Selected country experiences with the OGP process: Ukraine
This is the final post in our five part series of Q&As with selected countries and their experiences with the OGP process at the national level. This post is a Q&A with Oleksii Khmara, President TORO Creative Union – Transparency International Ukraine.
1. Describe the process
TORO Creative Union – 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 International Ukraine organized a coalition of more than 60 active NGOs to support the OGP initiative. When Ukraine joined the initiative, it received active support from both civil society and the government. In the process of developing the national plan the government used more than 80 percent of the Coalition’s suggestions. We created a network of regional consultants on the OGP initiative, which helped to hold consultations with more than 500 active organizations. The Coalition also taught municipalities how to hold consultations with citizens. Moreover, when the government was running out of time to create an 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..., it used the model developed by the Coalition as a basis. The OGP issue in Ukraine has been facing the misbalance of active and strong NGOs interested in the initiative and considerably weak interest of donor organizations. However, some of the donors started to pay more interest in the issue, for instance, the British Embassy supported the project “Towards 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 the Eastern Partnership Countries and Russia” that played a great role for the OGP initiative implementation in Ukraine, and made its contribution for the progress in the aforementioned countries.
2. Describe two things that were really good about the consultation, why it worked, and one thing that was not so good about it
A challenge faced from the beginning of the National Plan development was, for instance, when the Ukrainian government decided to hold national consultations on the OGP plan by means of the civic councils. All of the 400 suggestions they proposed to the draft government plan were of a very general character. Based on these wordings, they would be able to develop a plan that would be both too general and at the same time favourable for the government. This action was successfully opposed by our Coalition. The Ukrainian civic community could not support a draft national plan that did not reflect the real needs of the Ukrainian state, while the authorities did not want to take the civic community seriously, opining that it is always unsatisfied with something. However, our Coalition together with its experts started to develop an alternative national plan, which fully corresponds with the OGP requirements and began working to promote it. It resulted in the current document signed by the Prime Minister of Ukraine, 80 percent of which is comprised of the suggestions of our Civic Coalition. Finally, we achieved a partnership with the government, which appeared beneficial to both sides. The government benefits substantively and financially from the work of civic experts, which is usually free, and boosts its international image and domestic reputation by collaborating with civil society. Civil society is able to make itself heard at the national level, and have direct input on policy. As already mentioned before, there are some threads that should be worked on for proper implementation of the OGP initiative. Besides, the Government has two major weak points in the OGP implementation process: building efficient dialog with stakeholders and the lack of the funding. Donors might consider the opportunity to fund initiatives, related to the introduction of e-government, preferably the software development for the steps, indicated in the OGP Country plan. In this case, efficient use of funding could be easily monitored and evaluated.
3. What would your advice be for a new OGP member country- both for the government and for the civil society actors.
To overcome challenges, government and CSOs have to create a working communication mechanism, and furthermore, the government should properly supervise and manage the OGP implementation process. Currently, government suffers from inexperience in the development of an open and transparent public dialog. Thus, the Government needs additional assistance and guidance in the development of the communication mechanism. The other option to increase the efficiency of OGP implementation is some kind of technical assistance to the Government in development of IT tools for the e-government implementation.