Measuring the Impact of OGP

Measuring the Impact of the 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 in Member States using an Implementation Size Model

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

Since 2011, OGP member countries have made over 2500 commitments, with the aim of promoting transparencyAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, transparency occurs when “government-held information (including on activities and decisions) is open, comprehensive, timely, freely available to the pub... More, accountability and public participationGiving citizens opportunities to provide input into government decision-making leads to more effective governance, improved public service delivery, and more equitable outcomes. Technical specificatio.... It is now time to generate frameworks of analysis that allow us to understand, in the most precise way possible, the impact of the measures adopted. Therefore, the aim of our recent study was to identify the contribution of OGP in the member countries, through the proposal of a framework of analysis known as the Implementation Size Model (ISM).

Our study began with the following premise: the size of organizational change achieved by commitments included in the National Action Plans is important. Based on the theory of public policy implementation, the ISM model has been developed to capture the contribution of the OGP, based on the capacity of change
 of each implemented 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... or action. The theory of public policy implementation indicates that besides the bottom-up and top-down perspectives, there is a way to study the implementation as a form of organization and bureaucratic process. Prior studies have outlined the organizational analysis of the policy implementation on micro and macro levels. We add nano and meso levels, and also define the criteria for selecting each commitment or action to put into a level of implementation as part of our ISM model.  Commitments are assigned four levels of implementation based on their capacity to transform the environment of government (see table below): macro level (creation of rules), meso level (creation of organization structures), micro level (improving public programs that were already operational), and nano level (generating dialogues between actors with the involvement of civil society (nano level).

Implementation Size Model (ISM) for Open Government Actions

Source: Own elaboration

The model was applied to commitments included in the 2011-2013 cycles of national action plans of OGP member countries from the Americas that fulfilled the following characteristics:

1. They had been co-created or designed between government and civil society;

2. They had been evaluated by the IRM in the reports as substantively or completely implemented actions;

3. They had high potential for impact in line with the parameters of the IRM.

The results of this analysis are summarized in the table below:

Results of the ISM of open government in the Americas

Source: Own elaboration

Our research shows that the contribution of the OGP in the Americas’ governments is notable, given that 65.6 % of high potential impact actions, according to the IRM, belong to the meso and macro levels of implementation in our typology of implementation (ISM).  Between 2011 and 2013, most of the actions were in the meso implementation level (see table above). These include, among others, the creation of an autonomous institution that guarantees the protection of the right of access to public information (Columbia), the establishment of an agency of State purchases and contracting (Dominican), an integrated multiservice network (Chile), the opening of offices of information and response (El Salvador), and a system of information exchange between government institutions (Paraguay).

Within the OGP framework, the implemented actions at meso implementation level indicate a certain penetration in the governmental administrative structures. If the actions of this level are added to those of the macro implementation level, we can sketch a preliminary conclusion: within the framework of the OGP, actions are designed that add organizational and institutional value, and to a lesser extent actions of dialogue and formulation of transparency and corruption prevention programs. This does not imply that change actions at levels 1 and 2 are not relevant for the OGP, but they involve less potential organizational and institutional change. Most of the implemented actions by the countries studied are concentrated in governmental and civil society agreements in search of a more organizational and institutional changes.

Within the actions of the macro implementation category are those that represent outstanding organizational change. Among these actions can be highlighted, for example, the design and implementation of a normative framework for companies that function under a standard framework of corporate government to improve public integrity (Columbia), the draft law of probity in public service (Chile), the open regulationGovernment reformers are developing regulations that enshrine values of transparency, participation, and accountability in government practices. Technical specifications: Act of creating or reforming ... to improve accountability (Uruguay), the construction of the international initiative to promote transparency in infrastructure (Guatemala), among others. In these actions, the institutionalization of new rules, processes, or axiological principles portray rooted organizational changes.

It is worth specifying that not all countries will be interested in pursuing actions at all the four levels of implementation, because the size of actions undertaken typically respond to different needs and context. The research is a classificatory exercise, that it is at an exploratory level and requires complementary studies to arrive at categorical conclusions. The implementation of open government requires a process subject to the adaptive capacity of the public organization, as well as how to manage the change, as is suggested in the premises of the ISM. The ISM could be replicable in other continents, and as future research it is proposed to do similar investigations in Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania. Finally, the ISM could have its methodology improved and its results refined, as it is clear that the OGP has only just started a process of systemization of the information and products of published research.

The full study is available here.