IRM releases UK report for public comment

The Open Government Partnership’s Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) has launched its third report, this one on the UK which can be found below. IRM progress reports are carried out by an independent researcher under the guidance of an International Experts’ Panel. In the UK, this researcher was Kevin Dunion, the first Scottish Information Commissioner and now Executive Director of the Centre for Freedom of Information, University of Dundee Law School. 

The IRM’s goal is to deliver credible, non-partisan description of the OGP process, results of commitments, and to provide technical recommendations based on the input of government, civil society, and the private sector. The UK action plan focused on rolling out a major 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... initiative, improving digital services, and improving the 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 of overseas development assistance. The UK was successful in implementing many of its commitments, notably in aidMore and better information about aid helps partner countries and donor institutions plan and manage aid resources more effectively, parliaments and civil society to hold governments accountable for t... transparency. One area where the 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... of commitments did not match performance were the commitments around data inventories. In this area, the IRM researcher recommends a more phased rollout of open data inventories in place of a “whole of government” approach.

The IRM researcher found that consultation during development of the 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... was very limited and largely built off of a prior open data consultation. As a consequence, some stakeholders felt that the scope of the action plan was overly limited. Consultation during the implementation of the action plan and following the first self-assessment has grown increasingly robust.

All interested parties are encouraged to comment on this blog or to send comments to IRM@opengovpartnership.org until November 14. Where relevant, comments will be integrated into a final version of the report, except where the requester asks to be anonymous.

UK IRM Report by Open Government Partnership

Photo credit: Tower Bridge, London via Wikimedia Commons.