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Beyond South Africa: The Future is Open

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Britain’s Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude delivered a speech alongside Acting South African President Kgalema Motlanthe to the delegates of the annual Government Leadership Summit in Pretoria on 2 April. While much of the speech focused on public service reform and UK case studies, the latter half of the speech centred around the UK’s aims for the Open Government Partnership as lead co-chair. Read the extract of Minister Maude’s speech below while the full speech may be found here.  

#govleadershipsummit2013 Mr Francis Maude, Civil Service Reform. twitter.com/thedpsa/status… — Batho Pele(@thedpsa) April 3, 2013

Open Government Partnership

One of the UK’s ambitions during its time as chair of the Open Government Partnership is to showcase to the world how transparency and participation drive economic growth, well-being and prosperity. That means sharing stories of success … and also importing and exporting our transparency techniques, lessons learnt and best practise to every corner of the globe. We’re at the beginning of a global movement towards transparency, you can see many positive examples around the world – but of course there is no room for complacency. In the year since its launch the OGP has made big strides with 58 members signed up – and of those 46 have published ambitious action plans setting out transparency commitments; and many of the rest will be joining us in London later this month to present their new plans to the OGP Steering Committee. But after all the enthusiasm and rhetoric of the first year – we’ve got to turn words into action. Otherwise we risk just being a talking shop – where Governments pat themselves on the back for making grand-sounding commitments.

The success or failure of the OGP does not of course hinge on pushing Governments into making big promises on transparency – it hinges on whether they will deliver on their promises. Genuine transparency will always demand external scrutiny.

And the OGP’s value will lie in supporting domestic reformers within and outside of government to promote transparency – providing them with a lever to help ensure that their voices are amplified and heard at the highest levels. The loudest voices for transparency have long come from civil society organisations. The involvement of leading Civil Society groups in the OGP is what gives it authority. But this involvement must translate into something tangible. This is why the key priority for the UK during our time as Chair is to establish an Independent Reporting Mechanism that will give civil society groups the platform to provide real third party scrutiny to Governments. This work will be driven by an Independent Expert Panel, led as you know by Graca Machel, the former Irish President and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson and Sudanese-born entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim. We expect the first IRM reports on the 8 founding countries for the OGP – including the UK and South Africa– to be published at our plenary in October next year. This is a crucial step – And it’s important the UK, South Africa and other leading nations really lead by example. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that South Africa makes the OGP a stronger organisation by its membership particularly in the light of your important regional leadership role and as a member of BRICs. Your outreach efforts in particular will continue to be vital. And by working together and being ambitious – we can establish the OGP as a really credible international organisation that genuinely makes Governments better. One that countries around the world will aspire to join. And member countries feel compelled to deliver against their action plans.

Filed Under: Champions National
Open Government Partnership