OGP Civil Society Newsletter – 27 September

When asked what makes 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 model different I always mention three elements: the guaranteed seat at the table for civil society; the concrete, ambitious commitments made; and the independent monitoring of the process and promises.

Two years after the OGP was launched at the UN General Assembly the first set of independent reports are being released. This brings the first cycle for the founding countries to a close. Over the past twelve months reformers in close to 60 countries have experimented with the OGP process, testing it out as a new tool to deliver change and bring greater 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, greater accountability and greater participation. Not surprisingly, civil society across the globe has been watching OGP closely; embracing the idea of creating space for reformers, but critically vocal on all three key elements, as well as the partnership’s entry criteria. In ultra-short summary: the eligibility threshold is too low and the criteria too limited; the commitments are not ambitious; and the consultations are insufficiently inclusive and ‘real’. All okay to an extent for the ‘test drive’ of the first 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... cycle, but not for the second round.

The team working on the independent reports (IRM team) has worked hard during the last couple of months to get its methodology right, find the best researchers, and balance the interests of government and civil society. Last weeks, the first reports – on South Africa and Brazil – were published and the coming weeks 6 more will follow. Hopefully, the reports will bring about a dialogue on key lessons, rather than serve as a simple scorecard to praise or denounce national efforts.

Solid thinking and resources have been put into this exercise and the reports should push the reviewed countries in the right direction and generate fresh energy. Being a critical watchdog is in the DNA of civil society, and holding government to account is one of our ‘raisons d’être’. Does our critical lens prevent us from seeing the upside? If you read the 15 country articles the OGP Civil Society Coordination team has produced, you will notice very many positive seedlings. We have heard from colleagues in Georgia, Mexico and Croatia – to name a few countries – that OGP helped to deliver things that they had been pushing for for a long time. Still, improving the basics and raising the bar seem the right priorities at this point, exactly at the moment that the first and second groups of members undergo evaluation and prepare for their second Action Plan.

Who will do this and how? OGP itself recently approved new rules to define and measure ambitious commitments and will also strengthen the guidance around the civil society–government dialogue. That’s one. Two, in the coming months both the OGP itself as well as the Civil Society Coordination Team will create some additional capacity for guidance and support at the national level. Three, the IRM will review its methodology and revise it to collect information early on, to measure ambitionAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, OGP commitments should “stretch government practice beyond its current baseline with respect to key areas of open government.” Ambition captures the po... and to see where real-time monitoring is feasible. These improvements are all closely linked to OGP.

What can civil society itself do to monitor success at the national level? Actors like Access Info Europe and Transparency International are already working on projects to define standards and measurements related to open government. Building on this work and that of others, civil society could create a new global ‘open government index’ that rates and ranks countries on a wide range of aspects of open government. Such an index could be a blend of (elements of) existing indices (i.e. the Global Integrity Report, the Civicus index and rapid assessment of civil society, Web Foundation’s 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... Index, the Open Budget Index, the Resource Governance Index), or be built from scratch. This would be a macro-approach, setting new levels of ambition for the broader concept of open government, triggering a race to the top by explicitly ranking countries and thus triggering their vanity and competitiveness. A great tool for (media) advocacy, yet time- and resource-intensive to create.

A more modest idea is to create a simple and transparent review methodology to be used by civil society in OGP member countries to assess the quality and ambition of both the consultation process and the resulting Action Plan. For each quadrant thus defined a limited set of weighted indicators could be developed that national civil society would apply in its assessment. A round of comments by both government and civil society could calibrate the scores. The end result would be a Civil Society National OGP Review simple stating ‘country x gets 4 out of 5 stars for quality of the Action Plan, 3 out of 5 for the quality of the process.’ If chosen smartly, the indicators could be a positive stimulus for responsible government actors to makes changes, thus improving the national OGP plan and process each iterative round.

Personally I feel we might need both – and even more – tools in the coming years in order to achieve the scale of change we all hope for. But we need the second idea as soon as possible. Having a simple review methodology would give a comparable basis across countries for our critique of OGP and the actions of our governments. It would strengthen the case we make. It would help the second round of OGP plans.

This is what we discussed at OKCon last week. Especially finding the right questions around ambition of the plan led to solid discussion. One of the issues to solve is if we should measure the distance from plan to perfection or rather assess the commitments of the plan against the baseline of the country. Discussing the push for ambition and quality on OG comes back on the CSO day, don’t forget to register.

Another key debate we will have in London concerns the general space for civil society to co-create societies. The space OGP creates is challenged by countertrends – not just in rogue countries but across the globe. Last Monday the United Nations High Level Event on Supporting Civil Society was held, at which President Obama emphasised the need to create and defend the space for a global independent and vibrant civil society to hold governments to account. OGP was specifically referred to as an important leverage for civil society to claim this space. This, too, will get concrete follow-up in London.

NEWSLETTER HIGHLIGHTS

Civil Society annual survey launched! This week, we launched the OGP Civil Society Survey 2013! Last year we had over 100 responses and we hope to get at least as many this year. Please feel free to forward the survey to other civil society players and lists working on open government. The OGP CS Survey really is a temperature check of your engagement with OGP, and the health of the initiative as a whole. Your prompt response will give us a snapshot of the OGP players and insights into ‘year 2’ experiences at the national level. It will also provide us with the information needed to improve communications within the OGP community and to figure out what is needed to improve OGP and to make it a success (and what you can bring to the community). [Read full article here].

Draft agendas for OGP Summit and OGP Civil Society Preconference available! The draft agenda for the OGP Civil Society Day on 30 October at the University of London Union (ULU) is now available. The Civil Society Day will focus on the conversations we need to have as civil society amongst ourselves in order to prepare for the summit and strengthen the national OGP processes down the line. The agenda for the OGP Summit is also available! Although sessions and attendees are still be subject to change, we hope this gets everyone excited about a gathering of reformers, activists, thinkers and doers in open government

Conference call to be organized in preparation for the OGP Summit! In order to prepare for the summit, and to hear your input and ideas, a round of conference calls will be organized in the first week in October. The calls are opportunities to hear about the latest OGP developments, and discuss how best to use the Summit for our CS agenda. Call details available here.

OGP CS Co-chairs to rotate at OGP Summit. As required by the OGP Articles of Governance, the civil society co-chairs will rotate at the London OGP Summit. After 18 months as co-chair, Warren Krafchik will step down and Rakesh Rajani will succeed him as lead civil society co-chair. Suneeta Kaimal will succeed him as support co-chair. [Read full article here].

Rumours of 61th OGP member. Following a meeting with UK Prime Minister David Cameron, Prime Minister of New Zealand John Keyes said that New Zealand would join OGP later this year. As stated in a New Zealand government press release, ‘At the request of the UK, New Zealand will formally express its intention to join the Open Government Partnership (OGP) later this year.’ Mr Keyes went on to say, ‘The OGP’s goals are consistent with New Zealand values and with our goals for international economic and social development, and I was pleased the UK invited us to join.’ [Read full article here].

Participation of Steering committee member Alejandro Gonzalez in UN High Level Event on Supporting Civil Society Last Monday, 23 September, OGP Steering Committee member Alejandro Gonzalez, Executive Director of the Mexican CSO Gesoc, participated in the United Nations High Level Event on Supporting Civil Society, which was hosted by US President Barack Obama. In his speech, President Obama launched #Stand4CivilSociety, and issued the following call to action to OGP:

Strong nations recognise the value of active citizens … even when inconvenient for government leaders. … We urgently need to do more to spur global action.

[Read full article here].