The Ministry of Mines of Peru, alongside the IFC, BHP, various mining companies, and CISCO developed the Mining InfoCenter, a one-stop-shop social and digital innovation to provide mining-related information and capacity building to local leaders. The system will enable them to access information from the private and the public sector, build their capacities, and provide feedback to mining companies and the government, generating an informed dialogue that drives local development and contributes to reducing the levels of conflict.
Innovation Summary
Innovation Overview
Globally, over the past decade, access to information from extractive industries and data opening have been recognized as a fundamental tool in transparency and governance efforts. However, despite the commitments undertaken by governments and the private industry, and the increase in the data volume, the results are not yet as expected. In the mining sector in particular, transparency efforts have not effectively reached communities. Consequently, there is a gap between data supply and the demand and needs of communities. Communities do not have an adequate level of access to relevant and understandable information or the means to make their voice heard to influence local development decision-making.
In this context, the “From Disclosure to Development” (D2D) Project in Peru, a global initiative of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the BHP Foundation, designed the One-Stop-Shop Mining InfoCenter to contribute to improving the dissemination and understanding of mining information at the local level.
Initially, the proposal was piloted in Moquegua, a mining region in Peru where territorial development has been prioritised in the national agenda and where, at the regional level, there are important mining activities associated with the Quellaveco project (Anglo American) and the Cuajone project (Southern Peru Copper Corporation). The Ministry of Mines has now committed to replicating it in other mining regions.
The Mining InfoCenter is an information, capacity building and dialogue space with a three-fold objective:
• Facilitate the convergence of public and private suppliers of open data and information related to mining and its link to local development;
• Contribute to consolidate a more complete and comprehensive perception of mining activity in the region, its future plans and the local benefits;
• Promote an informed dialogue among the mining company, communities and the government.
In order to fulfil its objectives, the Mining InfoCenter:
- Responds to users' information needs: Information to be shared will prioritise the questions and information needs expressed by local leaders and their communities.
- Provides culturally appropriate services: The Mining InfoCenter is centred around the local leader’s point of view and their information needs related to mining and local development issues.
- Incorporates digital innovations: The two innovative applications considered (the BOT application to manage FAQs and the digital investment monitoring tool for local leaders and surveillance committees) will facilitate access to and use of information on key mining and development issues for local leaders and will also allow local leaders and especially women to strengthen their digital skills in a practical way.
- Promotes behavioural changes: The Mining InfoCenter will ensure not only that users receive information that responds to their needs, but it is designed to promote the very use of information.
- Involves the participation of youth as facilitators of dialogue on mining and local development issues: Youth sustained participation is key as they take on their role to promote better levels of information and dialogue around mining and development, and help generate new ideas and innovations that help other young people to access and use information and open data.
- Incorporates a gender focus into each service: The services will recognize and respond in a prioritised manner to the information requests from women (whether or not they are leaders).
The Mining InfoCenter focuses on benefiting two main beneficiaries:
Local and young leaders, who will be able to:
•Access, analyse and use information for efficient monitoring of public investment projects and to undertake an informed dialogue with the authorities, mining companies, their peers and communities.
• Share their questions and concerns regarding key topics related to the mining activity and its relationship to local development, and get timely, reliable and understandable answers.
• Share the information with their communities.
Mining Companies and the Peruvian Government, who will be able to:
• Share relevant information in a neutral space.
• Adopt the practice of providing information on a regular basis and of receiving feedback.
• Adapt information to effectively reach the population.
Key to the success, scalability and replicability of the Mining InfoCenterits are the roles that have been agreed with the different partners involved in the initiative:
In essence, the Mining InfoCenter has provided mining companies and the government a neutral space to share information, build capacities and develop a new way to connect with the communities. Receptivity to the idea has been very high at the community and local leaders’ levels, as well as at the company and government levels.
Innovation Description
What Makes Your Project Innovative?
The Mining InfoCenter is a unique social and digital innovation because it:
1. Is a one-stop-shop where users can find responses to their information needs from different sources.
2. Provides culturally adapted services and fits with communication codes of the users.
3. Incorporates digital innovations (a chatbot application to manage FAQs and the digital investment monitoring tool) that facilitate access to and use of information on key mining and development issues for local leaders.
4. Promotes behavioural changes, not only focusing on ensuring that users receive information but promoting its use.
5. Involves the participation of youth as facilitators of dialogue on mining and local development issues promoting better levels of information and dialogue.
6. Incorporates a gender focus into each service recognising and responding in a prioritised manner to the information requests from women.
What is the current status of your innovation?
The One Stop Shop Mining Infocenter has been widely discussed and agreed with different parties and implementation was planned to start in 2020 (as of submission).
Innovation Development
Collaborations & Partnerships
As part of the From Disclosure to Development (D2D) program, a Working Group composed by representatives from the government and mining companies was set up. The objective of the Working Group was to promote dialogue among mining companies, the Government, and civil society on best practices for providing information to communities and effective feedback mechanisms to improve information dissemination. This dialogue space started in December 2018.
Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries
Local leaders:
• Access, analyse and use information to monitor public investment and to dialogue with their authorities, mining companies, and communities.
• Share their questions related to mining and local development and get timely and reliable answers.
Mining Companies and the Government:
• Share relevant information in a neutral space.
• Adopt the practice of providing information on a regular basis and of receiving feedback.
• Adapt information to effectively reach the population.
Innovation Reflections
Results, Outcomes & Impacts
The first phase of the Mining InfoCenter focused on the participatory design of the proposal involving and incorporating many voices from different stakeholders as local leaders, mining companies, government officers, academia and CISCO. Below are the principal results achieved:
• The Ministry of Mines (MINEM) and the mining companies co-designed the Mining InfoCenter proposal recognising it as an innovative way to communicate relevant information to local leaders and community members, focusing on responding to their information needs.
• MINEM and the mining companies have started to adopt some of the ideas of the Mining InfoCenter, such as focusing on providing information on topics where there are information gaps (e.g. labour).
• MINEM has agreed to lead the implementation of the Mining InfoCenter in Moquegua with a view to replicate it in other mining regions.
• The InfoCenter became part of CISCO’s Networking Academy to provide digital literacy training to local leaders.
Challenges and Failures
The challenges that were encountered and to which the Mining InfoCenter is responding are:
- Local leaders lacked mining related information: only 4 out of 10 leaders know about public investments and there is little knowledge about the mining cycle, public investment and mining activities in favour of local development.
- Limited access to information: Only 2.5% of local leaders confirmed having been informed by national level government institutions, specifically by MINEM, 12.5% by the regional government of Moquegua and 12.5% by municipalities.
- Lack of trust: 15% of local leaders confirmed having received information from mining companies, however they maintained that the information could be biased and incomplete.
- Women in general are the least able to have access to information on mining and local development issues.
- Disconnect between published information and what the local population needs in terms of content, detail, simplicity and direct language.
Conditions for Success
The following conditions are key for the success of the Mining InfoCenter:
• Physical location that makes it easier for users to interact with the facilitators of the InfoCenter.
• Internet connectivity to promote access to, and use of, open data and public information to enable virtual consultations and interactions.
• Active and systematic listening to the information needs of users to respond in a timely manner, with information that allows its understanding and use.
• Multiple providers of open data and information, which will allow sharing and aggregating information from different (public and private) sources to answer user’s questions and interests.
• Digital training for citizen monitoring and improvement of dialogue processes which will allow not only leaders, youth and women to have access to reliable information, but also to strengthen their digital skills to access and use mining related information.
Replication
The Mining InfoCenter is replicable globally in areas where extractive industries operate to support the communication and dialogue process between communities, companies and the governments, helping to avoid social conflicts.
In the particular case of Peru:
• The Ministry of Mines has agreed to lead the implementation of the Mining InfoCenter in Moquegua and to replicate it in other mining regions.
• Mining companies operating in other regions started to adopt some of the services from the Mining InfoCenter, such as focusing on providing information on topics where there are information gaps (e.g. labour).
• CISCO is interested in expanding the effort to other regions through its Networking Academy.
Lessons Learned
• The design of a social and digital innovation must be based on evidence to ensure its usefulness and ability to solve concrete problems related to local development.
• Beneficiaries must participate as key actors to design the innovation. Hearing their voices and suggestions to better shape the whole proposal is vital in ensuring the incorporation of culturally adapted elements.
• Public and private sector collaboration is not always easy, especially in the mining environment since information sharing is often difficult. Creating a common space to coordinate better strategies, contents and messages in innovative ways to overcome misinforming the local population has proven to work.
• The digital innovations included in the Mining InfoCenter entail the need of strengthening digital capacities in beneficiaries such as women and local leaders, so to enable them to access, analyse and use public and private information about local development and mining activities.
• Social and digital innovations need to incorporate a Communication for Development (C4D) approach to develop comprehensive strategies that consider behavioural and social changes and enable feedback mechanisms along the design and implementation process.
Status:
- Generating Ideas or Designing Solutions - finding and filtering ideas to respond to the problem or opportunity
- Developing Proposals - turning ideas into business cases that can be assessed and acted on
Innovation provided by:
Date Published:
8 February 2021