South Africa Results Report 2020-2022

The Government of South Africa’s submission of the 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... maintained their status as a member in the partnership. However, the government directed very few human or financial resources to the Open Government PartnershipThe Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on improving government transparency, ensuring opportunities for citizen participation in public matters, and strengthen... More (OGP) process. Consequently, dialogue between the government and civil society remained minimal, contributing to civil society’s further disengagement. As the government fell short of harnessing OGP’s participatory and action-oriented model, no open government results were achieved within the scope of the action plan.

The submission of South Africa’s fourth action plan in 2020 maintained the country’s participation in OGP, which had been dormant since 2018. However, the government did not allocate sufficient financial or human resources for an effective OGP process. This is evidenced by the submission of an action plan largely not specific enough to be measurable and a lack of implementation progress.

The Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), which is responsible for OGP activities, dedicated their limited human resources to other multi-lateral commitments. In particular, the government point of contact for OGP is also responsible for South Africa’s engagement in the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). During the implementation period, DPSA prioritised South Africa’s Second-Generation Review and adoption of the APRM National Plan of Action. Moving forward, the government intends to undertake a complementary approach to meet OGP and APRM commitments.[1]

OGP can provide a platform to ensure that civil society is an equal partner in the design and implementation of APRM reforms. OGP’s action-oriented model helps hold members accountable for co-creating and implementing measurable commitments with observable open government results. South Africa is advised to follow the OGP Participation and Co-Creation Standards to unlock the value of complementarity between the APRM and OGP.[2]

None of the three commitments saw open government results during the implementation period. The commitments aimed to advance 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 around 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..., fiscal processes, and the beneficial owners of companies. Only 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, on Open Data, saw a limited level 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. The absence of clear milestones and timelines made it difficult to identify 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 linked to the implementation of the commitments. The commitments to advance fiscal and beneficial ownershipDisclosing beneficial owners — those who ultimately control or profit from a business — is essential for combating corruption, stemming illicit financial flows, and fighting tax evasion. Technical... More transparency did not contain verifiable milestones and therefore had an ‘unclear’ 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... to open government. Other challenges that impacted implementation included a lack of institutionalisation of the OGP process and the absence of a monitoring and periodic review system.

Open government reforms progressed outside of the action plan’s scope. The National Treasury and civil society organisation Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) continued to update and expand the ‘Vulekamali’ open budget portal, that was launched under a previous action plan. Likewise, open data and beneficial ownership reforms continued outside of the OGP participatory framework. An effective OGP process could reinforce and coordinate these efforts, broaden participation, and build towards ambitious long-term reforms.

An Interim Steering Committee with representation from DPSA, the National Treasury, the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), and civil society aimed to revitalise OGP in South Africa and develop an implementation roadmap. However, the roadmap was not developed, and the level of government engagement with civil society declined during implementation compared to previous cycles.[3] Likewise, the decrease in the number of commitments, from seven or eight in previous action plans to three in this action plan, indicates a smaller number of participating government bodies.[4] The government and civil society’s limited funding and human resource constraints inhibited meetings and other activities.[5] The absence of a designated space for ongoing coordination between government and civil society further drove open government reformers to work outside of the OGP process.

Interviewees held the view that the intended overall goal of the fourth action plan to reinvigorate the OGP process was not achieved. However, they also noted there were efforts made towards continued engagement with high-level political stakeholders and sustaining informal relationships for collaboration among civil society.^[6] The challenge remains to translate high-level political objectives into concrete commitments, in collaboration with civil society.

South Africa does not maintain a public OGP repository with evidence of co-creation and implementation.[7] Therefore, South Africa is acting contrary to OGP process. Given the absence of early open government results, this report focuses its analysis on recommendations to use the OGP process to advance South Africa’s open governance aims.

[1] Government of South Africa, information submitted to the Independent Reporting Mechanism during the report’s prepublication period, 27 February 2023.

[2] ‘OGP Participation and Co-Creation Standards’, OGP, 24 November 2021, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/ogp-participation-co-creation-standards/.

[3] Zukiswa Kota of the PSAM, interview, 3 November 2022; Paul Plantinga of the HSRC, 27 October 2022.

[4] ‘South Africa’, OGP, 2023, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/members/south-africa/. Previous action plans may be found here.

[5] Kota, interview; Plantinga, interview.

[6] Plantinga, interview; Kota, interview.

[7] Note: The DPSA website contains some documents on OGP: https://www.dpsa.gov.za/ However, these documents were uploaded after the implementation period and do not include evidence of co-creation and implementation. Therefore, South Africa is considered acting contrary to process under the 2017 OGP Participation and Co-Creation Standards: https://www.opengovpartnership.org/ogp-participation-co-creation-standards-2017/.