OGP Steering Committee 2014 Rotation Note

OGP Steering Committee 2014 Rotation Note

In 2014, the Open Government Partnership Steering Committee rotates both the government and civil society members simultaneously for the first time since OGP was launched in September 2011. In 2013 three new civil society representatives joined the Steering Committee, but 2014 will be the first time new government members are elected to join the main governing body of OGP. As the number of countries participating in OGP has grown – from the founding 8 to 64 today – it is vital to offer leadership opportunities to a wider group of government and civil society actors. Beginning in 2014, annual elections and selection processes will ensure that the Steering Committee rotates regularly.

After a competitive process the following governments and civil society leaders will make-up the new OGP Steering Committee from October 1st 2014. This note also explains the background to each of the selection processes and how the decisions were reached.

OGP Steering Committee from October 1st, 2014

Governments

Government of Brazil

Government of Croatia****

Government of France****

Government of Georgia****

Government of Indonesia*

Government of Mexico**

Government of the Philippines

Government of Tanzania

Government of South Africa***

Government of the United Kingdom

Government of the United States

Civil Society

Sugeng Bahagijo****                   International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development

Manish Bapna****                       World Resources Institute

Cecilia Blondet****                     Pro-Etica

Veronica Cretu                            Open Government Institute

Mukelani Dimba****                   Open Democracy Advice Centre

Alejandro Gonzalez***                GESOC, A.C.

Suneeta Kaimal**                         Natural Resource Governance Institute

Warren Krafchik                           International Budget Partnership

Alvin Mosioma****                     Tax Justice Network- Africa

Martin Tisne                                 Transparency & Accountability Initiative (Omidyar)

Rakesh Rajani*                             Twaweza

* = Co-Chair in 2013-14

** = Co-Chair in 2014-15

*** = Co-Chair in 2015-16

**** = Joining the OGP Steering Committee in 2014

The 2014 Rotation of Government Members of the OGP Steering Committee

The OGP Articles of Governance require the OGP participating governments to vote to elect new government representatives to the Steering Committee each year.  Three months before voting was due to begin, the Support Unit sent information on the requirements to be a candidate to all 64 participating governments.  Of those 64 governments, 10 elected to compete for one of the eight available seats (Canada initially applied but withdrew their application during the voting period).  Five of the candidates were current Steering Committee members and five were running for the first time. In accordance with the Articles of Governance, the Governance and Leadership subcommittee reviewed the full slate of candidates for their compliance with the eligibility criteria to stand for election. All 10 candidates were approved.

The Support Unit contracted an independent and experienced elections firm, EveryoneCounts, to organize and run the election.  Instructions were sent to the points of contact in each government shortly before the election opened on July 1.  Reminders were sent periodically to governments and a total of 58 of the 64 OGP governments participated in the election (over 90%) before it closed on July 30.

To ensure a regular rotation of three to four governments each year from 2015, the governments were awarded staggered terms of three, two and one years.   Terms were awarded based on the number of votes received.  To prevent a tie, countries were asked to rank their preferences so that the top choice received 10 points, second choice received nine points, etc.   Based on the results, three countries were awarded three-year terms (the United States, the United Kingdom and Brazil), three were awarded two-year terms (France, Croatia and Georgia) and two were awarded a one-year term (the Philippines and Tanzania).  The following is the full list of results, which will also be posted to the OGP website.

Country	Votes	Place	Region	Years of Term
United States	523	1	Americas	3
United Kingdom	452	2	Europe	3
Brazil	450	3	Americas	3
France	411	4	Europe	2
Croatia	331	5	Europe	2
Georgia	269	6	Asia-Pacific	2
Philippines	239	7	Asia-Pacific	1
Tanzania	225	8	Africa	1
Sierra Leone	203	9	Africa	N/A
Honduras	156	10	Americas	N/A

The Government rotation process was coordinated by Jack Mahoney at the OGP Support Unit: jack.mahoney@opengovpartnership.org

The 2014 Rotation of CSO Members of the OGP Steering Committee

The selection process for new Steering Committee members has come to an end. Coming October 1st 2014 Sugeng Bahagijo (Indonesia), Cecilia Blondet (Peru), Alvin Mosioma (Kenya), Mukelani Dimba (South Africa) and Manish Bapna (USA) will join the OGP Steering Committee. The selection committee also selected Nathaniel Heller (USA) to remain on stand-by, in case any of the current Steering Committee members step down before the 2015 rotation process begins.

As a re-cap, we had an original list of 37 exceptionally strong candidates. In the first round the members of the selection committee (Warren Krafchik, Helen Darbishire, Malou Mangahas, Suneeta Kaimal and Paul Maassen) all individually ranked the candidates using three criteria (leadership, working across stakeholders and ability to articulate civil society interests). This gave insight on the candidates’ ability to engage strategically at the senior political global level that the Steering Committee works on. To come to a shortlist the committee also looked at other factors, including making sure the shortlist was diverse across open government issues, regions and gender. It’s important to note that the original list was only around 20% women. The final shortlist had a total of 14 names.

The second round consisted of interviews with all the candidates, with at least 3 selection committee members taking part in each call. Shortlisted candidates also sent in endorsement letters (a minimum of 3) and we spoke informally to people we knew that knew the candidates.

To come to a final list we took all information we had into account and first discussed whether each candidate would add something to the overall mix of Steering Committee members. Our first cut really was on strategic leadership. We approached this discussion regionally, as our rotation criteria specify a minimum and maximum of members per region. After that we revisited the diversity criteria on issues and especially gender. The low number of female applicants on the long list proved challenging when making the final selection. As a community we really need to make a big effort next year to convince more female civil society leaders to apply.

The 5 selected names are:

• Sugeng Bahagijo, Indonesian, Executive Director of the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID), and a member of the Asia Democracy Network
@_infid_
• Cecilia Blondet, Peruvian, Executive Director of Proética, the Peruvian chapter of TI and former minister for the Advancement of Women and Human Development
 @ProeticaPeru
• Alvin Mosioma, Kenyan, Founder and Director of Tax Justice Network-Africa
 @alvinmosioma
• Mukelani Dimba, South African, Executive Director of the Open Democracy Advice Centre
 @mukelanidimba
• Manish Bapna, American, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of the World Resources Institute (WRI) @ManishBapnaWRI
• Stand-by: Nathaniel Heller, American, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Global Integrity @Integrilicious

It is important to stress that this is a positive choice for these candidates and what they will bring to the mix. Many of the other candidates would make good Steering Committee members. All of them are an important part of the OGP community and hopefully will stay involved in OGP and will run again when the next rotation comes.

However, with only 5 seats available and the ambition to diversify across topics and regions the selection committee had to make tough choices. Our sense is that we did well on strategic leadership, as well as on issue and regional diversity, but not nearly as well as we would have liked on gender.

As the OGP Articles of Governance specify, this list has been endorsed by the current nine civil society Steering Committee members, and shared with the full Steering Committee. The new members will be invited to observe the next OGP Steering Committee meeting at the end of September and will assume their full positions on October 1st 2014. After that they will be in full charge for guiding OGP the next three years at the international level, and also bringing their energy and skills to the national and regional level.

We hope that you are as pleased with the new members as we are and join us in wishing them all the best, and providing them all the support needed to make their hard job a success.

The Civil Society rotation process was coordinated by Paul Maassen, the Civil Society Coordinator for OGP: maassenpaul@gmail.com