Israel Implementation Report 2017-2019

Israel’s third 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... mainly focused on disclosing government-held information, strengthening 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 legislationCreating and passing legislation is one of the most effective ways of ensuring open government reforms have long-lasting effects on government practices. Technical specifications: Act of creating or r..., and using technology to improve access to government services. While many commitments were substantially or fully implemented, they mostly did not lead to significant changes in government practice due to low levels of 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.... CommitmentOGP commitments are promises for reform co-created by governments and civil society and submitted as part of an action plan. Commitments typically include a description of the problem, concrete action... 5 resulted in notable changes by starting to publish the legislative and budgetary amendments.

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 (OGP) is a global partnership that brings together government reformers and civil society leaders to create action plans that make governments more inclusive, responsive, and accountable. The Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM)The Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) is OGP’s accountability arm and the main means of tracking progress in participating countries. The IRM provides independent, evidence-based, and objective ... monitors all action plans to ensure governments follow through on commitments. Israel joined OGP in 2012. Since, Israel has implemented three action plans. This report evaluates the implementation of Israel’s third action plan.

General overview of action plan

Over half of the commitments in Israel’s third action plan saw substantial or full completionImplementers must follow through on their commitments for them to achieve impact. For each commitment, OGP’s Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) evaluates the degree to which the activities outlin... More by the end of the implementation period. However, due to the low levels of ambition, their results in changing government practice were mostly marginal. Some commitments that could have improved public access to information, such as pro-actively disclosing information under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Law and increasing access to information held by local governments, were ultimately not implemented.

Commitment 5 resulted in the publication of legal and budgetary amendments to the Israeli Parliament (Knesset)’s National Legislation Database. This represents a significant improvement to the transparency of legislation and the budget process compared to before the action plan. However, other important information envisioned under the commitment, namely draft bills and secondary legislation, was not published to the database.

Table 2. Noteworthy commitments

Five Key IRM Recommendations

The IRM key recommendations are prepared in the IRM Design Report. They aim to inform the development of the next action plan and guide implementation of the current action plan. In Israel’s 2017–2019 Design Report, the IRM recommended the following: