ICT as a Tool for Municipality Transparency and Efficiency in Panama

This paper presents the application at Panama starting in October, 2010 of the initiative Efficient and Transparent Municipalities – MuNet developed by the Organization of American States – OAS. The objective of this project is to help Latin-American municipalities to use ICT tools to improve efficiency and transparency in its activities. The phase I was developed between 2005 and 2006 in 22 municipalities distributed in 11 Latin-American countries supported by 5 experts of 5 different nationalities. The process implies a diagnosis of the general situation of the municipality including technological aspects, transparency and efficiency perceptions, and citizen participation development. Besides the diagnosis, participants receive a course for the Introduction to the Formulation of Electronic Government Strategies in order to prepare a strategy proposal to apply electronic government with collaboration of a Consultancy Team and a Task Force defined by the Major in each municipality. The document approved by the society and the political ambit is implemented by the Task Force. In some cases, using the technological support offered by the project, specifically with software applications to develop the WEB page of the municipality – MuniPortal –, another software – MuniCompra – to improve the buying process, another to support the creation of a one stop window for the municipality services – MuniServi –and a last one – MuniParticipa – to improve the citizen participation