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How can Open Government Partnership members bridge the “Commitment-Indicator” Gap for greater Return on Investment?

Dr. Adegboyega Ojo|

By Adegboyega Ojo

Co-authored with Niall Ó Brolcháin, Edobor Osagie, and Lukasz Porwol

This is the second in a six blog series written by winners of the IDRC grant for research on OGP

Recent findings from analysis of the Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) reports of OGP members show increasing difficulty in linking the implementation of OGP commitments to concrete outcomes and impacts in government and society.

In our opinion, there are at least two desirable outcomes when implementing open government initiatives. The first is that open government endeavors by governments positively impact their perceived openness and transparency by major stakeholders. These stakeholders include citizens, the international community and relevant international organizations such as Transparency International, the World Bank and other regional Development Banks providing assistance to countries. The second is that openness and transparency enabled by these open government efforts produce greater knowledge of how waste and redundancies in government operations could be significantly reduced. Concretely, for developing countries, a good return-on-investment (ROI) includes the acknowledgment and recognition of their OGP efforts by international bodies in terms of improved good governance related indicators, and increased willingness of these organizations to engage with respective governments. More developed countries with greater focus on efficiency and innovation could expect their efforts to translate into improved international competitiveness and innovation indicators; signifying good environments for investments and doing business. However, experience from similar initiatives (such as national e-government programs) shows that obtaining improved international governance and competitiveness indicators from OGP commitments and initiatives is contingent on their alignment a priori. Thus, the adoption of grand challenges commitments should be partly shaped by consideration of the strength of countries in terms of the international governance and development indicators. Ignoring these metrics in our view could significantly increase the risk of little or no perceived improvements in government openness by citizens and other stakeholders that rely on these benchmarks to measure real progress.

Our recently concluded study investigated how these international governance and socio-economic development indicators could underpin an approach for governments to track the overall impact of their open government initiatives over time. Specifically, the study examined: 1) the extent to which grand challenges declared and commitments made by countries cover their areas of weakness based on major governance and e-government related indicators; 2) which Grand Challenge areas require more attention by individual countries. The study employed five international governance and socio-economic indicators that are expected to be impacted by open government initiatives. These include:

  • Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, 2014
  • World Bank’s Worldwide Governance indicators (2014)
  • United Nations E-Government Survey (2014)
  • World Economic Forum’s Global competitiveness report (2014-2015)
  • Open Data Barometer report (2015)

Results show that in general, countries are currently strongest in the Public Service area and weakest in both Public Resource Management and Corporate Accountability areas. Based on our analysis of the action plans, the Public Services and Public Integrity areas enjoy relatively more attention than other areas, while there are deficits of attention in the other three grand challenge areas – Public Resource Management, Safer Communities and Corporate Accountability. Based on the findings from the study, some recommendations are provided to OGP members on how they can create more balanced Action Plans towards improved international governance indicators. These recommendations include:

  • There is a need to increase advocacy for OGP members to consider increasing commitments in the areas of public resource management, safer communities, and corporate accountability when revising their action plans. It may be possible for members to reallocate resources from areas where they are already doing well relatively, such as in the space of Public Integrity and Public Service improvement.
  • OGP members could engage peers with similar Grand Challenge (GC) profiles to exchange and co-develop ideas on how to address challenges in GC3 through GC5. Also, countries need to understand better how (relative) inaction in any GC area impacts its governance outcomes. For instance, “the value of having a very transparent government is greatly diminished in a relatively unsafe society”. 
  • To strengthen the review and evaluation process, a self-assessment Open Government performance framework with an integrated set of indicators covering all five grand challenge areas should be developed to complement the current Independent Reporting Mechanism.

The full papers can be downloaded here: 

Adegboyega et. al.: https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2001/01/Adegboyega_Commitment%2520Indicator%2520Gap%5B1%5D.pdf

Filed Under: Private Sector Public Service Delivery Research Security & Public Safety
Open Government Partnership