Subnational Open Government (RO0038)

Status quo or problem addressed by the commitment At the level of local public authorities, knowledge of the open government principles is low. There are several initiatives and good practices, but these are not replicated, due to the lack of information and communications on this topic. Main objective Increase citizen engagement in the decision-making process of local authorities and increase the involvement of local authorities in the OGP process. Brief description of commitment A set of recommendations regarding open local government will be drafted based on the OGP principles, and a pilot program modelled on the OGP Subnational Pilot will be initiated for 8 local governments. OPG challenge addressed by the commitment Improving public services; Increasing Public Integrity; More Effectively Managing Public Resources Relevance Civic Participation; Accountability; Access to public information Ambition Increase the number of local authorities that are committed to implement measures related to OGP principles; Increase the number of social actors that participate in the decision-making process.

9. Subnational open government

A set of recommendations regarding open local government will be drafted based on the OGP principles, and a pilot program modeled on the OGP Subnational Pilot will be initiated for 8 local governments.

Main Objective:

Increase citizen engagement in the decision-making process of local authorities and increase the involvement of local authorities in the OGP process.

Milestones:

6. • Co-creation of set of recommendations on OGP principles for local public administration
   • Dissemination of information regarding these recommendations to local authorities
   • Organize regional information sessions with public authorities, NGOs, academia and other stakeholders to promote the OGP subnational principles (8 sessions)
   • Based on the model of the OGP Subnational Program process, launch an application session followed by the selection of 8 local public authorities that will be assisted in the development and implementation of local action plans
   • Implementation of local action plans developed by the local governments, with the support of NGOs and the OGP Coordination Unit: (1) hold local public debates and consultations;(2) identify local specific problems and priorities with the participation of all stakeholders; (3) set up local mixed action teams to draft and propose projects / solutions and implement them.
   • Select and award the best practices in OGP Subnational
   • Based on gained experience, develop an OGP action plan for local authorities for 2018-2020
   • Analysis of the opportunity and necessity, as well as identification of funding sources, for the development of a set of standardized, open-source tools to facilitate the online presence of local public authorities (website based on the provisions of the Memorandum on transparency; user interface allowing the update of the page even without having technical expertise; widgets that automatically retrieve particular information from centralized databases; instruments for participatory democracy; the development of a cloud service, managed by the MDRAP, including maintenance, that will hostfree of charge the local public authorities’ websites that use the standardized solution

Responsible Institution: Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration (MDRAP)

Supporting Institution(s): Chancellery of the Prime-Minister (CPM), Ministry for Public Consultation and Civic Dialogue (MCPDC), County Councils, Open Data Coalition, Smart City and other NGOs with relevant experience

Start date: September 2016                                                  End date: June 2018

Editorial Note: The commitment text is abridged. The full text can be found in the OGP 2016–2018 national action plan.

Commitment Aim

This commitment aimed to increase citizen engagement in decision-making at the local level. It aimed to create—together with civil society—a set of recommendations on OGP principles for local public administration and promote their application through regional information sessions and pilot exercises. On the basis of the pilot application of the recommendation, the commitment aimed to distill the best practices and to develop an action plan for implementing the OGP principles at the level of all local public administrations.

STATUS

Midterm: Limited

In June 2017, the Guide for Open Government Partnership at the Subnational level was published. [70]

End-of-term: Limited

According to the government’s self-assessment report, MDRAP emailed the Guide for Open Government Partnership at the Subnational level to all local administrations.  Moreover, the guide was made available on the MDRAP website. [71] Additionally, 111 local public administrations were selected [72] after they responded to the call of the MDRAP for local public administrations willing to implement this commitment.

All other milestones have not been started, although according to the government’s self-assessment report, funds were allocated to Milestones 3, 5, 6 and 8 through the SIPOCA 61 EU cofunded project. [73]

Did it Open Government?

Access to information: Marginal

The completion of Milestones 1 and 2 secured the development and the dissemination of a set of recommendations that local authorities can use to improve transparency and participation in the decision-making processes, including opening data (e.g. available platforms, tools, resources and support to implement open government reforms). However, these measures alone did not lead to the opening of data. According to two civil society representatives, the difficulty lied in the diverging interests of the local and the central administrations. For instance, local public authorities would have joined OGP if they could build their own more flexible local portal to engage the local IT community (e.g. to reutilize the data or collect more data on the basis of widgets), [74] and use it in their political campaigns. ^[75] Alternatively, central authorities wanted control over the local data (to ensure their reliability, safe storage, management, and homogeneous publication, etc.) because they, in turn, had to populate the European Data Portal in accordance to the European System of Open Data. Central authorities therefore preferred local data to be published on data.gov.ro. [76]

Consequently, the central administration had to persuade the local administration to join the OGP efforts. The solution was to publish them in two places: locally and on the national data portal. ^[77] To this end, outside Milestones 1 and 2, the Secretariat General of the Government (SGG) wrote the texts that local public administrations could use to accompany their data, and allowed the national portal to be embedded in other portals, thus eliminating the need for double updates. [78]  Furthermore, the open data methodology developed for Commitment 18  of this action plan included recommendations for procedures and publishing of data at the local level, without the obligation to publish on the national portal. Other local initiatives (e.g. in Alba Iulia [79] and in Timisoara [80]) that were started by the local civil society and IT industry, together with the local public authorities, have produced few datasets because of internal disagreements, or have produced unique datasets gathered by the widgets and sensors spread through the city. [81]

Civic participation: Did not change

The guide was coauthored by MDRAP, the Center for Public Innovation and Smart City Timisoara. [82] Nevertheless, according to a civil society representative, civil society was not involved in its dissemination. [83]

Carried forward?

This commitment will be continued in the 2018–2020 national action plan as Commitment 2: “Open Government at local level.”

[70] Guvernul Romaniei, “Recomandări privind Parteneriatul pentru Guvernare Deschisă la nivel local”, Centrul pentru Inovare Publică, Smart City Timișoara, 2017, available [in Romanian] at https://bit.ly/2VOZTsh.

[71] “Peste 100 de unitati administrativ-teritoriale vor beneficia de indrumare metodologica in vederea implementarii valorilor Parteneriatului pentru o Guvernare Deschisa (OGP) la nivel local”, MDRAP, 1 November 2017 press release available [in Romanian] at https://bit.ly/2Y5sYks.

[72] “List of selected local public administrations”, MDRAP, 2017, available [in Romanian] at https://bit.ly/2PQOU00.

[73] “SIPOCA 61: Consolidarea Sistemelor De Integritate – Cea Mai Buna Strategie De Prevenire A Coruptiei În Administratia Publica”, MDRAP, 27 October 2017, available [in Romanian] at https://bit.ly/2J4LEy3; “National Action Plan 2016-2018: Self-assessment report”, Open Government Partnership, 2018, pages 40-41, available [in Romanian] at https://bit.ly/2vv2yw7.

[74] Dan Bugariu, SmartCity, interview by IRM researcher on 14 November 2018.

[75] Andrei Nicoara, Open Data Coalition, interview by IRM researcher on 15 November 2018.

[76] Andrei Nicoara, Open Data Coalition, interview by IRM researcher on 15 November 2018.

[77] Andrei Nicoara, Open Data Coalition, interview by IRM researcher on 15 November 2018.

[78] Andrei Nicoara, Open Data Coalition, interview by IRM researcher on 15 November 2018.

[79] Civic Tech Romania describes the Open Data Alba Iulia [in Romanian] at https://bit.ly/2H9TXqF.

[80] “Primăria Timișoara – prima instituție locală ce contribuie la data.gov.ro”, Open Government Partnership Romania, 21 April 2014, available [in Romanian] at https://bit.ly/2NRIw7H.

[81] Andrei Nicoara, Open Data Coalition, interview by IRM researcher on 15 November 2018.

[82] “Recommendations regarding the open government partnership at local level”, Open Government Partnership, Centre for Public Innovation, Smart City Timisoara, 2017, available [in Romanian] at https://bit.ly/2Voi0Kc.

[83] Dan Bugariu, SmartCity, interview by IRM researcher on 14 November 2018.