NEWS

Uruguay's Local Innovation Network launched a peer community made up of municipalities and departmental governments, aimed at getting local governments to work together on human development. The launch event was held jointly with the Canelones Departmental Government (Intendencia de Canelones) and brought together representatives of local governments, authorities from the Ministry of Social Development (Mides), the Uruguayan Institute for Children and Adolescents (Inau), the National Public Education Administration (Anep), and private-sector actors.

The event included a panel on the evolving role of local governments, featuring Pedro Irigoin, Secretary General of the Canelones Departmental Government; Juan Martín Fernández, National Director of Transfers and Data Analysis at Mides; Ximena Baraibar, adjunct professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Universidad de la República; and Gerardo García, representing Edenred.

Irigoin argued that governing "means anticipating," and that much of the work of local governments involves transforming institutions to bring them closer to citizens: "Moving beyond the basics — street lighting, street sweeping, road maintenance — and continuing to add responsibilities is a demand from citizens (...) but governing doesn't mean just reacting to whatever comes up or to public pressure. It means anticipating and preparing." Baraibar noted that, for citizens, "the final shape that public policies take" is the one that shows up "face to face" in the territory. Fernández, for his part, framed the challenge as one of implementation: "how we can improve policies from the execution side, so that they address the specific needs of each part of society."

Beyond the panel, the event included a board-game exercise in which representatives from municipalities, national government, and the private sector analyzed hypothetical scenarios on how subnational infrastructure and services affect different stages of life: childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age.

With this launch, RIL Uruguay adds a new space for working with local governments in the region, aimed at helping municipalities and departmental governments share how each of them, from their own territory, addresses human development challenges that are common across much of Latin America.