Latvia Design Report 2019-2021

Latvia’s 2019-2021 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... addresses relevant national issues on 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..., 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... 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, and participation in local government. 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... introduced a new multistakeholder forum and civil society and government officials collaborated closely on the development of commitments. Greater involvement from high level and political officials could ensure more impactful commitments related to public participationGiving citizens opportunities to provide input into government decision-making leads to more effective governance, improved public service delivery, and more equitable outcomes. Technical specificatio... and greater 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... for lobbyingLobbying transparency allows the public to ensure that there is diversity of participation and contribution to public decision-making. Technical specifications: Policies and actions affecting lobbying... regulationGovernment reformers are developing regulations that enshrine values of transparency, participation, and accountability in government practices. Technical specifications: Act of creating or reforming ....

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 global partnership that brings together government reformers and civil society leaders to create action plans that make governments more inclusive, responsive, and accountable. 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 ... monitors all action plans to ensure governments follow through on commitments. Latvia joined OGP in 2011. Since then, Latvia has implemented three action plans. This report evaluates the design of Latvia’s fourth action plan.

General overview of action plan

Latvia’s 2019–2021 action plan addresses relevant national challenges for government transparency. Commitments on public procurement, open data, corruption prevention and lobbying transparency build on the initiatives in previous OGP action plans. For the first time, the plan includes 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... on local government that envisions openness standards for municipalities with more transparent local level decision-making. Upcoming structural reforms to local government make this a timely commitment.

Latvia’s fourth action plan was developed in a collaborative manner between civil society and government representatives. An improvement from the last cycle saw input from the public sought early on in the co-creation process. A new multistakeholder forum drafted the commitments in thematic working groups and focused on proposals that are not already covered by other government plans.

The multistakeholder forum could benefit from being formalised while involvement in the process by high-level representatives such as politically appointed officials and elected officials, could ensure more strategic and ambitious commitments. The process would also benefit from transparent feedback about how public input is used and ongoing communication.

Despite appearing in previous action plans, the commitment on lobbying regulation introduces a minor activity rather than a comprehensive legislative reform or implementation framework which is being conducted outside the scope of the OGP action plan. Although the commitment on corruption prevention will have moderate impact, it does not include measures that are sufficiently public facing to be relevant to 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.

Table 2. Noteworthy commitments

Recommendations

IRM recommendations aim to inform the development of the next action plan and guide implementation of the current action plan. Please refer to Section V: General Recommendations for more details on each of the below recommendations.

Table 3. Five KEY IRM Recommendations