CSO Day at the Summit: The “P” in OGP gets bigger, stronger and more diverse
The Open Government civil society community comes together in bigger numbers and in greater diversity than ever before at this year’s OGP Global Summit. In Brasilia (2012) we were 200, in London (2013) 600, and when we meet this week in Mexico we’ll be over 1000 from 94 countries. Una gran parte hablará español pues 656 de ellos vendrán de la región.
Starting off OGP events with a civil society day has become an important partnership tradition. It’s a day to (re) connect with friends and colleagues from around the world, to make new connections, to strategize and learn and even vent a little bit.
This CSO day we have a really packed and interesting agenda. In the morning for example we will have 20 parallel discussions addressing the next frontiers in open government, followed by a reflection on these by civil society leaders from across the globe. Members of the civil society Steering CommitteeThe Steering Committee is OGP’s executive decision-making body. Its role is to develop, promote and safeguard OGP’s values, principles and interests; establish OGP’s core ideas, policies, and ru... will present the first ever OGP Government Champion Award, voted on by civil society and presented to the government champion that has gone over and beyond what OGP asks for. We will also present the results of the 2015 OGP Civil Society Survey that – together with other data sources like the IRM – tell the story on how OGP is delivering for civil society. In the afternoon we have 38 sessions organized by the community on topics ranging from hacking political corruption via the role of infomediaries, to the question of if OGP can tackle cultural exclusion.
Let me share some initial results of the survey based on the responses of over 600 respondents: 79% of respondents feel equipped and informed to a moderate (47%) or large (32%) extent to actively participate in and make use of OGP. This is up from 60% in 2013. 73% of respondents that have been involved in OGP have become more positive about the potential of OGP to deliver change in their countries in the past 12 months. This is up from 62% in 2013. And 62% feel that their national Action Plans match at least a majority of civil society priorities on open government. In the fourth year of OGP we also see more strategic partnerships at the country level – 36 countries now have some sort of regular dialogue – and beyond by having actors like Oxfam and World Vision join the dialogue in Mexico.
As an initiative we have identified the Sustainable Development Goals, open government at the subnational level, access to justice and civic space as some of the priority issues to get higher on the open government agenda. The two full days of the Global Summit echoes these topics – and many more – and brings together the countries and CSOs working on them. The Summit will give civil society excellent opportunities to connect to high level domestic reformers, create new advocacy opportunities and facilitate peer learning. With close to 2,000 participants, 120 sessions and 500 speakers you need to make sure you know beforehand who you want to meet and where you want to go.
Open government is both political and personal. We need to keep that in mind in the years to come by getting smarter in securing the political buy-in for the agenda we as civil society really care about – and by making sure that agenda resonates with the priorities of society at large and not just of professional civil society.