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Making Transparency Count: The Open Government Awards

OGP Support Unit|
PARIS, December 7 – The Third Annual Open Government Awards winners were announced today at the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Global Summit in Paris, France. Taking home the top prize was the Ukrainian initiative, ProZorro, which sheds light on corrupt procurement practices in that country. Ukraine also received special recognition for the involvement of youth in the project. Second place went to the API Pemilu platform from Perludem in Indonesia, which centralizes elections data to improve citizen engagement and streamline the elections process. The third place winner, the Honduran branch of the Construction Sector Transparency Initiative (CoST), works to make government more accountable for construction and infrastructure spending. Four initiatives also received honorable mentions: Malawi’s Transparency Infrastructure project, DEMO Mongolia’s Check My Service project, Mexico’s Budget Transparency Portal, and the Netherlands’ Open State Foundation Open Spending portal.
 
The awards celebrated civil society initiatives that are using government data to bring concrete benefits. These initiatives improve civic participation in public life, improve functioning of government and create new services with social and commercial value. “Given troubling political developments around the world and a shrinking civic space, it is encouraging to see the great progress that can be made when civil society works together with government. The initiatives carried out by these this year’s award winners can serve as models for better government – citizen cooperation around the world,” said Paul Maassen, director of civil society engagement for OGP. “This is the first time we opened up the awards to civil society organizations,and this year’s theme, Making Transparency Count, celebrates those initiatives that are empowering citizens to use information released by government to allocate budgets, unmask corruption or audit the quality of service delivery and get governments to address their grievances.”
 
OGP Chief Executive Officer, Sanjay Pradhan, believes that transparency reforms must be strengthened and reinforced by embedding citizen participation and government accountability of those reforms. “Transparency is not just making data open – it’s using that data to bring citizens into the policy-making process and closing the feedback loop between citizen complaints and government responses. These award-winning initiatives from across the globe – improving budget transparency in Mexico, shedding a light on government spending in Ukraine, tracking infrastructure projects in Malawi, fixing potholes in Mongolia – show that change happens from the ground up, and is most successful when civil society partners with government to collaborate for a better future.”
  • FIRST PRIZE: Yurii Bugai, Ukraine – ProZorro Open Procurement Platform
  • SECOND PRIZE: Titi Anggraini, Indonesia – API Pemilu Election Programming Interface
  • THIRD PRIZE: Carlos Chinchilla, Honduras – Construction Sector Transparency Initiative
  • HONORABLE MENTION, AFRICA: Dalitso Kubalasa, Malawi – Construction Sector Transparency Initiative
  • HONORABLE MENTION, AMERICAS: Lorena Rivera del Paso, Mexico – Budget Transparency Portal
  • HONORABLE MENTION, ASIA: Undral Gombodorj, Mongolia – Check My Service
  • HONORABLE MENTION, EUROPE: Arjan El-Fassed, The Netherlands – OpenSpending

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Notes to editors

  • Follow the Open Government Awards:

  • OGP launched in September 2011 with eight governments and nine civil society organizations at a side event during the United Nations General Assembly. Today OGP is composed of 70 national governments and hundreds of civil society organizations who together have made over 2,500 commitments to bring about greater transparency and accountability in government, facilitating real changes that improve the lives of citizens around the world. OGP recently launched a subnational government pilot program to engage people working in and around local governments.

  • For more on the Summit and OGP, please visit: http://www.opengovpartnership.org/

 

For further information, or to set up interviews with any of the OGP Awards winners, please contact:
Rachel Ostrow, Communications Officer

rachel.ostrow@opengovpartnership.org
 

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