So What’s In Those New OGP Action Plans, Anyway? 2014 Edition.
Over the summer we received many questions on the content of the new OGP national action plans. The most common question was about how one could find commitments made in a particular issue area. To provide a useful response to this question, the OGP Support UnitThe OGP Support Unit is a small, permanent group of staff that work closely with the Steering Committee and the Independent Reporting Mechanism to advance the goals of the Open Government Partnership.... has created a database of all new commitments categorized by topic.
In all we reviewed and tagged around 900 commitments across 48 new action plans. These are the plans that had an implementation start date of January, 2014 or later. The resulting dataset provides a comprehensive view of the various open government reforms countries are committing to across the Partnership, which can be filtered by individual topics.
We are excited to publish this and encourage you to share it with peers. The beta release of the complete dataset can be accessed here (CSV can be downloaded using the Google document).
How we created the data
Building on previous efforts, we refined the methodology and tags used to categorize each 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.... The new set of 42 thematic tags covers key horizontal (e.g. Open DataBy opening up data and making it sharable and reusable, governments can enable informed debate, better decision making, and the development of innovative new services. Technical specifications: Polici..., Capacity BuildingEnhancing the skills, abilities, and processes of public servants, civil society, and citizens is essential to achieving long-lasting results in opening government. Technical specifications: Set of ac..., etc.) and vertical (e.g. EducationAccountability within the public education system is key to improving outcomes and attainment, and accountability is nearly impossible without transparent policies and opportunities for participation ..., Asset Disclosures, etc.) open government topics.
We then broke down every 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... into its constituent commitments, applying appropriate tags to fully describe each commitment. For example, if a commitment on Access to Information involved passing legislationCreating and passing legislation is one of the most effective ways of ensuring open government reforms have long-lasting effects on government practices. Technical specifications: Act of creating or r..., training of officers, and implementing an online platform, the relevant tags were applied to capture all those aspects of the commitment.
How to use the data
We hope this database will be a useful resource to reformers within and outside government. Users are invited to explore the data to compare action plans and uncover opportunities for assistance with implementation and improvement in future action plans.
If you are from civil society or a researcher, use the data to find gaps and identify model commitments to include in future action plans in your countries. You can also use the data to compare action plans, analyze trends, and track performance across countries. Or create your own taxonomies to further classify and analyze the data.
If you are from government, use the data to find other countries making similar commitments to learn from their approach to implementation. You can also use the data to find target countries that could benefit from your support, building on the pledges made at the OGP High Level event at the UN General Assembly in September.
If you’re from a multilateral organization or aidMore and better information about aid helps partner countries and donor institutions plan and manage aid resources more effectively, parliaments and civil society to hold governments accountable for t... agency, use the data to identify technical assistance and funding opportunities in support of action plan implementation.
No matter how you use the data, please do not hesitate to reach out to the Support Unit for assistance in connecting to your peers to strengthen action plan development and implementation.
What’s next?
We will update the data as new action plans come in. We also hope to combine the tagged commitments with data from the IRM reports of new action plans (view the previous set of OGP commitments and IRM data from 2011 to 2013 here). The resulting dataset will provide single-window access to all content and performance data on new OGP action plans. We are also developing a data exploration and visualization tool to help you navigate the data more easily, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, explore the data and share your findings with the wider open government community—we are eager to learn from your insights. You can get in touch with us at info@opengovpartnerhsip.org.
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Links to data files (you can download to CSV/Excel from the Google docs below):
2014 – 2016 New Action Plan Commitments Data – Beta Release.
2011 – 2013 Old Action Plan Commitments and IRM Data – Beta Release.