Articles of Governance

The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a voluntary, multi-stakeholder international initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to their citizenry to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. In pursuit of these goals, OGP provides an international forum for dialogue and sharing among governments, civil society organizations, and the private sector, all of which contribute to a common pursuit of open government. OGP stakeholders include participating governments as well as civil society and private sector entities that support the principles and mission of OGP. OGP is not registered as its own independent legal entity. The Articles of Governance detailed in this document relate to the mandate and operations of the Open Government Partnership, including: The OGP Steering Committee (see Section IV); The OGP Annual Conference (or Plenary) (See Section III); The OGP Support Unit (see Section V); The OGP Networking Mechanism (see Section VI); and The OGP Independent Reporting Mechanism (see Section VII).

The Articles of Governance were adopted by consensus by OGP's Steering Committee (SC) on April 16, 2012.  At that point, the SC asked several representatives to refine the language under "expectations of OGP stakeholders," and in particular, the concept of how and when a government would be asked to suspend its participation in the initiative.  On June, 11, 2012, the Articles were ammended to reflected this refined language.  Both the original and current versions are included here.