Bogotá Cómo Vamos — Citizen-Led Quality-of-Life Monitoring Network

Bogotá Cómo Vamos was founded in 1997-98 by a coalition of non-governmental actors — the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce, Fundación Corona, the newspaper El Tiempo, and (from 2010) the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana — to independently track whether the city's public policies were actually improving residents' quality of life, outside of any political campaign cycle.

To hold successive Bogotá administrations accountable, regardless of political party, by independently and continuously measuring how public policy affects residents' quality of life.

Each year the initiative runs a large-scale Citizen Perception Survey alongside a technical indicators report covering health, mobility, security, environment and public services. Since 2013 it has published the underlying data on an open platform (api.bogotacomovamos.org), used by city council, media and civil society.

The model has been adopted by more than 40 other Colombian cities and municipalities and by at least 10 more programmes elsewhere in Latin America, coordinated through the Red de Ciudades Cómo Vamos network. In the 2025 survey, satisfaction with Bogotá as a place to live rose to 61%, up 5 points on 2024.

The evidence base is strongest on reach and continuity. Because the core method is self-reported perception rather than an experimental evaluation, it measures how residents feel about city performance rather than proving causal policy impact.