The Paris Declaration: Building Exchange and Cooperation

The fourth global OGP Summit will take place December 7th – 9th and will launch the Paris Declaration on OGP. The OGP Steering CommitteeThe Steering Committee is OGP’s executive decision-making body. Its role is to develop, promote and safeguard OGP’s values, principles and interests; establish OGP’s core ideas, policies, and ru... and 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.... are encouraging governments and civil society organizations to sign up to collective actions that will further the open government agenda in their countries and around the world.

There are 21 collective actions in the Paris Declaration – areas in which governments and civil society are looking to collaborate. Actions are not ‘commitments’ to do something. They are not necessarily new commitments in National Action Plans. Actions are concrete cooperation, output-orientated and will produce tangible results.The impetus for collective actions was a recognition that there is benefit to shared learning and exchange between countries, and more countries are likely to implement well if they know others are doing the same.

The 21 collective actions cover:

1. Open Public ProcurementTransparency in the procurement process can help combat corruption and waste that plagues a significant portion of public procurement budgets globally. Technical specifications: Commitments that aim t...
2. Ending Abuse of Anonymous Companies
3. Innovation and data driven approaches to expose and fight corruption
4. 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 on lobbyingLobbying transparency allows the public to ensure that there is diversity of participation and contribution to public decision-making. Technical specifications: Policies and actions affecting lobbying...
5. Transparency on political party finance
6. Access to information
7. Transparency and participation in budgets and fiscal policies
8. Transparency and open contracts in the natural resource sector
9. Engaging citizens in an open and inclusive law-making process
10. Inclusive development of national and subnational climate and sustainable development strategies and plans
11. Tracking climate relevant policy implementation and results
12. Greater transparency of information on climate and sustainable development in national budgets
13. Disclosure of climate-related investment risks and corresponding mitigation measures
14. Harnessing the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development and Climate Risk Resilience
15. Supporting JusticeTo address barriers that prevent citizens from having their justice needs met, OGP participating governments are working to expand transparency, accountability, and inclusion into all systems of justi... for All through a focus on measurement and data collection
16. Policies and mechanisms to promote and strengthen engagement with civil society
17. Opening and sharing civic technology tools for opening government
18. Increase the responsiveness and accountability of public services to citizens
19. Collaborative data infrastructures for digital commons
20. Guiding principles for 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... policies
21. Creating an Open Source Software policy