Netherlands 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 Bart Scheffers 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 Netherlands third 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

The Netherlands third action plan focused on a broad array of open government issues, with particular attention devoted to openness in local governance.[2] The action plan consisted of 11 commitments, of which four were fully implemented, while four were substantially implemented. Overall, this was similar to the results of the previous action plan (2016–2018), in which two out of nine commitments were fully implemented and five were substantially implemented.[3] The limited implementation of 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... 3 (creating an open government network for municipalities) and Commitment 6 (open algorithms) was mostly due to issues around human resources, with involved stakeholders on prolonged leave or rotating into different functions without an immediate successor in place.

Several commitments led to noticeable improvements in open government practice in terms of access to information, and many successful commitments saw close collaboration with civil society stakeholders during their implementation. Commitment 1 resulted in the creation of an easy-to-use platform where municipalities and provinces can publish all their documents and decisions in one central location. Thus far, 150 Dutch municipalities and six provinces have joined the platform. Commitment 8 led to successful pilots regarding the proactive disclosure of government-held information, following fruitful discussions between governmental and non-governmental stakeholders. Efforts to map the central government’s adherence to the Open Contracting Data Standard in its public procurement practices (Commitment 10) saw close collaboration with stakeholders and led to a successful grant to establish a platform around government procurement in the country. For Commitment 9, the Netherlands also formally joined the Extractives Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), published its first EITI report and established an EITI multi-stakeholder group.[4] Finally, under Commitment 11, the Netherlands utilized new tools in several municipalities to facilitate interaction with residents and enhance civic participation.

The Netherlands has carried forward several policy areas from the third action plan into the fourth plan (2020-2022).[5] Commitment 4 in the fourth action plan aims to further increase the number of public institutions publishing freedom of information (open WoB) requests in open format (continued from Commitment 5 in the third action plan). Commitment 9 aims to establish a platform around government procurement data, which is the result of a successful grant application following the 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... of Commitment 10 in the third action plan. Finally, the topic of government algorithms has been carried forward, with Commitment 12 seeking to develop human rightsAn essential part of open government includes protecting the sacred freedoms and rights of all citizens, including the most vulnerable groups, and holding those who violate human rights accountable. T... impact assessments for the government’s procurement of algorithms.

COVID-19 Pandemic impact on implementation

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, stakeholder meetings for 2020 that were supposed to take place in person were moved online. In interviews, stakeholders expressed overall satisfaction with how the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations handled the new circumstances and mentioned that in some cases this led to enhanced efficiency. At the same time, the lack of face-to-face discussions and informal networking that often took place after stakeholder meetings was experienced as a loss. Commitment 11 on local digital democracy performed better during the pandemic. The team went beyond the initially planned work and was involved in initiatives by various local governments to set up new tools for convening the local council online, guide on possible voting procedures, etc. Other commitments used the COVID-19 situation to pilot work. Commitment 7 on ‘dilemma logic’, for example, helped decision makers enhance their communications to the public around crisis management. Stakeholders involved in implementing Commitment 8 (‘open by design’) added COVID-19-related decision making to their inventory in 2020 and mapped various strands of government information that could be proactively released in the future. Some work for other commitments experienced slight delays due to the pandemic, such as Commitment 5 (Open Wob) and Commitment 10 (open contractingA transparent procurement process, known as open contracting, increases competition, improves public service delivery, and ensures governments better value for their money. Technical specifications: C...), where planned meetings and a seminar had to be postponed.

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

[2] Open Government Partnership, Netherlands Action Plan 2018-2020, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Netherlands_Action-Plan_2018-2020_EN.pdf

[3] Open Government Partnership, IRM, Netherlands End-of-Term Report 2016-2018, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Netherlands_End-of-Term_Report_2016-2018_EN.pdf

[4] See EITI, Netherlands 2017 EITI Report, https://eiti.org/document/netherlands-2017-eiti-report

[5] Open Government Partnership, Netherlands Action Plan 2020-2022, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Netherlands_Action-Plan_2020-2022.pdf