What’s Ahead for the Open Government Partnership Support Unit?
By Linda Frey, OGP Support Unit Executive Director
On January 2nd I started as Executive Director of the Open Government PartnershipThe Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on improving government transparency, ensuring opportunities for citizen participation in public matters, and strengthen... More Support UnitThe OGP Support Unit is a small, permanent group of staff that work closely with the Steering Committee and the Independent Reporting Mechanism to advance the goals of the Open Government Partnership..... Quite a mouthful, huh? Most of my family members still have only a vague sense of what this actually means, though I’ve been diligently practicing my elevator speech since accepting the job last October. Now almost three weeks in, it’s becoming more urgent that I get it right!
So, before the honeymoon is over, I thought I’d take this opportunity to introduce myself and share a few reflections on the Support Unit’s role and my own priorities for the next few months.
The obvious starting point is that I’m here to support the OGP Steering CommitteeThe Steering Committee is OGP’s executive decision-making body. Its role is to develop, promote and safeguard OGP’s values, principles and interests; establish OGP’s core ideas, policies, and ru... – and in turn, the 58 participating countries – in advancing the goals and principles of the Open Government Partnership. But, you may ask, what does that mean in practice? Behind the scenes, I’ll mostly be doing not-so-glamorous things like securing resources, organizing and facilitating lots of meetings, documenting decisions, and following up to make sure they get implemented.
That said, it’s clearly the end game that keeps us all motivated. To me, that means supporting open government innovation in the right direction — that is, innovation that helps governments become increasingly effective and efficient in service of the public good. Many OGP participating countries are charting new ground in terms of sharing information, listening to citizens, and responding to their feedback. As the Support Unit, we need to continue to work behind the scenes to encourage these innovations, but also increasingly to document them and share them as models for the rest of the world. This must be done not in an academic way, but in a practical way that convinces both ordinary citizens and committed public servants that open government actually can transform societies and improve lives. With 40+ countries now in the thick of on-the-ground implementation, we’ll be taking a close look this year at how the Support Unit can really activate the peer learning component of OGP. In the near term, we’ll focus as well on welcoming and supporting the 12 most recent countries to join OGP, who will be presenting their action plans on the global stage at the April Steering Committee meeting in London. Finally, now that the Independent Expert Panel has been established, my colleague Joseph Foti is working hard to get the Independent Reporting Mechanism up and running quickly. The launch of the first round of IRM reports during the latter part of the year is a critical milestone for OGP, so we’ll all be working hard to make sure the pieces come together.
As I communicate with the Steering Committee to refine a work plan for the coming year, it’s already clear that regardless of our specific deliverables, the Support Unit will need to do at least three things to set ourselves up for success:
First, build a top-notch team. Lean by design, we are currently two, with plans to grow to five by late 2013. That’s pretty significant growth, so I’ll be investing a lot of time and energyEnsuring universal access to sustainable, dependable, and affordable energy is critical to every aspect of prosperity. Increasing public oversight and transparency in the energy sector can help to ens... More to that end. That said, for an initiative of OGP’s size and profile, it’s still quite a small team, so we’ll have to be disciplined in setting priorities and managing expectations.
Second, design an external communications strategy that ‘walks the talk’ in terms of sharing information, listening to various stakeholders, and responding to feedback. Hopefully our upcoming website redesign will help. [If you have not done so already, please fill out a brief survey and send us your thoughts via this link]
Third, take every opportunity to embrace and elevate the “P” in OGP. The genuine partnership between governments and civil society is one of the most innovative aspects of the OGP model, and the Support Unit is on the line to help ensure the model works.
Want to run an idea past me? Please get in touch via info@opengovpartnership.org, post a comment below or tweet me @opengovpart