Skip Navigation
Netherlands

Netherlands Mid-Term Report 2016-2018

The second action plan primarily includes commitments on open data. While more than half of commitments were substantially completed, they were not sufficiently ambitious. Moving forward, the next action plan needs to address several stakeholder priorities, such as the new Freedom of Information Act and transparency of company beneficial ownership.

Highlights

Commitment Overview Well-Designed? *
6. Publication of open data standard Providing and publishing information in a standardized, machine-readable format is a major step toward increasing the quality of information for citizens and reducing inconvenience. No

* Commitment is evaluated by the IRM as specific, relevant, and has a transformative potential impact
✪ Commitment is evaluated by the IRM as being specific, relevant, potentially transformative, and substantially or fully implemented

Process

Several meetings were held with CSOs and citizens in 2015 to share ideas for the second action plan. The government ultimately formulated their own commitments and did not explain why CSO suggestions were not taken into account. The government did not establish a regular multi-stakeholder forum to enable consultation during implementation.

Netherlands did not act contrary to OGP process

A country is considered to have acted contrary to process if one or more of the following occurs:

  • The National Action Plan was developed with neither online or offline engagements with citizens and civil society
  • The government fails to engage with the IRM researchers in charge of the country’s Year 1 and Year 2 reports
  • The IRM report establishes that there was no progress made on implementing any of the commitments in the country’s action plan

Performance

The second action plan of the Netherlands contains 9 commitments and focuses on two key areas: open data and open attitudes. There are fewer commitments than the previous action plan but the rate of completion and ambition are both lower, with no commitment complete by the end of the first year and no commitment having a transformative potential impact.

IRM Recommendations

  1. Improve institutional and CSO participation in the OGP process
  2. Include large agencies, Parliament and judiciary in the OGP process
  3. Include legally binding commitments on disclosing information
  4. Include civic participation commitments
  5. Improve the performance of the “House of Whistleblowers”

Downloads

Filed under: Europe IRM IRM Report IRM Reports National Nordic+ OGP Member Information Report

No comments yet

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Open Government Partnership