Romania Action Plan Review 2022-2024

This product consists of an IRM review of the Romania 2022–2024 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.... The action plan comprises 10 commitments. This review emphasizes its analysis on the strength of the action plan to contribute to implementation and results. For the commitment-by-commitment data, see Annex 1. For details regarding the methodology and indicators used by the IRM for this Action Plan Review, see Section III.

Overview of the 2022–2024 Action Plan

Romania’s sixth action plan contains three promising commitments, including, for the first time, access to justiceAccessible justice systems – both formal and informal – ensure that individuals and communities with legal needs know where to go for help, obtain the help they need, and move through a system tha... More for victims of gender-based violenceReforms that combat gender-based violence are essential for fostering an inclusive society and government that respects human rights and promotes gender equality. Technical specifications: Commitments.... The two other promising commitments continue ongoing OGP reforms, while the action plan also addresses new areas including extractives sector 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 participatory budgeting. Implementation could benefit from targeted civil society engagement, as well as collaboration between commitments, such as for publishing high-value data sets.

Romania’s sixth action plan consists of ten commitments, half of which build upon commitments from previous plans.[1] It covers areas in which Romania has shown a longtime interest, such as de-bureaucratization, transparency of national investment funds, and open data. New areas include participatory budgeting, environmental protection, access to justice for victims of gender-based violence, gender equality in decision-making, and joining the Extractives Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). Many commitments align with national policy strategies, European Union (EU) programs, and international funding, which will help implementing agencies to carry them out.[2] The sixth action plan is similar in its level of 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... to the fifth plan, with most commitments constituting positive but modest steps forward.

The co-creation process, organized by the OGP technical secretariat of the General Secretariat of the Government (SGG), took place online between February and May 2022.[3] It provided an opportunity for public institutions and civil society organizations (CSOs) to submit proposals and work through them together. After a call for proposals from public institutions and stakeholders of the Multi-Stakeholder Forum (MSF) (the National Coordination Committee (CNC)), the OGP technical secretariat centralized the proposals (74 in total) for further deliberation.[4] Joint meetings were organized to discuss the proposals in more detail. The OGP technical secretariat drafted the action plan following these meetings, and the draft was made available for public consultation.[5]

Several CSO proposals are featured in the action plan. Expert Forum Association (EFOR) proposed Commitment 6 on transparency of national investment funds, now featured in the third consecutive Romanian action plan (due to slow implementation). Meanwhile, the Center for Public Innovation proposed joining EITI (Commitment 10) and implementing Romania’s new open data legislation (included in Commitment 7). Moreover, compared to the previous action plan, the sixth plan saw proposals from CSOs and government institutions that had not been involved in the OGP process before. However, many CSO proposals were not taken forward, including long-standing priorities such as increasing transparency of political parties’ financing, public procurement, and activities of state-owned enterprises.[6] As a result, the action plan largely reflected ongoing government reforms. Although the SGG published the reasoning behind the rejection of proposals, interviewed government and CSO stakeholders noted a degree of difficulty in reaching agreements over which proposals to include in the action plan.[7] Moving forward, future action plans better reflect CSO priorities, particularly by devoting more time in 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... to discuss their proposals. This could increase the interest among Romanian CSOs to continue their involvement in the OGP process.

The IRM considers three commitments to be promising. 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 seeks to release data on the implementation of two major funding sources for local development. This commitment could help CSOs and journalists to better track the implementation of local development projects funded through these sources, and flag possible corruption in their use. Commitment 7 implements the recently passed law that regulates open data publication. It will institutionalize CSO involvement in determining high-value data sets for future publication, implement an “open by design and default” principle across the public administration, and provide training on data skills to the public. Commitment 9 will provide unified sources of information to assist women who are victims of gender-based violence, as well as a national barometer on domestic violence that could inform public policy and civic activism on the matter. Other commitments, though modest in their scope, could also see strong results beyond the action plan cycle. These include a pilot program on participatory budgeting (Commitment 2), a database on debtOpenly disclosing information about government debt enables informed decision-making, mitigates the risk of financial instability, and allows citizens to hold their governments accountable for respons... recovery (Commitment 4), and joining EITI (Commitment 10). It will be important to ensure that CSOs are directly involved in implementing these commitments, not just in monitoring their implementation. The IRM recommends that implementing agencies seek synergies between different commitments, particularly for commitments that foresee the release of open data.

Promising Commitments in Romania’s 2022–2024 Action Plan

The following review looks at the three commitments that the IRM identified as having the potential to realize the most promising results. Promising commitments address a policy area that is important to stakeholders or the national context. They must be verifiable, have a relevant open government lens, and have modest or substantial potential for results. This review also provides an analysis of challenges, opportunities, and recommendations to contribute to the learning and implementation process of this action plan.

Table 1. Promising commitments

[1] “Romania Action Plan 2022-2024”, Open Government Partnership, last modified 25 July 2022, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/romania-action-plan-2022-2024/.

[2] Examples include Commitment 3 with the 2021–2025 National Anticorruption Strategy, and Commitments 8 and 9, with the 2022–2027 National Strategy on Promoting Equal Opportunities and Treatment Between Women and Men and Preventing and Combating Domestic Violence.

[3] “Calendar eleborare PNA 2022–2024,” Open Government Partnership, last modified 1 February 2022, https://ogp.gov.ro/nou/calendar-2022/.

[4] For the full list of proposals from civil society and from government institutions, see: https://ogp.gov.ro/nou/propuneri-primite-2022/

[5] “Dezbatem ȋmpreună Planul Naţional de Acţiune OGP 2022–2004,” Parteneriatul Pentru Guvernare Deschisă, https://ogp.gov.ro/nou/2022/05/16/lansarea-celei-de-a-doua-etape-de-consultare-privind-pna-2022-2024/.

[6] Other civil society priorities not taken up included developing the e-consultare.gov.ro platform and open government at the local level. See: https://ogp.gov.ro/nou/propuneri-primite-2022/

[7] Cornel Calinescu and Anca-Luminita Stroe (National Agency for the Management of Seized Assets (ANABI)), interviewed by the IRM, 4 November 2022; Dan Bugariu (President of Smart City Association and Member of the National Committee 2020–2022), interviewed by the IRM, 14 September 2022; and Larisa Barac (Open Government Point of Contact (POC) of Romania), interviewed by the IRM, 13 September 2022.