Luxembourg Transitional Results Report 2019-2021

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 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. 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... commitments may build on existing efforts, identify new steps to complete ongoing reforms, or initiate an entirely new area. OGP’s 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. Civil society and government leaders use the evaluations to reflect on their progress and determine if efforts have impacted people’s lives.

The IRM has partnered with Soledad Gattoni to carry out this evaluation. The IRM aims to inform ongoing dialogue around the development and implementation of future commitments. For a full description of the IRM’s methodology, please visit https://www.opengovpartnership.org/about/independent-reporting-mechanism.

This report covers the implementation of Luxembourg’s first action plan for 2019-2021. In 2021, the IRM will implement a new approach to its research process and the scope of its reporting on action plans, approved by the IRM Refresh.^[1] The IRM adjusted its Implementation Reports for 2018-2020 action plans to fit the transition process to the new IRM products and enable the IRM to adjust its workflow in light of the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on OGP country processes.

Action Plan Implementation

The IRM Transitional Results Report assesses the status of the action plan’s commitments and the results from their implementation at the end of the action plan cycle. This report does not re-visit the assessments for “VerifiabilityOGP commitments should be clear and specific enough to enable measurement of their progress. Verifiable commitments include specific activities that can be monitored. Following an action plan’s subm...,” “RelevanceAccording to the OGP Articles of Governance, OGP commitments should include a clear open government lens. Specifically, they should advance at least one of the OGP values: transparency, citizen partic...” or “Potential Impact.” The IRM assesses those three indicators in IRM Design Reports. For more details on each indicator, please see Annex I in this report.

General Highlights and Results

Luxembourg’s first action plan featured six commitments, covering open data and open administration, access to information on national climate action, the establishment of a European CivicTech hub, and a platform for civil society and human rights defenders. The commitments were aligned with the third National Plan for Sustainable Development of Luxembourg and followed the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Agenda 2030.[2] Two commitments directly reflected civil society proposals (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 on creating a CivicTech hub and Commitment 6 on supporting human rightsAn essential part of open government includes protecting the sacred freedoms and rights of all citizens, including the most vulnerable groups, and holding those who violate human rights accountable. T... defenders). However, most of the commitments reflected existing initiatives and focused on fostering internal capacity of the public administration.

Luxembourg’s point of contact to OGP and non-government stakeholders contacted by the IRM were mostly unresponsive and reported no advancement on the implementation of the commitments. The IRM was able to establish that limited implementation occurred for three commitments (Commitments 3, 4, and 6). The IRM was unable to establish the level of 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 for Commitment 1, while Commitment 2 was mostly completed prior to the official start of the action plan period. Commitment 5 on establishing a CivicTech Hub saw substantial implementation. The discussions around the hub have helped keep civil society stakeholders engaged in the OGP process. There was insufficient evidence for the IRM to determine whether any commitments led to early resultsEarly results refer to concrete changes in government practice related to transparency, citizen participation, and/or public accountability as a result of a commitment’s implementation. OGP’s Inde... More or changes in government practice.

Shortly following the first plan’s submission in August 2019, the responsibility for monitoring the OGP process shifted from the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs (MAEE) to the Ministry of State. MAEE had convened representatives from line ministries, civil society, and academia to co-create the action plan. However, the Ministry of State did not hold any consultations during the implementation, and the level of stakeholder engagement diminished greatly as a result. Luxembourg has not established a dedicated multi-stakeholder forumRegular dialogue between government and civil society is a core element of OGP participation. It builds trust, promotes joint problem-solving, and empowers civil society to influence the design, imple... to oversee the OGP process, and the country lacks an online repositoryAccess to relevant information is essential for enabling participation and ensuring accountability throughout the OGP process. An OGP repository is an online centralized website, webpage, platform or ... to track commitment progress.

 COVID-19 Pandemic impact on implementation

With more than 87,000 positive cases to date (December 2021), despite 42.7 percent of Luxembourg´s population being fully vaccinated,[3] the COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected public policy implementation in the country, with several projects and bills being postponed. The pandemic seriously tested the country’s capacity to provide access to timely and relevant public information. According to Reporters Without Borders, obtaining figures and information on the government’s response to the virus became a challenge, at least during the beginning of the pandemic.[4]

A general lack of responses from government officials and CSOs makes it difficult to assess the pandemic’s actual impact on OGP priorities in the country. There is only evidence of a direct impact on the implementation of Commitment 2 and Commitment 6. For Commitment 2, the 2020 and 2021 editions of the Game of Code Hackathon (Milestone 1) were held online, and the open data portal (Milestone 2) incorporated data and visualizations on the evolution of the pandemic in Luxembourg. For Commitment 6, as reported by the former point of contact, the pandemic limited the participation of CSO representatives that were originally involved in this commitment.[5] Desk research shows that many other activities lost momentum after March 2020. However, further inquiry from government and CSO stakeholders could help to clarify the actual causes and its relation between lost momentum and the pandemic.

[1] For more information, see https://www.opengovpartnership.org/process/accountability/about-the-irm/irm-refresh/

[2] Open Government Partnership, Luxembourg Design Report 2019-2021, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/luxembourg-design-report-2019-2021/.

[3] Government of Luxembourg, Coronavirus, https://covid19.public.lu/fr.html.

[4] Reporters without Borders, Luxembourg 2022, https://rsf.org/en/luxembourg

[5] IRM researcher email exchange with Luc Dockendorf, 22-25 November 2021.