Bulgaria’s third action planAction plans are at the core of a government’s participation in OGP. They are the product of a co-creation process in which government and civil society jointly develop commitments to open governmen... was mostly oriented towards e-government and depended on the technical implementation of projects, which was often slowed down by changes in government and long public procurementTransparency in the procurement process can help combat corruption and waste that plagues a significant portion of public procurement budgets globally. Technical specifications: Commitments that aim t... procedures. At the end of the action plan cycle, over half of the commitments saw only limited completionImplementers must follow through on their commitments for them to achieve impact. For each commitment, OGP’s Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) evaluates the degree to which the activities outlin... or were not started, and most did not lead to any changes in government practice.

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 (OGP) is a voluntary international initiative that aims to secure commitments from governments to their citizenry to promote transparencyAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, transparency occurs when “government-held information (including on activities and decisions) is open, comprehensive, timely, freely available to the pub... More, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. The Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM)The Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) is OGP’s accountability arm and the main means of tracking progress in participating countries. The IRM provides independent, evidence-based, and objective ... carries out a review of the activities of each OGP-participating country. This report summarizes the results of the period July 2016 to June 2018 and includes some relevant developments up to January 2019.

The Council of Ministers leads the OGP process in Bulgaria. During the reporting period, the political leadership and day-to-day responsibilities for Bulgaria’s OGP commitments changed twice. Former Deputy Prime Minister Rumiana Bachvarova became Head of the Political Cabinet of the Prime Minister after a short interim government period (late January–early May 2017), early electionsImproving transparency in elections and maintaining the independence of electoral commissions is vital for promoting trust in the electoral system, preventing electoral fraud, and upholding the democr... (in late March), and formation of a new government. The two consecutive teams from the administration of the Council of Ministers coordinating the OGP process had little legal power to enforce policy changes within other government agencies. This was because neither the political lead nor the dedicated team had the ability to compel other agencies to enter into or implement commitments.

Civil society organizations (CSOs) participated in the action plan development, but the government did not organize a regular forum to consult stakeholders on implementation. By the time of writing of this report in early 2019, the government had not published a self-assessment report.

Less than half of the commitments were completely or substantially implemented. One of the frequent reasons for this was disruptions to the public procurement procedures related to implementation of commitments, often related to the reorganizations in government. The action plan lacked sufficient financing, and most commitments depended on EU programs and funds for implementation.

In September 2018, the OGP team from the Administration of the Council of Ministers organized a comprehensive and meaningful discussion on the future action plan commitments. All stakeholders had the chance to propose and discuss in-person with the OGP team and potential implementing agencies. At the time of writing this report, Bulgaria has not developed its fourth action plan.

Consultation with Civil Society during Implementation

Countries participating in OGP follow a process for consultation during development and implementation of their action plan.

The government did not organize a forum to consult stakeholders on implementation of the action plan. In a few cases, the lead implementing experts in different agencies consulted stakeholders on the implementation progress of individual commitments. This was generally initiated either by the government experts as informal individual meetings or as formal working groups on specific projects or draft legislationCreating and passing legislation is one of the most effective ways of ensuring open government reforms have long-lasting effects on government practices. Technical specifications: Act of creating or r.... In addition, in some cases stakeholders also took the initiative to meet with government officials and experts on OGP commitments and related projects as part of their advocacy campaigns. However, this was not the general practice for most of the action plan commitments.

Table 2: Consultation during Implementation

Table 3: Level of Public Influence during Implementation

The IRM has adapted the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) “Spectrum of Participation” to apply to OGP.[1] This spectrum shows the potential level of public influence on the contents of the action plan. In the spirit of OGP, most countries should aspire for “collaborative.”

About the Assessment

The indicators and method used in the IRM research can be found in the IRM Procedures Manual.[2] One measure, the “starred commitmentOGP commitments are promises for reform co-created by governments and civil society and submitted as part of an action plan. Commitments typically include a description of the problem, concrete action...” (✪), deserves further explanation due to its particular interest to readers and usefulness for encouraging a race to the top among OGP-participating countries. Starred commitments are considered exemplary OGP commitments. To receive a star, a commitment must meet several criteria:

• Starred commitments will have “medium” or “high” specificity. A commitment must lay out clearly defined activities and steps to make a judgment about its potential impact.
• The commitment’s language should make clear its relevance to opening government. Specifically, it must relate to at least one of the OGP values of Access to Information, Civic Participation, or Public AccountabilityAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, public accountability occurs when ”rules, regulations, and mechanisms in place call upon government actors to justify their actions, act upon criticisms ... More.
• The commitment would have a “transformative” potential impact if completely implemented.[3]
• The government must make significant progress on this commitment during the action plan implementation period, receiving an assessment of “substantial” or “complete” implementation.

Starred commitments can lose their starred status if their completion falls short of substantial or full completion at the end of the action plan implementation period.

At the end of term, Bulgaria’s action plan did not contain any starred commitments.

Finally, the tables in this section present an excerpt of the wealth of data the IRM collects during its reporting process. For the full dataset for Bulgaria, see the OGP Explorer at http://www.opengovpartnership.org/explorer.

About “Did It Open Government?”

To capture changes in government practice, the IRM introduced a new variable “Did It Open Government?” in end-of-term reports. This variable attempts to move beyond measuring outputs and deliverables to looking at how the government practice has changed as a result of the commitment’s implementation.

As written, some OGP commitments are vague and/or not clearly relevant to OGP values but achieve significant policy reforms. In other cases, commitments as written appear relevant and ambitious, but fail to open government as implemented.  The “Did It Open Government?” variable attempts to captures these subtleties.

The “Did It Open Government?” variable assesses changes in government practice using the following spectrum:

• Worsened: Government openness worsens as a result of the commitment.
• Did not change: No changes in government practice.
• Marginal: Some change, but minor in terms of its effect on level of openness.
• Major: A step forward for government openness in the relevant policy area but remains limited in scope or scale.
• Outstanding: A reform that has transformed “business as usual” in the relevant policy area by opening government.

To assess this variable, researchers establish the status quo at the outset of the action plan. They then assess outcomes as implemented for changes in government openness.

Readers should keep in mind limitations. IRM end-of-term reports are prepared only a few months after the implementation cycle is completed. The variable focuses on outcomes that can be observed in government openness practices at the end of the two-year implementation period. The report and the variable do not intend to assess impact because of the complex methodological implications and the time frame of the report.

Commitment Implementation

General Overview of Commitments

As part of OGP, countries are required to make commitments in a two-year action plan. The tables below summarize the completion level at the end of term and progress on the “Did It Open Government?” metric. For commitments that were complete at the midterm, the report will provide a summary of the progress report findings but focus on analysis of the ‘Did It Open Government?’ variable. For further details on these commitments, please see the Bulgaria IRM progress report 2016–2017.

Bulgaria’s third action plan contained 37 commitments, loosely grouped into six themes: e-government; access to information; open cities; civic participation; public integrity; and open dataBy opening up data and making it sharable and reusable, governments can enable informed debate, better decision making, and the development of innovative new services. Technical specifications: Polici.... One commitment—4a.1.5. Forums on Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy—was included only in the Bulgarian version of the action plan and not in the English version. The IRM researcher re-clustered three commitments into a single commitment: 6.1.1 (Improve Open Data Portal), 6.1.3 (Open data promotional events), and 6.1.4 (Open Data Usage Manual). These three were designed to be implemented together through the same EU-funded project. For the rest of the action plan, the IRM researcher maintained the government’s original order of the commitments.

[1] More information on the IAP2 Spectrum, http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.iap2.org/resource/resmgr/foundations_course/IAP2_P2_Spectrum_FINAL.pdf

[2] IRM Procedures Manual, http://www.opengovpartnership.org/about/about-irm.

[3] The International Experts Panel changed this criterion in 2015. For more information, visit http://www.opengovpartnership.org/node/5919.