Citizen participation and its relationship with access to public information

Abstract

Beginning the process of citizen participation is, at the same time, beginning a pilgrimage to a process of cultural change. The groups in Mexico and Sinaloa that promote this change—from the State, from religious organizations, from private companies, from international financial organizations, or even without knowing it, from non-governmental organizations—have become aware of the importance and need to involve people and society, while the groups and communities that have resisted the imposed change have been forced to modify their practices and representations in the face of this new “global” situation that some have called informational capitalism and that decisively influences the way in which people are involved. Thus, information, which has only recently become a legal prerogative, is positioned as a fundamental element to increase the incipient processes of citizen participation. Faced with this, cultural, scientific, technological, legal, economic and ideological modernity has found a possible antidote: information, which, when satisfactorily structured, can serve as an incentive to progressively incorporate people into a process of responsibility and cooperation. Furthermore, having the legal possibility of accessing public information paves the way for obtaining it and using it in the best possible way to thus encourage the active participation of people in the increasingly blurred issues of public interest.