Sweden Design Report 2019-2021

Sweden’s fourth 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... includes commitments on creating a national 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... action plan, publishing priority datasets, and supporting data-driven innovation and uptake. Most of the commitments fall under the scope of work of the Agency for Digital Government, and there were few opportunities for non-government stakeholders to provide input on the action plan. Moving forward, Sweden could consider using future action plans to address 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 public procurementTransparency in the procurement process can help combat corruption and waste that plagues a significant portion of public procurement budgets globally. Technical specifications: Commitments that aim t... More data and lobbyingLobbying transparency allows the public to ensure that there is diversity of participation and contribution to public decision-making. Technical specifications: Policies and actions affecting lobbying....

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. Sweden joined OGP in 2011. Since, Sweden has implemented three action plans. This report evaluates the design of Sweden’s fourth action plan.

General overview of action plan

Sweden continues to rank among the best performers in transparency and anti-corruption globally. The fourth action plan focuses on open data, including data-driven innovation and digitisation of the public sector.

The development of Sweden’s fourth action plan was led by an independent third-party consultant, and mostly consisted of surveys and individual interviews with stakeholders. However, there was no available evidence that any open consultations took place for stakeholders to submit their proposals for inclusionOGP participating governments are working to create governments that truly serve all people. Commitments in this area may address persons with disabilities, women and girls, lesbian, gay, bisexual, tr... More in the action plan.

The Ministry of Infrastructure oversees Sweden’s involvement in OGP and the commitments in the action plan largely consist of existing activities that fall under the scope of work of the Ministry’s Agency for Digital Government (DIGG). The commitments involve proposing a national open data action plan, publishing priority datasets, encouraging data-driven innovation solutions to societal challenges, and discussing digitisation of the public sector with civil society.

Table 2. Noteworthy commitments

Recommendations

IRM recommendations aim to inform the development of the next action plan and guide implementation of the current action plan. Please refer to Section V: General Recommendations for more details on each of the below recommendations.

Table 3. Five KEY IRM Recommendations