Morocco Transitional Results Report 2018-2020

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 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. 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... commitments may build on existing efforts, identify new steps to complete ongoing reforms, or initiate an entirely new area. OGP’s 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. Civil society and government leaders use the evaluations to reflect on their progress and determine if efforts have impacted people’s lives.

The IRM has partnered with Stephan Anguelov, an independent researcher, to carry out this evaluation. The IRM aims to inform ongoing dialogue around the development and implementation of future commitments. For a full description of the IRM’s methodology, please visit https://www.opengovpartnership.org/about/independent-reporting-mechanism.

This report covers the implementation of Morocco’s first action plan for 2018-2020. In 2021, the IRM will implement a new approach to its research process and the scope of its reporting on action plans, approved by the IRM Refresh.^[1] The IRM adjusted its Implementation Reports for 2018-2020 action plans to fit the transition process to the new IRM products and enable the IRM to adjust its workflow in light of the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on OGP country processes.

Action Plan Implementation

The IRM Transitional Results Report assesses the status of the action plan’s commitments and the results from their implementation at the end of the action plan cycle. This report does not re-visit the assessments for “VerifiabilityOGP commitments should be clear and specific enough to enable measurement of their progress. Verifiable commitments include specific activities that can be monitored. Following an action plan’s subm...,” “RelevanceAccording to the OGP Articles of Governance, OGP commitments should include a clear open government lens. Specifically, they should advance at least one of the OGP values: transparency, citizen partic...” or “Potential Impact.” The IRM assesses those three indicators in IRM Design Reports. For more details on each indicator, please see Annex I in this report.

General Highlights and Results

Morocco’s first action plan made notable open government gains in furtherance of citizens’ rights to government transparency and civic participation enshrined under the 2011 constitution. Overall, Morocco fully or substantially completed 17 out of 24 commitments. This level of completion is around average when compared to all OGP member countries (65%) and above the average for OGP members in Africa (46%).[2] This report evaluates the open government early resultsEarly results refer to concrete changes in government practice related to transparency, citizen participation, and/or public accountability as a result of a commitment’s implementation. OGP’s Inde... for three commitments in particular, of which two achieved major results (commitments 8 and 15) and one achieved marginal results (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... 6).

In regard to government 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, the administration moved toward simplified and transparent administrative services (commitment 8 and 9), and improved the publication of information by the Lower House (commitment 20) and of environmental data (commitment 5). The government also improved budget transparency (commitments 11 and 12). In terms of civic participation, implementation of commitments 15 and 19 enabled citizens to submit petitions to the head of government, parliament, or local government, and legislative motions to parliament. The government also provided an online platform for official complaints to public bodies (commitment 10).

Morocco’s first action plan advanced proactive government transparency and civic participation through implementation of its commitments. However, the action plan was largely government-led, thereby missing opportunities to strengthen civil society engagement through the implementation process. The IRM recommends that Morocco’s second action plan engage civil society beyond awareness-raising and government-led trainings. Many of the commitments were evaluated for their level of 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... but not for generating early results because they prioritized training, awareness raising, and the organization or release of government data. These are important supporting activities for larger open government aims. However, they are only modestly ambitious and were therefore not conducive to direct results.

Late in the second half of the action plan cycle, in September 2019, the Parliament’s Lower House decided to add six commitments to the action plan. Mohammed Doukha, General Councilor—a senior civil servant in the administration—in the House,[3] explained that the Parliament organized a debate on Open Parliament on 23 May 2019, with the participation of many civil society organizations. Based on this forum, the House produced an addendum to the OGP action plan without further CSO input. None of the civil society interviewees for this report, some of whom had participated, or their organizations had participated in the forum – like Sim Sim[4] or Transparency Morocco[5] – knew that the House had included these commitments in the OGP action plan or monitored their implementation. The lack of awareness among relevant civil society organizations of the addition and implementation of these commitments indicates that parliament fell short of following the minimum expectations for the co-creation and shared implementation of commitments.

COVID-19 Pandemic impact on implementation

As with countries around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted Morocco’s economy and underscored governance challenges.[6] The government imposed a state of emergency on 20 March 2020, which included curfews and travel restrictions. A decline in tourism, remittances and agricultural exports increased Morocco’s economic vulnerability and inequality. Specifically, “economic output contracted by 13.8 per cent, leading to a tax revenue shortfall that increased the budget deficit. Morocco’s poverty rate rose from 17.1 per cent in 2019 to 19.8 per cent in 2020. The unemployment rate went up from 8.1 per cent to 12.3 per cent. A third of Morocco’s families lost their main source of income due to the imposed quarantine measures.”[7]

Accordingly, the COVID-19 crisis affected at least nine of the action plan commitments by postponing or prevented a series of in-person events. The government adapted to the situation somewhat by organizing webinars like in commitment 18 and by holding online meetings for the multi-stakeholder forum in October 2020.[8]

[1] For more information, see: https://www.opengovpartnership.org/process/accountability/about-the-irm/irm-refresh/

[2] OGP Data Dashboard, “At a Glance,” data retrieved 2 August 2021: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AkPoj2FTDI0UAK_ElfyN8IkQO1tyYJW94IZGVb7ult4/edit#gid=113111183

[3] Mohammed Doukha, General councilor in charge of international cooperation programs in the House of Representatives of the Kingdom of Morocco, interview with IRM researcher on 22 July 2021 and e-mail correspondence from 26 July 2021.

[4] Ayoub Touati and Zineb Bouzar, SimSim interview with IRM researcher 20 July 2021

[5] Ahmed Bernoussi, Secretary General of Transparency Morocco, interview with IRM researcher 23 July 2021

[6] Morocco: Glaring gaps revealed by response to the coronavirus pandemic, Transparency Morocco, 12 February 2021, https://www.transparency.org/en/blog/morocco-glaring-gaps-revealed-by-the-management-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic

[7] Morocco: Glaring gaps revealed by response to the coronavirus pandemic, Transparency Morocco, 12 February 2021, https://www.transparency.org/en/blog/morocco-glaring-gaps-revealed-by-the-management-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic

[8] Réunion des comités de pilotage et d’implémentation, Morocco Open Government Portal, https://gouvernement-ouvert.ma/event.php?id=68&lang=fr