As a novelty, the regulation of the Government Plan in Law 8/2015, of March 25, on Transparency of Public Activity and Citizen Participation of Aragon, it is included in the chapter dedicated to active publicity in the title on transparency.
In particular, the article 14 entitled “Information on planning” has a first section devoted, in a general way, to plans, annual and multiannual programs of Aragonese public administrations. It includes next obligations:
¥ Publication within a maximum period of one month after its approval.
¥ Regarding its content: objectives must be fixed, as well as the activities, means, estimated costs and time foreseen for its achievement.
¥ Regarding its evaluation: the degree of performance, its indicators and its results must be evaluated and published periodically, at least once a year.
In this article 14 it is also included the requirement for the Government of Aragon to approve, in the first six months of each legislature, an open Government Plan. Although its content is not static, since it must be fixed by each incoming government, it is indeed fixed the structure to be followed by the plan of the respective government. It is also indicated that the Plan must include any relevant bill, plan or sectoral program. In this way:
¥ The strategic objectives pursued must be identified.
¥ Activities and means required to achieve them, including human resources and economic costs
¥ The time scheduled for its achievement.
¥ Responsible departments for its execution must be identified too
¥ The indicators list that allows its monitoring and evaluation.
The Government Plan of the IX Legislature, approved by the Government of Aragon Agreement of January 26, 2016, responds to the current mandate. This Plan is composed of 147 strategic objectives, distributed by departmental action areas, which are structured in 469 instruments of action. For each instrument or activity, the body responsible for its execution, human resources available, the economic costs, the timing of execution and indicators are listed. The plan is conceived as an open, flexible document subject to periodic evaluation.
Article 14.3 of Law 8/2015 establishes that the Government of Aragon must report main activities performed within four months of the end of each budget year. After the first year of execution, it was reviewed coinciding with the budget year, by Agreement of the Government of Aragon of April 25, 2017.
However, the Government set up a more ambitious objective: Government Plan monitoring has to be a permanent activity, allowing citizens to check the performance in real time. To achieve so, The Govierment has the Portal of Transparency of the Government of Aragon, citizens can access the content of the Government Plan in real time, which shows the degree of compliance with strategic objectives and their departmental distribution. By accessing each instrument individually, no activity has yet been initiated.
In those instruments and activities in which the objective has been achieved or is in the execution phase, access to documents, official bulletins, links to web pages, etc. is facilitated.