation a a number of micro-regions or inter-municipal alliances to address common challenges is creating a climate of collaboration which augurs well for learning in those areas.

There is a strong demand for local information from townspeople (particularly students) and international development organizations, and to a lesser extent from the central government. There have been strong efforts by some international organizations to collect local socio-economic information, but the effort has been of limited use to those who participate in local development. At the same time, limitations in education, literacy, and information culture undermine the effective application of information when it is accessible.

In general, it is very difficult to obtain information relevant to local development from central government agencies, either because it does not exist, it is not accessible, or it is fragmented or inconsistent. This has more to do with the overall problem of information management at the national government level, but the age-old tradition of centralized government also plays a role. More recently, the creation and development of the Corporation of Municipalities (COMURES) represents a more effective channel for local governments to seek satisfaction of their needs.

The overall lack of ICT infrastructure in small and medium-sized municipalities constitutes a serious impediment to resolving problems related to information and knowledge. Nevertheless, some twinning relationships with overseas municipalities have been set up, and interactions with individuals who have emigrated from El Salvador and formed a village or municipal support committee abroad have also helped information flows, despite the lack of efficient mechanisms.

Specific challenges:

Build awareness and practice around generating, obtaining, and utilizing information in municipalities and communities, and among the support organizations which work with them.
Select, organize, and systematize local information (generation of information resources).
Disseminate local information to different individuals and organizations with an interest in maintaining relations with the community or municipality, from students to international finance organizations.
Facilitate the search for and use of information resources and networks of all kinds to leverage local development.

V. Projects, initiatives, and recommendations

A. Projects proposed by the learning circle

Generation of local information and utilization of external information to complement local planning

General objectives:

Overcome a critical lack of local information that is useful to socio-economic activities and local development, thereby promoting learning in the area of local development by broadly leveraging a long-term capacity to create, record, organize, and disseminate information on the one hand, and to access, apply, and systematize information on the other.

Thus, the project proposes to work in both the generation and systematization of local information –for schoolchildren, planners, national agencies, international financing organizations, investors, and tourists, as well as emigrants, for example– and capturing external information to improve local planning processes.

The general premises upon which the project is based include continuing administrative and political decentralization trends at the national level, and enriched processes of participatory planning and execution at the local level. The evolution of the Infocenter Association will also play a very important support role in the success of this project.

Participants:

Candidates for participation as direct beneficiaries of the project should be local development committees or consortia, broader than the local government itself. It is probably most useful to select as first candidates those who have had positive experiences in participatory municipal planning, in order to refine the project methodology with groups more likely to succeed, and then apply and adapt it to subsequent, less advanced groups following appropriate dissemination of results.

It may also be useful to select participating groups by region or department, in order to facilitate teamwork between groups or municipalities who already probably have some history of working together, and also to achieve more consistent results in the evaluation. Finally, given the great quantity of daily tasks carried out by the individuals who will probably be part of the project, it may be a good idea to select one person in each participating group who would work full-time, with stipend, on project activities.

Goals:

Generate local information: Produce information resources to leverage local development plans and projects, by creating broad-based community groups (producers, communities, educators, etc.) who will work together in the effort. The idea is to "inventory" the local area in terms of economic, social, demographic, environmental, commercial, municipal-administrative, institutional, and other information, and record it in such a way as to facilitate its access and distribution, such as a Website.

Capture external information for municipal planning: The goal is to leverage existing efforts at municipal planning among local governments, members of the broader local planning commission, and others, by locating, selecting, and applying external information that is useful to local goals, such as statistics, maps, studies, policies, and legislation.

Systematize the information that is generated: To enrich local and national stocks of relevant information that is accessible to the public in general and the local population in particular, and to generate learning dynamics which leverage local development and make it more sustainable.

Activities: [see implementation proposal]

Gather and organize a critical mass of external information that could be useful for local planning, create a bibliographical database, a Website with relevant links that are organized in a useful fashion, and a stock of documentation distributed among different resources centers.

Establish and implement an appropriate monitoring and evaluation method from the start .

Work with selected local groups to:

Define jointly the goals of generating these contents, inventory the location and quality of existing local information, plan the organization of the components and areas in which information will be generated.

Create the agreed-upon contents with technological support; train groups in generating electronic information (Website creation, etc.); train one or more members of the group in techniques to systematize and organize the information that is both created locally and captured externally.

Inter-municipal workshops to learn how to locate and capture existing external information, systematize it and apply it to local planning; enter into agreements with national and international organizations which currently collect and systematize information on municipalities, communities and regions[5], in order to obtain such information in an ongoing and opportune fashion (for example, statistics, maps, studies, etc.).

Share experiences among groups; disseminate results at local, national and international levels; systematize experiences; support new participants.

B. Recommendations for other learning circles

Education learning circle: Information generation on local schools could be a made a dynamic process (as in Suchitoto, with a form to assist information creation by local school officials and teachers), and could be coordinated throughout all the municipalities in which this project is implemented. There should be a priority on involving local teachers (innovative activities, or with the Website). As part of the curriculum, students from the sixth grade on up could be motivated to help capture data and information relevant to efforts to generate a stock of local information.

Rural development learning circle: Ongoing coordination with rural development efforts to generate information, particularly in terms of environmental information.

Migration learning circle: Coordination to generate local information targeting former residents of the community who now live abroad.

C. Recommendations to enhance ongoing projects:

Infocenter Association: Create an ongoing inter-municipal commission within the Association to facilitate the creation and standardization of local information, as well as generate information exchanges at the municipal level; ensure that community radio stations are involved in the association, both nationally and at the level of nearby Infocenters.

Organizations which support local development: Create and/or coordinate an inter-organizational group in charge of collecting, processing and disseminating information by and for local governments, departments, and micro-regions.

The information should be classified by areas:

Social

Economic-productive

Environmental

History and geography

Culture

Results should be ordered by priority

An inventory should be set up, and the information should be processed and adequately disseminated.

D. Additional policy recommendations:

Set up minimal norms to promote public information at the local level, in the context of a national public information policy, and in coordination with municipalities. The norms should include incentives to support different sources of information generation at the local level, and the human resources involved, as well as permanent coordination among the chief producers of local information, and conditions of access to locally-produced information.

Notes:

1. Instituto Salvadoreño de Desarrollo Municipal (ISDEM, 1987), Fundación "Guillermo Manuel Ungo" (FUNDAUNGO), FUNDAMUNI, Fundación para el Desarrollo (FUNDE), SACDEL, FUSAI. [return]

2. Comité Impulsor (Tendencias, FEDECOOPADES, CDC, FUNDE, DIGNAS y Fundación CORDES), "Carta ciudadana por la descentralización del Estado" San Salvador: Algier’s Impresores, November 1998, p.7. [return]

3. Galdámez, Ernesto, "Perfilando el municipio como promotor del desarrollo económico y social". San Salvador: FUNDE, November 1997, p. 27. [return]

4. Ibid., p. 30. [return]

5. For example, UNICEF, GTZ, UNDP, Ministries and central government agencies, etc. [return]

[see related case studies]

Conectándonos al Futuro, San Salvador, El Salvador

Updated 25-06-1999

[Table of Contents] [Executive Summary] [Introduction] [Chapter I Context] [Chapter II Building] [Education] [Migration] [Local Development] [Rural Development] [Micro-Small Enterprise] [Learning Organizations] [Infocenters] [Government] [Democracy & Citizenship] [Business Competitiveness] [Culture & Identity] [Quality of Life] [Conclusions]

Appendices: [Methodology] [Project Implementation] [Monitoring & Evaluation] [Local Development] [Migration] [Rural Technology Transfer] [Water Resources] [Electronic Commerce] [Public Information] [Government ICTs] [Evaluation of 3 Organizations] [Electronic Conference] [Participants] [Bibliography] [Glossary of Acronyms]

All rights reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce all or part of this publication as long as the complete source is cited: Conectándonos al Futuro de El Salvador, "Strategy for Building a Learning Society", San Salvador, 1999, http://www.conectando.org.sv/English/Strategy/