Tunisia 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 Tunisia’s third action plan, covering 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 revisit 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

Tunisia strengthened access to information and 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... (such as transport and water management data) through implementation of its third action plan. Tunisia also made progress in the extractive industriesApplying open government values of transparency, participation, and accountability to extractive industries can decrease corruption, safeguard community interests and needs, and support environmental ... and strengthened youthRecognizing that investing in youth means investing in a better future, OGP participating governments are creating meaningful opportunities for youth to participate in government processes. Technical ... participation in government. Finally, the cocreation of eight municipal action plans sets in motion manifold open government gains across the country in the near future.

Seven out of the thirteen commitments saw substantial 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 these, two commitments were completed in 2021 after the implementation period. This included 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... 4 on opening land transport data and Commitment 11 on implementing OGP standards at local levels. The remaining six commitments were implemented to a limited extent. During the 2018–2020 implementation period, Tunisia achieved a similar level of completion and 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... from the country’s 2016–2018 action plan.

Most commitments with substantial progress focused on creating and publishing open data or establishing legal frameworks. Two important exceptions are Commitments 6 and 11. Commitment 6 (enhancing 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 in the extractive industries) saw significant government-civil society engagement. Tunisia only needs to submit its application to join the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative for this commitment to be considered complete. Commitment 11 facilitated a more cooperative relationship between civil society and the government through dialogue and the cocreation of municipal OGP action plans. As a result, local activists and officials in eight municipalities have cocreated and adopted open government action plans by 2021.

Commitments that saw more modest progress generally entailed a strong public accountability element and close cooperation between civil society and government. Similar to the previous action plan, stakeholders reported that political instability and government reshuffling hindered the OGP process. COVID-19 also presented an obstacle. Some civil society actors also noted that the multistakeholder forum was not sufficiently inclusive during emails with implementation and did not actively invite new participants on specific OGP topics to raise OGP’s profile.[2] The government stressed that great attention has been taken to involve various components of civil society at national and local levels. The multistakeholder forum meetings were open to anyone who wished to attend and participate, and all information related to forum meetings was published on Tunisia’s OGP website (http://www.ogptunisie.gov.tn) and on the Facebook page.[3]

COVID-19 pandemic impact on implementation

COVID-19 adversely affected civil society operations and many commitments’ implementation, especially those requiring traveling between regions and in-person consultations. These include Commitment 11 on implementing OGP standards at the local level and Commitment 6 on enhancing transparency in the extractives industry. Restrictions on movement between regions in the country were put in place from January 2020 until June 2020, and again in October 2020. The multistakeholder forum assembled only three times in 2020, much less than in 2019 or 2018. Its meetings remained in-person, which caused absences of some participants from civil society and government.

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

[2] Asma Cherifi (founding president of TACID Network), e-mails with IRM researcher, 16 Apr. 2021; Samia Zayani (president of Dynamique Tunisienne autour de l’eau 2017–2021), interview by IRM researcher, 24 Apr. 2021.

[3] Government of the Republic of Tunisia to the IRM during the prepublication comment period of this report. June 2021.