Germany Results Report 2023-2025

Germany’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... led to strong 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 in 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 at the federal level and linked 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... at the state level. Linkages to the 2021 coalition agreement led to ambitious commitments in the action plan. Among those, a Federal 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 Act and transparency guidelines for federal public-private partnerships were not completed due to the collapse of the government in November 2024. Moving forward, Germany could re-energize engagement in the OGP process both from civil society and government and ensure a sustained multi-stakeholder collaboration.

Implementation

Germany’s fourth action plan (2023-2025) had 15 commitments, including 11 from the federal government and four from states (Länder). Despite the early collapse of the government coalition in October 2024, the federal commitments had high levels 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, comparable to previous German action plans. However, some of the ambitious commitments that originated from the coalition agreement and required passing legislationCreating and passing legislation is one of the most effective ways of ensuring open government reforms have long-lasting effects on government practices. Technical specifications: Act of creating or r... were not completed, namely the introduction of a Federal Transparency Act (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... 1) and transparency guidelines for federal public-private partnerships (Commitment 3). For Commitment 9, the Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community (BMI) expanded the digital platform for procurement tenders, developed during the previous action plan, to include tenders whose anticipated value is lower than the EU-set thresholds. This commitment took important steps in making more below-threshold tenders available in a central space.

The state commitments saw important advancements and cooperation in linked open data (LOD) by Berlin and Schleswig-Holstein (Commitments 12-14). The publication of data as LOD allows users to more easily analyze across different datasets and reduces the burden on administrations, academics, and civil society in compiling composite datasets. The cooperation between these states on LOD could establish a best practice for future progress on open data in budgetary matters, energyEnsuring universal access to sustainable, dependable, and affordable energy is critical to every aspect of prosperity. Increasing public oversight and transparency in the energy sector can help to ens... More, and educationAccountability within the public education system is key to improving outcomes and attainment, and accountability is nearly impossible without transparent policies and opportunities for participation ... across Germany.

Other commitments with early results include the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy’s report on the equivalence of living standards on the level of the 400 districts and self-governing towns and cities (Commitment 4), which was based on more than 30,000 citizen survey responses, and the Federal Foreign Office’s foreign policy dialogues, a continued commitment which led to over 100 events explaining foreign policy to the public in 15 out of 16 federal states (Commitment 5).

Participation and Co-Creation

The Federal Chancellery leads the OGP process in Germany. The Open Government Network (OGN), an informal coalition of civil society organizations focused on transparency, open data, and technology-related issues in Germany, continued to be the main interlocutor between civil society and the government in the OGP process. Civil society and government engagement in the co-creation and co-implementation was lower than for earlier action plans.[1] The Point of Contact (PoC) at the Federal Chancellery has found it is challenging to coordinate with the federal government, due to varying levels of interest from ministries in participating in OGP action plans. Moreover, members of the OGN felt that the process did not offer them sufficient opportunities to shape the content of the action plan. However, the PoC noted that low levels of civil society interest largely precluded the need for a longer co-creation process.[2]

Implementation in Context

In October 2024, a little after the midpoint of the action plan’s implementation, the coalition government collapsed due to budget disagreements.[3] This meant that commitments that were tied to the government coalition agreement (Commitments 1 and 3) were not implemented. Elections were held in February 2025, and the new government took office in May 2025.[4] This meant that, for more than seven months, commitment implementation was impacted by the lack of political leadership in the lead implementing government bodies.

After this period of political transition, Germany reaffirmed its commitment to open government as the new administration settled in. In October 2025, the German government signed the Vitoria-Gasteiz Declaration during the IX OGP Global Summit, reaffirming its commitment to democracy, civic space, and the open government principles outlined in the declaration.[5]

Table 1. Commitments with Early Results