A Guide to Open Government and the Coronavirus

This is a moment of peak uncertainty for governments, civil society and citizens. Facing a unique challenge from the coronavirus, new policies and approaches are being tested in real-time. Many in the open government community are deeply involved in their country’s response and recovery.

This guide is a one stop shop for the best current resources on how open government projects and approaches can support tackling the pandemic. It draws on over 350 crowdsourced examples from the open government community and amplifies the work of OGP’s wide range of thematic partners, many of whom have directly contributed their expertise to the guide. The guide is for open government reformers who are looking for practical ideas, tools and resources that can be adapted to their particular context.

The guide lays out recommendations and resources for an open response and an open recovery, and some long-term reforms that OGP members should consider to build trust and resilience to manage future shocks of this nature, and stronger societies overall. Our intention is not to present an unrealistically sequenced set of policy recommendations to an unpredictable situation. In some contexts the correct policy response will already be a mix of what this guide lays out under response and recovery, while early thinking about the opportunities for bigger structural shifts in society has already begun, for example on more inclusive safety nets.

The guide is organized by different policy areas which are long-standing priorities for the open government community. For each topic, the guide explains why it is relevant to the COVID-19 response and recovery, summarises key recommendations, includes examples of real-time projects and policies, and provides links to resources for more information. For each policy area, OGP and our partners ensured that gender and inclusion dimensions were considered, that the role for civil society, government and civic tech tools were explained. As a highly collaborative project, we welcome suggestions of additional resources that can be added or new examples that can be shared.