Liberia End-of-Term Report 2015-2017

Liberia has made progress in improving citizens’ consultations on land rights and providing increased access to information on budget and public spending. However, the commitments on the whistleblower act and on the new government’s platforms remain unfulfilled.

Commitment	Overview	Well-designed? *	Major or Outstanding Results? **
✪1.5 Information on commercial land use rights	Making information on commercial land use publicly available can transform citizens’ access to information on land ownership and mediate conflicts over specific areas in which citizens and companies have competing land ownership claims.	Yes	No
✪2.1 Implementation of the new Jury Law	Establishing the Jury Management Office would have a transformative potential impact to select and train jurors, increasing the transparency and fairness in selecting those who will participate in the judicial system.	Yes	No
3.1 Passage of Whistleblower Protection Act	Passage of a Whistleblower Protection Act could positively alter government practice by reducing corruption and setting the framework to allow citizens the opportunity to hold public officials accountable without fear of retaliation.	Yes	No

* Commitment is evaluated by the IRM as being specific, relevant, and potentially transformative
** Commitment is evaluated by the IRM as having major or outstanding results in terms of the ‘Did it Open Government?’ variable
✪ Commitment is evaluated by the IRM as being specific, relevant, potentially transformative, and substantially or fully implemented

Development of Liberia’s action plan involved consultation meetings between a variety of stakeholders, including government ministries and institutions, civil society organizations, and international partners. Moving forward, the government could give greater advance notice of consultation events, and could better publicize the notes and outcomes from meetings. Providing a sufficient period for public comment on the draft action plan could also allow for the collection of more diverse views.

Liberia did not act contrary to OGP process A country is considered to have acted contrary to process if one or more of the following occurs: The National Action Plan was developed with neither online or offline engagements with citizens and civil society The government fails to engage with the IRM researchers in charge of the country’s Year 1 and Year 2 reports The IRM report establishes that there was no progress made on implementing any of the commitments in the country’s action plan

Mostly “governance” civil society Significant involvement of line ministries and agencies

Liberia’s second action plan contained 20 commitments, grouped into four thematic areas (transparency, citizen participation, accountability and integrity, and technology and innovation). Commitment completion increased from the first year of assessment but the number of starred commitments decreased by one due to changes in IRM evaluation criteria.