Regional Projects

INFOSEGURA

Strengthening evidence-based public policies, and enhancing regional coordination and collaboration to implement effective citizen security strategies in Central America.

The Infosegura Regional Project is executed by the United Nations Development Programme Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean (RBLAC-UNDP), in partnership with seven UNDP country offices (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize, Costa Rica, and The Dominican Republic).

Infosegura provides technical and strategic support for managing information regarding citizen security, from a multidimensional approach, to inform the development of evidence-based public policies.

InfoSegura came into being in 2014 with the financial support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In addition, strategic partnerships have been sought with the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund, the Spotlight Initiative to prevent gender-based violence, with the Offices of the United Nations resident coordinators, with agencies such as IOM, UNWOMEN, UNFPA, UNOPS, ACNUR and others.

In this line of work, InfoSegura has contributed to the creation of resources for national policy making, and cooperation frameworks for development and their revisions in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, as well as undertaking analysis of local and national policy impact, from the standpoint of governance, prevention, resilience, gender and effective governance, by way of its knowledge and skills strategy.

SIGOB

Strengthening management capacities for governance. The objective is for the program to develop the methods and tools to support public policy implementation with governmental action, and bridge the gap between decision and action.

The Governance Management Project, which operates under the UNDP Regional Directorate for Latin America and the Caribbean, is designed to strengthen the capacities of institutional management for democratic governance. The tools developed as part of this project can be seen operating in management systems known throughout the region as SIGOB.

The Objective of SIGOB is to develop methodologies and tools that support political action by the government’s senior management and contribute to producing and maintaining the conditions necessary for democratic governance. These tools are aimed at reducing the gap between the decisions made by the initiators of governmental political action and the capacity of the Executive to carry out such decisions.

The characteristics of SIGOB are as follows:

1. It facilitates external transparency (as seen by citizens) as well as internal transparency (as seen by government actors);
2. It contributes to the effectiveness of policies, with indicators for early alerts and operational solutions to obstacles, and to the execution of these policies;
3. It encourages high levels of interaction with citizens through access to information, the reception and systematization of public opinion, and the integration of these opinions into the co-management of policies;
4. It makes use of methods and media available for planning and strategic management with the aim of overcoming many of the challenges of human development not only in the medium and long term but also through short term actions, which shows management's adaptability in finding the time to manage conflicts without endangering governability;
5. It contributes to adjusting government policy actions to the law.
6. To make these characteristics more tangible in each SIGOB module, approaches are systematically integrated for guiding the formulation of policies, managing these policies, envisioning products that are interchangeable among the various participants, guiding methods of analysis, and offering software that supports processes and products while promoting interactive communication and techniques for organizational implementation learned over the course of 15 years of project operations.

CariSECURE

Promoting the resilience of valid, credible, and comparable information on citizen security to improve policy decision-making, and reduce crime and violence in ten countries in the eastern and southern Caribbean.

CariSECURE draws on a public health approach to crime prevention.  In adopting this approah, the Project workS with technical  personnel  in  public  institutions  to  standardize  and  disaggregate  citizen  security  data  across  the  region, and  build  the  analytical  capacity  of  public  institutions  to  use  such  data  to  identify  and  measure  youth  crime and violence trends and resilience factors, draw conclusions on the actual state of citizen security in each country, and identify possible interventions. Finally, the Project promote a culture of evidence-based policy-making and program development in national institutions, which focuses on addressing the root causes of youth involvement in violence and crime. 

CariSECURE  is  one  of  three  components  of  the  broader  USAID  Youth  Empowerment  Services  (YES)  project  which  seeks  to  reduce  youth  involvement  in  violence  and  crime  in  the  Eastern  and  Southern  Caribbean.    In  collaboration  with  the  governments  of  10  Eastern  and  Southern  Caribbean  countries  and  other  UN,  regional  and  sub-regional  agencies,  CariSECURE  will  strengthen  the  capacity  of  regional  and  national  institutions  to  collect,  analyze  and  use  citizen  security  data  to  develop  evidence-based  policies  and  programs  that  effectively  target  risk  factors  which  drive  youth  violence,  crime  and  victimization.  Project  activities  will  be  implemented  in  Antigua  and  Barbuda,  Barbados,  the  Commonwealth  of  Dominica,  Grenada,  the  Republic  of  Guyana,  Saint  Kitts  and  Nevis,  Saint  Lucia,  Saint  Vincent  and  the  Grenadines,  the  Republic of Suriname, and the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.