Launch of the 2016 OGP Global Summit

TOWARD A TRANSPARENT AND COLLABORATIVE PUBLIC RELATIONSHIP

I am pleased to launch this year’s 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 World Summit, and thereby to promote, via means and actions, a more transparent and collaborative public action.

An open government is one in which digital tools enable each citizen to better know, understand, and guide the public decision process and to set free a democracy-changing collective intelligence.

Thus open government can restore confidence in our institutions and in their ability to respond to the great challenges we face. Long-term challenges such as living together, environmental protection and globalization, require 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... from each and every one of us.

In the digital age, decisions need to be simplified and democracy enriched. The duties of Minister of State for State Reform and Simplification have been entrusted in me, and they will help us succeed in the Open Government Partnership, which puts executive integrity and public decision openness at the center of the democratic healing that we wish for.

France is at the forefront of this modernization effort.

This is why France was elected to the co-presidency of Open Government Partnership. With a strong history of debate and public action, and a prolific digital ecosystem, we will make the best use of this year to accomplish the following:

• Affirm our vision of the “open government” and demonstrate its leadership in the implementation of our National 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... and it’s 26 commitments;
• Mobilize the participating state communities and encourage new countries to join, most notably amongst francophone countries, around the theme of the alliance between public authorities and civil society;
• Collaboratively develop the Summit’s program, in consultation and trust between the governments and civil society representatives.

These are the goals of the inaugural workshop scheduled for April 20th, which I have designed to be open and participatory, just like the Global Summit. France has a little over seven months to prepare, with its international partners, this inspirational and fruitful meeting. On December 7th, 8th and 9th, the Open Government Partnership Global Summit, this year under the authority of the President of France, will be enlightened by the values of a democracy that we will together make more contributive, more responsive, more inclusive… in a nutshell, more open.