Simplification and Open Government: Friends or Foes?

Across Europe, the EU and many governments are driving simplification agendas, with varying degrees of controversy. Enhancing administrative effectiveness to achieve better results with fewer resources is not a new policy goal. Various waves of simplification have been underway since at least the early 2000s, from better regulationGovernment reformers are developing regulations that enshrine values of transparency, participation, and accountability in government practices. Technical specifications: Act of creating or reforming ... programs in the EU and national public administration reforms to digital transformationGovernments are working to increase access to and quality of government services, improve transparency, and create opportunities for participation by using information and communications technologies.... More strategies and, more recently, Recovery and Resilience Plans.  

At the core of these efforts lie two overarching goals: restoring public trust in public institutions, which has steadily declined across Europe, and increasing the competitiveness of European economies, particularly compared with the US and China. The latter has become central to the strategy of the EU and of several European governments. For many of them, simplification is part of the response to the new geopolitical turmoil, aggressive competition, heightened security concerns, and severe budget constraints. 

In this context, some political forces use the simplification narrative to advance deregulation, arguing that European businesses are constrained by EU regulatory burdens, environmental and social protection, and oversight agencies. As a result, critics worry that some recently proposed reforms could roll back environmental and social protections, weaken 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 and accountability, and reduce opportunities for 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.... 

Amidst growing concerns over these risks, OGP hosted a webinar earlier this month to discuss the links between the simplification and open government agendas. What clearly came out from the debate is that simplification reforms highly depend on the political goals that decision-makers pursue. Echoing the findings from OGP’s Nordic+ roundtable at the 2025 OGP Global Summit,  government representatives from France and Portugal showed that openness, participation, and accountability can make government more accessible, effective, and trusted, not less. 

Here are our key takeaways from these discussions.

1. Co-Creation Drives Smarter and Cheaper Policies

OECD research has shown that engaging local communities and civil society organizations (CSOs) in the design, production, and delivery of public services makes them more accessible, cost-effective, and efficient, which also leads to higher user satisfaction. Specifically, citizen input helps the government identify their priority issues and develop innovative solutions. It also significantly reduces costs associated with “failure demand,” or the influx of repeated requests caused by unclear, inefficient, or poorly designed services. 

Several countries intend to make highly complex law-making more efficient and inclusive through transparent and understandable processes. Latvia’s Public Portal for Draft Legal Acts, or “TAP,” is a 2024 UN Public Service Award winner that allows citizens to comment on draft laws from their first iteration. This saves time in later legislative stages while also improving the quality of policy-making. Similar initiatives have been successful in Finland and are under development in the other Baltic countries.

Many OGP members have also created public innovation labs to experiment with new policies, redesign services, and co-create solutions with citizens. These labs typically use design thinking, behavioural insights, and rapid prototyping methods to develop and test solutions with users before scaling them. In Portugal, for instance, LabX works with users, CSOs, and experts using service design and experimentation methods. Projects typically begin with research on citizens’ experiences and needs, followed by collaborative workshops where stakeholders jointly identify problems, generate solutions, and prototype new services or procedures before testing them in real-life settings. Other examples in Europe include the UK Policy Lab, Estonia’s Innovation Team, Latvia’s Innovation Laboratory, and the French network of Public Innovation Labs.

Similar gains are observed when it comes to infrastructure projects. While some simplification proposals involve fast-track adoption for strategic projects, data show that meaningful public participation significantly lowers risks of push-back, delays, and related legal costs. In Portugal, participatory approaches to climate policy helped lower the number of court appeals against major infrastructure projects, saving administrative and legal costs while accelerating project delivery. Participatory oversight mechanisms have also been shown to detect corruption risks, preventing loss of public finances.

2. Citizen ParticipationAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, citizen participation occurs when “governments seek to mobilize citizens to engage in public debate, provide input, and make contributions that lead to m... More Help Fix Real-Life Regulatory Hurdles

Under their simplification agendas, many European governments make administrative procedures easier for citizens and businesses through measures such as the “once-only” principle, avoiding multiple submissions of the same data, and the use of plain language. Modernizing the public sector also often involves reducing unnecessary bureaucracy and burdens on the administration, private sector, and citizens. Regular reviews of existing legislation and the “one-in, one-out” rule, ensuring no net increase in regulatory requirements, have been widely adopted. When key stakeholders are part of the solution, pain points are easier to find and the process itself creates greater legitimacy for the outcome.

France’s Simplification program enables users to report specific administrative obstacles on an online platform, such as delays in permits, overlapping procedures, or inconsistent interpretations of regulations. Local public administrations, particularly prefectures, look for practical solutions whenever possible within the existing legal framework. So far, more than 80 percent of the 500 cases that have been submitted since November 2024 have been solved, unblocking local projects and cumbersome processes. When administrative difficulties are the result of legislative complexity, local authorities can escalate these cases to the national level for consideration, so such laws can be revised. 

Estonia’s Council for Efficiency and Economic Growth draws on extensive private sectorGovernments are working to open private sector practices as well — including through beneficial ownership transparency, open contracting, and regulating environmental standards. Technical specificat... More inputs to streamline regulations and reduce red tape. Similar initiatives have been implemented in Norway and Latvia. These initiatives have been welcomed albeit with calls to proactively also include non-business voices,  highlighting the shared need to work across sectors and as closely as possible to the end user to make governments work for all.

3. Inclusive Digitalization Creates Efficiency Benefits

An efficient government is a digital one. We know that open procurement platforms save public money and time. Open budgeting processes improve fiscal discipline and tax morale. Beneficial ownership transparency registers help uncover hidden wealth and broaden the taxPlacing transparency, accountability, and participation at the center of tax policy can ensure that burdens are distributed equitably across society. Technical specifications: Commitments related to c... base. Beyond financial gains, easy-to-understand public information is considered a core part of transparency and openness. To fulfill this potential, government officials bear high levels of responsibility to make digital processes work for everyone.

Current modernization and simplification agendas aim to ensure interoperability between IT systems, databases, and 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... portals across public institutions

Germany is building the Deutschland-Stack, a shared open-source system for all levels of government. It is designed to make public services faster, simpler, and more transparent for people and businesses. People without digital tools will still access these services with in-person support at local government offices, public terminals, and citizen service centers.

For example, France, Germany and the Netherlands have all increased the availability of open source software, showing that engaging a broader community of digital experts and users make them safer. 

Efforts also include centralizing public service portals and procurement platforms to make them easier for users to navigate. Finland’s e-procurement portal is famous for not only visualizing procurement data and making it comparable across time, but also for creating radical transparency of public spending, which in turn has created savings across the government. Similarly, Norway’s Digitalization Strategy treats data as a public resource that is cross-cutting across sectors, to cut duplication, enable smarter services, and strengthen data-driven innovation. Norway is additionally considering creating a single digital gateway where the user can access all  public services in one place, streamlining services across the administration and providing better control over personal data. Simultaneously, the strategy emphasises involving users in the design of and using clear language across digital services and strengthening digital competence in local service centres and libraries. 

At the same time, digital-only approaches carry the risk of excluding people who face digital barriers. To address this challenge, Portugal, which was one of the first European countries to apply the “digital-first’ principle for public services through the SIMPLEX programs, has developed a broad network of more than 1,000 “Citizen Spots” to bring public services closer to citizens, particularly in rural or underserved areas. Hosted in municipalities, parish councils, libraries, post offices, and other community facilities, these counters are places where users can receive in-person support to navigate all types of online public services. Trained mediators help them renew documents, request certificates, or interact with different government agencies. 

Experiences from OGP members show that simplification does not necessarily, and should not, mean deregulation. Open user-centric approaches are powerful levers to achieve greater cost-efficiency and positive impact that benefit both citizens and businesses. The open government community needs to reclaim the simplification narrative. The OGP 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.... will keep collecting tangible impact data on how open government principles make administration more effective and trusted.