What’s in the New OGP National Action Plans?

The majority of countries participating in 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 (OGP) have submitted new National Action Plans since the London Summit in October 2013. For a voluntary initiative such as OGP, this is an important indication of support from governments and civil society around the world. Thirty-one of these are countries developing or implementing their second OGP 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 three countries and implementing their first plan. Together these 34 new plans contain over 500 individual reform commitments. The briefing paper available below provides an initial analysis of the noteworthy new commitments that are relevant to OGP values and that highlight major emerging trends. It also presents examples of solid civil society engagement in the public consultation process.

OGP commitments have been grouped into seven clusters, according to the intended results of the reforms:

1. 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... – Engaging Citizens in Policymaking.

2. Government Integrity – Fighting  Corruption and Strengthening Democratic Institutions.

3. Freedom of Information – Guaranteeing Public Access to Government Information.

4. Fiscal 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 – Helping Citizens  Follow the Money.

5. Public Service DeliveryTo ensure that citizens of all groups are better supported by the government, OGP participating governments are working to improve the quality of and access to public services. Commitments in this are... – Making Services Work for the People.

6. Extractive Resources Transparency – Ensuring Extractive Revenues Are Used for Public Benefit.

7. 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... – Digitizing and Opening Up Government Data for Access to Information and Transparency

The objectives of the briefing paper are:

• To provide a summary of the policy commitments countries are undertaking.

• To identify some of the major emerging trends and examples of commitments that are relevant to OGP values.

• To highlight commitments that can inspire other countries to tackle new challenges.

• To encourage OGP’s multilateral and civil society partners to play a role in the implementation of these new commitments.

The report is not intended to present a comprehensive picture of all commitments that countries are making. Further, it does not replace or supplant the Independent Reporting Mechanism process that will review all of these country commitments in due course.

We hope these examples will serve as an inspiration to all those using the OGP platform as we collectively work to make open government reforms that make a real difference to peoples’ lives.

The report is accessible here.

The report is also available in Spanish here.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.