2017 Review of the IRM – Report

The Open Government Partnership’s (OGP) continuous growth over the years has had effect on the organization of the initiative, in particular on the Independent Review Mechanism (IRM). With 75 participating national governments and 15 subnational governments, the IRM has reviewed close to 2,000 OGP commitments. The IRM’s activities within the OGP expanded over time with staff members playing a growing role in OGP organization-wide strategy, analysis and cross-country learning. On the national level, there are increasing expectations of communication work. At the same time, concerns are voiced in relation to the IRM not adequately addressing issues of scope in terms of time frame, broader policy context, or civic space. With the OGP’s implementation of a Strategic Refresh in 2017-2018, the IRM in parallel is evaluating its role within the movement. On this premise, the IRM unit and the International Expert Panel (IEP) asked Blomeyer & Sanz to review the mechanism’s performance.

Activities for this review took place from June 2017 to December 2017. The review assesses the IRM’s 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..., effectiveness and efficiency on the basis of a set of review questions. The evaluators used desk research, surveys, interviews and field missions. Interview feedback was collected from a total of 23 Government (Govt) stakeholders, 19 Civil Society Organization (CSO) stakeholders, 11 IEP and former IEP members, 11 OGP staff members and 9 IRM researchers. Survey feedback was collected from 26 Govt stakeholders, 35 CSO stakeholders and 30 IRM local researchers. The scope of the assessment includes all activities of the IRM unit and the IEP, as well as the interaction with the OGP Steering CommitteeThe Steering Committee is OGP’s executive decision-making body. Its role is to develop, promote and safeguard OGP’s values, principles and interests; establish OGP’s core ideas, policies, and ru... and other OGP support units.