Israel Action Plan Review 2023-2025

The development of Israel’s fourth 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... restarted its OGP process after its last action plan ended in 2019. Political instability and a lack of high-level political support negatively affected the ambitionAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, OGP commitments should “stretch government practice beyond its current baseline with respect to key areas of open government.” Ambition captures the po... of the action plan. The Israel–Gaza war disrupted implementation of the plan and led to its revision in August 2024.

This report evaluates the design of Israel’s fourth OGP action plan, which restarted Israel’s OGP process after the last plan ended in 2019. The original action plan was submitted in August 2023 and included seven commitments. Israel submitted an updated plan to OGP in July 2024, nine months after the start of the Israel-Gaza war. The government added a 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... about information on Israelis impacted by the war and removed a commitment on making government data accessible and usable as this had already been completed. Two commitments from the updated plan have modest potential for open government results.

The co-creation processCollaboration between government, civil society and other stakeholders (e.g., citizens, academics, private sector) is at the heart of the OGP process. Participating governments must ensure that a dive... saw some improvements compared to the previous action plan. It was co-led by the Israel National Digital Agency and Joint Distribution Committee Institute for Leadership and Governance (JDC Elka). For the first time, the government launched an OGP website and repositoryAccess to relevant information is essential for enabling participation and ensuring accountability throughout the OGP process. An OGP repository is an online centralized website, webpage, platform or ..., offering new access to information on the process. Following initial outreach events on OGP, a call for proposals elicited 114 commitment ideas from the public.

Five multi-stakeholder working groups led the development of commitments, marking a new approach to co-creation. The final commitments were based on the working groups’ internal discussions. Over the course of the process, the Israel National Digital Agency and JDC Elka consulted with the multi-stakeholder Accompanying Forum of key civil society and government stakeholders. In 2024, the Israel National Digital Agency and JDC Elka revised the action plan with input from Hasadna (Workshop for Public Knowledge), a civil society organization.

Civil society participants observed that it was not easy for public officials to engage civil society organizations in co-creation.[1] They noted that some were unwilling to engage in the OGP process because of a lack of a minister or high-ranking civil servant responsible for open government. Others cited the ongoing political crisis linked to a proposed reform that allegedly threatened the independence of the judicial system.[2] Widespread protests have criticized the proposed legal amendments as a threat to the balance of powers between the executive and the judiciary.[3] Snap 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... More at the end of 2022 also disrupted the development of the action plan.

However, Israel’s OGP process included participants from new fields, such as on gender and climate along with more academics and private sector stakeholders. While organizations representing Arab Israelis did not participate in development of the action plan, the government point of contact and JDC Elka made efforts to include them. Between 2019 and 2022, Israel’s governing parliamentary coalition dissolved five times, also disrupting the co-creation process.[4] Ministerial-level government stakeholders did not participate in the co-creation process. This contributed to difficulty budgeting commitments and passing them as formal government decisions. Overall, lack of high-level political support for OGP in Israel limited the potential for more ambitious commitments.

Implementation of the action plan was significantly disrupted as individuals from the civil service and civil society were seconded to emergency response roles or military service due to the October 7th attack and onset of the Israel-Gaza war. Restrictions to civic space also have been recorded. Civil society organizations (CSOs) noted restrictions of freedoms of expression and association. There are examples of arrests, use of disproportionate force, and administrative restrictions affecting the right to protest. There have been hundreds of arrests related to social media posts. In 2024, the government blocked broadcasts of Al-Jazeera for security reasons, sanctioned news organization Haaretz, and taken steps towards greater involvement in the broadcasting corporation’s content and financial management.[5]

Submission of this action plan ends a period of procedural review of Israel for repeated failure to deliver an action plan after the previous plan ended in 2019.[6] However, the process for developing this action plan did not meet the minimum requirementsAll OGP participating countries are expected to adhere to the Participation and Co-Creation Standards. Each Standard includes clear and measurable minimum requirements that all OGP participating count... of OGP’s Participation & Co-Creation Standards. The government did not provide reasoned responseOngoing dialogue between stakeholders during the development of an OGP action plan is critical to the plan’s success. Specifically, communicating back to stakeholders the ideas received and decision... to commitment proposals received from the public. OGP instituted a 24-month grace period to ensure a fair and transparent transition to the updated standards. As this action plan was co-created and submitted by 31 December 2023, it falls within the grace period.

[1] Roy Peled (College of Management Academic Studies), interview by IRM researcher, 16 January 2024.

[2] Racheli Edri (Movement for Freedom of Information), interview by IRM researcher, 17 January 2024; Mor Rubinstein (Open Heroines), interview by IRM researcher, 13 August 2024; Adam Kariv (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... Consultant), interview by IRM researcher, 16 August 2024.

[3] “Freedom in the World 2024: Israel,” Freedom House, 2024, https://freedomhouse.org/country/israel/freedom-world/2024

[4] “Timeline: Israel’s election cycle,” Reuters, 30 October 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-election-cycle-2022-10-30.

[5] “Israel,” Civicus, accessed 25 November 2024, https://monitor.civicus.org/country/israel; [דיכוי מחאות בעת המלחמה] “Suppression of protests during the war,” Association for Civil Rights in Israel, 11 April 2024, https://www.acri.org.il/post/_1015; [מעצרי שווא של מפגינים], “False arrests of protesters,” Association for Civil Rights in Israel, 9 September 2024, https://www.acri.org.il/post/_1125; “The Judicial Overhaul in the Shadow of the War: Attack on Democracy and Human Rights Continues,” Association for Civil Rights in Israel, 20 December 2023, https://www.english.acri.org.il/post/the-constitutional-coup-in-the-shadow-of-the-war-attack-on-democracy-and-human-rights-continues.

[6] “Israel – Update to Status (August 2023),” Open Government Partnership, 6 September 2023, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/israel-update-to-status-august-2023.