Countries and OGP Partners Detail Their Pledge to Support Peers

A significant benefit to joining OGP is being connected with a network of allies with valuable experiences in working toward a common objective of a more open government. In advance of the OGP High-Level Event at the United Nations on September 24th 2014, all OGP participating countries and a collection of OGP partners, including civil society organizations, were asked to make a pledge to build a more active peer exchange and support activities with other OGP counties. A total of 32 countries, 13 civil society organizations, five OGP Working Groups, and five Multilateral Partners made commitments to help countries make more ambitious commitments and implement them.  

These pledges were included in a one-sentence summary included in Annex 1 of the Outcome Statement and the details behind each commitment have now been published in a supplemental Annex available here.

Participating countries and civil society organizations pledged support to their peers on a range of issues:

• Governmental and civil society leaders in Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Sierra Leone, and South Africa along with Hivos and Integrity Action offer to deepen citizen engagement in policy making.
• Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Panama, and Uruguay as well as ARTICLE 19 and IREX Ukraine will work with governments to promote access to public information.
• Governments in Italy, the Philippines, and Sweden with the support of Global Integrity, International Budget Partnership, and ONE pledge to share their experience in putting more and better quality information online, allowing citizens to hold them accountable for how they spend taxpayer dollars.
• The nations of Canada, Ireland, Moldova, the Netherlands, Slovak Republic, the United Kingdom and the United States along with Web Foundation commit to supporting initiatives to make government-held data more accessible to the public.
• Hungary and Norway offers experience in increasing public integrity in public administration and in post-employment regulations respectively.
• Georgia pledges assistance in creating innovative solutions to improve 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... More.
• Indonesia will share its experience in enhancing good governance in natural resource management.
• Governments in Finland and Mexico and partners from CAFOD, Making All Voices Count, Oxfam, Restless Development, and 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 International will continue their initiatives to foster accountability, transparency and citizen empowerment and the development of the OGP national 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....

The details of these pledges elaborate on the expertise and type of assistance countries and civil societies are willing to deliver on the varying issue areas. We hope that the details of the pledges can serve as a resource for OGP countries seeking innovative ideas and support to ensure implementation of commitments in their National Action Plans. We hope these pledges will also help to deepen bilateral exchanges and engagement between like-minded reformers, and to catalyze broader progress on open government reform.