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France

Public Pariticipation in Sustainable Development (FR0046)

Overview

At-a-Glance

Action Plan: France Action Plan 2018-2020

Action Plan Cycle: 2018

Status: Active

Institutions

Lead Institution: Ministry for the Ecological and Solidary Transition

Support Institution(s): National Council for Ecological Transition (CNTE) Ministries contributing to the 17 goals: all ministries Public institutions, particularly: National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee), France's inclusive public development bank (AFD) Decentralised government departments

Policy Areas

Capacity Building, E-Government, Environment and Climate, Open Data, Private Sector, Public Participation, Public Service Delivery, Sustainable Development Goals

IRM Review

IRM Report: France Design Report 2018-2020

Starred: Pending IRM Review

Early Results: Pending IRM Review

Design i

Verifiable: Yes

Relevant to OGP Values: Access to Information , Civic Participation

Potential Impact:

Implementation i

Completion: Pending IRM Review

Description

Empower citizens to exercise scrutiny
and get involved in public decisions on energy transition and sustainable development
Lead institution(s):
Ministry for the Ecological and Solidary Transition
Other stakeholders:
National Council for Ecological Transition (CNTE)
Ministries contributing to the 17 goals: all ministries
Public institutions, particularly: National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee), France's inclusive public development bank (AFD) Decentralised government departments
Commitment building on commitment no. 26 of the NAP 2015-2017 "Initiate new collaborations with civil society
to develop innovative solutions to meet the challenges
of Climate and Sustainable Development"
OGP principles with which the commitment is associated:
Accountability, participation
Challenges
The energy transition and sustainable development are key issues, and there has been a groundswell of support for them among civil society.
Implementation of the road map charted following the April 2016 environmental conference particularly includes "Launching the revision of the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (PNACC-2) by calling on all of the stakeholders".
What is more, an action plan on the 17 sustainable development goals adopted by the United Nations in September 2015 needs to be set up in France for the period running until 2030. Work towards these goals must not only prompt the ministries to uphold and draw up the action plan together, but also include civil society, businesses, local authorities and citizens in shaping, promoting and delivering the action plan.
Ambitions
Empower citizens to get involved in public decisions on the energy transition and sustainable development.
The Ministry for the Ecological and Solidary Transition (MTES) would like to press on with the efforts already under way to provide digital tools and involve citizens in drafting the plans to implement international agreements and public policies and monitoring them, not least:
The National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change, by getting all of the stakeholders to contribute to recasting the previous plan;
The inclusive drafting of the Action Plan for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Enhance the opening up of public environmental data.
Open up new datasets produced by the two ministries, and encourage their re-use;
Give the departments a basic grounding in data and data science;
Build an infrastructure for environmental data: define the reference data and publish
them, including documentation
The road map in detail

Based on the operating arrangements determined by the CNTE, incorporate citizens' proposals in the opinions on the monitoring and assessment of the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (PNACC-2) written by the members of the CNTE, and particularly the Specialised Advisory Committee of the National Observatory on the Effects of Global Warming (ONERC) 2018 - 2022
Organise cross-government coordination to address the challenges of the PNACC-2, inform and educate all the public stakeholders in the SDGs to encourage their uptake Action programme 2015 - 2030
Inform, educate and mobilise civil society across the board to play a part in the action plan and make their own contribution
to achieving the SDGs -
Undertake an inventory of the data produced by the two ministries and their operators and make all of this data accessible via Github: mtes-mct.github.io/dataroom/
March 2018

Open up the data:
Of the platform SINOE® déchets9 and encourage re-use.
Bearing on sale of plant protection products10 at the most
micro-scale possible and add them, in a map format in
particular, to the Eaufrance website.
Of the building permit database Sitadel in an open data
format, so that it is easy to re-use and process by an automated processing system (subject to approval from the French Data Protection Authority/CNIL) From summer 2017 to end 2018
Provide citizens with access to environmental impact assessments11 via a co-design approach:
Make sure that each environmental public consultation clearly states the possibility of accessing impact assessments via the dedicated display interface. From January 2017 to January 2018
Geolocate environmental compensatory measures12
in order to reduce the accumulation rate of compensatory measures 2017 - 2018

IRM Midterm Status Summary

17. Empower citizens to exercise scrutiny and get involved in public decisions on energy transition and sustainable development

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

The energy transition and sustainable development are key issues, and there has been a groundswell of support for them among civil society.

Implementation of the road map charted following the April 2016 environmental conference particularly includes "Launching the revision of the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (PNACC-2) by calling on all of the stakeholders".

What is more, an action plan on the 17 sustainable development goals adopted by the United Nations in September 2015 needs to be set up in France for the period running until 2030. Work towards these goals must not only prompt the ministries to uphold and draw up the action plan together, but also include civil society, businesses, local authorities and citizens in shaping, promoting and delivering the action plan.

Empower citizens to get involved in public decisions on the energy transition and sustainable development.

The Ministry for the Ecological and Solidary Transition (MTES) would like to press on with the efforts already under way to provide digital tools and involve citizens in drafting the plans to implement international agreements and public policies and monitoring them, not least:

  • The National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change, by getting all of the stakeholders to contribute to recasting the previous plan;
  • The inclusive drafting of the Action Plan for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Enhance the opening up of public environmental data.

  • Open up new datasets produced by the two ministries, and encourage their re-use;
  • Give the departments a basic grounding in data and data science;
  • Build an infrastructure for environmental data: define the reference data and publish them, including documentation. [64]

Milestones

17.1 Based on the operating arrangements determined by the CNTE, incorporate citizens' proposals in the opinions on the monitoring and assessment of the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (PNACC-2) written by the members of the CNTE, and particularly the Specialised Advisory Committee of the National Observatory on the Effects of Global Warming (ONERC)

17.2 Organise cross-government coordination to address the challenges of the PNACC-2, inform and educate all the public stakeholders in the SDGs to encourage their uptake

17.3 Inform, educate and mobilise civil society across the board to play a part in the action plan and make their own contribution to achieving the SDGs

17.4 Undertake an inventory of the data produced by the two ministries and their operators and make all of this data accessible via Github: mtes-mct.github.io/dataroom/

17.5 Open up the data:

  • Of the platform SINOE® déchets and encourage re-use.
  • Bearing on sale of plant protection products at the most micro-scale possible and add them, in a map format in particular, to the Eaufrance website.
  • Of the building permit database Sitadel in an open data format, so that it is easy to re-use and process by an automated processing system (subject to approval from the French Data Protection Authority/CNIL)

Start Date: 2018

End Date: 2020

Context and Objectives

Through this commitment, the government expresses a continued interest in involving civil society in the country’s decision making on key environmental issues, namely energy transition and sustainable development. The previous action plan contained a commitment to involve civil society in the negotiations surrounding and follow-up to the commitments taken at the Conference of the Parties 21. [65] However, the activities undertaken in that framework were time bound, and it is unclear if they contributed to long-lasting changes in government practices. [66]

The current commitment features public participation in the monitoring and assessment of the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (PNACC-2). It would also involve the public in the development of the national action plan for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The second component of the commitment concerns accessibility to various strategic datasets. The diverse ambitions of this commitment result from the merging of two different commitments. Indeed, the initial version of the action plan, made available for comments in 2017, had two separate commitments on open government and environmental issues. [67]

Some components of the commitment lie outside of the action plan’s implementation period. The Ministry for the Ecological and Solidary Transition started working on the first component of the commitment in 2016. The co-construction phase of the PNACC-2 lasted from mid-2016 to mid- 2017. Six working groups gathered approximately 300 participants from civil society, the expert community, and local governments and ministries. They included members of the Conseil National de la Transition Ecologique (CNTE), which is also a multi-stakeholder entity. The working groups developed 33 thematic notes that served to develop the PNACC-2, which was in turn validated by the CNTE. [68] The implementation of the PNACC-2 will be monitored by a special commission of the CNTE. [69] The government took steps toward implementing the second part of the commitment at the beginning of 2018, with the publication of data from the Sitadel database on construction licenses and dates. [70]

The action plan states that this commitment is relevant to public accountability and civic participation. Given the objectives of the various milestones, the IRM researcher, however, considers the commitment to be relevant to the OGP values of access to information and civic participation. There is no clear indication of how civil society would be better equipped to hold government accountable if the commitment were fully implemented.

This commitment contains five different milestones of varying degrees of detail. They target two different—but complementary—objectives. Overall, the commitment, as written, is specific enough to be verifiable. However, while the second segment of the commitment provides sufficient information on the datasets to be opened, the first segment is vague. Milestone 17.1 does not contain sufficient information about the means given to citizens to make proposals or on the way these would be considered. Similarly, Milestone 17.2 mixes information on the PNACC-2 and the SGDs and does not inform the reader whom should be informed and how. The same thing is true for Milestone 17.3, which aims to inform and mobilize “the whole civil society.” Some of the milestones go beyond the time frame of the action plan implementation, which will be a challenge for the assessment of completion at the end of the cycle.

The IRM researcher deems this initiative to have a moderate potential effect. The open data component of the commitment could provide public access to several new datasets, including data on the purchase of pesticides at a micro-scale. Dissemination of such information would be an important step toward more transparency in the environmental field. However, the participation component is formulated too vaguely to be able to assess potential impact.

Next steps

The IRM researcher recommends that the commitment, or at least its milestones, be carried on in the next action plan and that:

  • The commitment be split into two separate commitments, one concerning the involvement of civil society in the monitoring of government action regarding climate-related international and national commitments, and the other concerning opening environmentally relevant data;
  • More detailed information be presented in the commitment text regarding how civil society will partake in the monitoring and assessment of the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change and in the elaboration of the action plan concerning the Sustainable Development Goals.
[64] For a Transparent and Collaborative Government: France National Action Plan 2018–2020, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/France-Action-Plan-2018-2020-English.pdf (accessed on 10 January 2019).
[65] The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference was the 21st yearly session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 11th session of the Meeting of the Parties to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The meeting was held in Paris from 30 November to 12 December 2015.
[66] Sofia Wickberg, Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM): France End-of-Term Report 2015–2017 (Washington, DC: Open Government Partnership, 2018), p. 112, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/France_End-of-Term_Report_2015-2017.pdf.
[67] Etalab, “Plan d'Action 2018–2020: Appel à Commentaires,” 2017, https://gouvernement-ouvert.etalab.gouv.fr/pgo-concertation (accessed on 15 February 2019).
[68] Ministry of Ecological Transition, “Adaptation de la France au Changement Climatique,” https://www.ecologique-solidaire.gouv.fr/adaptation-france-au-changement-climatique (accessed on 15 February 2019).
[69] The IRM researcher did not get any information about the composition of this commission. Jean-Philippe Lang, Ministry for the Ecological and Solidary Transition, email exchange with the IRM researcher, 15 February 2019.
[70] Jean-Philippe Lang, Ministry for the Ecological and Solidary Transition, email exchange with the IRM researcher, 15 February 2019.

Commitments

  1. Transparency of Public Services

    FR0030, 2018, E-Government

  2. Transparency of Public Procurement

    FR0031, 2018, E-Government

  3. Transparency of Development Aid

    FR0032, 2018, Aid

  4. Expand Open Data

    FR0033, 2018, E-Government

  5. Improved Data Policies and Administration

    FR0034, 2018, Capacity Building

  6. Transparency of Public Algorithms

    FR0035, 2018, E-Government

  7. Open Data at Sub-National Level

    FR0036, 2018, Capacity Building

  8. State AI Lab

    FR0037, 2018, Capacity Building

  9. Administrative Capacity-Building

    FR0038, 2018, Capacity Building

  10. Public Service Incubators

    FR0039, 2018, Capacity Building

  11. Streamline Data Flows

    FR0040, 2018, E-Government

  12. Open Etat Forum

    FR0041, 2018, E-Government

  13. Online Procedures Dashboard

    FR0042, 2018, E-Government

  14. Govtech Summit

    FR0043, 2018, Capacity Building

  15. Imrove Public Consultation Mechanisms

    FR0044, 2018, E-Government

  16. International Transparency and Citizen Participation

    FR0045, 2018, Aid

  17. Public Pariticipation in Sustainable Development

    FR0046, 2018, Capacity Building

  18. Open Science

    FR0047, 2018, E-Government

  19. Citizen Involvement in Cour Des Comptes

    FR0048, 2018, Capacity Building

  20. Private Sector Transparency

    FR0049, 2018, Asset Disclosure

  21. Access to Information on Public Officials

    FR0050, 2018, Asset Disclosure

  22. Open Regional and Local Authorities' Data

    FR0001, 2015, Fiscal Transparency

  23. Publish Municipal Council Decisions and Reports Online

    FR0002, 2015, E-Government

  24. Publish Building Permits in Open Data Format

    FR0003, 2015, Open Data

  25. Starred commitment Increase Transparency in Public Procurement

    FR0004, 2015, Open Contracting and Procurement

  26. Improve Transparency in International Development Aid

    FR0005, 2015, Aid

  27. Open Access to Public Policy Evaluations

    FR0006, 2015, E-Government

  28. Involve Citizens in Cour Des Comptes Work

    FR0007, 2015, Fiscal Transparency

  29. Access to Public Officials Transparency Obligations

    FR0008, 2015, E-Government

  30. Starred commitment Beneficial Ownership

    FR0009, 2015, Beneficial Ownership

  31. Transparency in Extractive Industries

    FR0010, 2015, Extractive Industries

  32. Transparency in International Trade Commercial Negotiations

    FR0011, 2015, Labor

  33. Fix My Neighborhood

    FR0012, 2015, E-Government

  34. Digital Fix-It

    FR0013, 2015, Open Data

  35. Co-Produce Data Infrastructure with Civil Society

    FR0014, 2015, Open Data

  36. Starred commitment Open Legal Resources

    FR0015, 2015, Legislation & Regulation

  37. Reform Participatory Mechanisms

    FR0016, 2015, Public Participation

  38. Mediation and Justice

    FR0017, 2015, Judiciary

  39. Starred commitment Open and Circulate Data

    FR0018, 2015, Land & Spatial Planning

  40. Open Calculation Models and Simulators

    FR0019, 2015, Open Data

  41. Open Platform for Government Resources

    FR0020, 2015, E-Government

  42. Improve Public Services Through E-Government and User Interaction

    FR0021, 2015, E-Government

  43. Empower Civil Society to Support Schools

    FR0022, 2015, E-Government

  44. Diversify Recruitment Within Public Institutions

    FR0023, 2015, Capacity Building

  45. Culture Change

    FR0024, 2015, Capacity Building

  46. Spread Public Innovation

    FR0025, 2015, Capacity Building

  47. Starred commitment Protect Against Conflicts of Interest

    FR0026, 2015, Conflicts of Interest

  48. Civil Society & Transparency in COP21 Conference Planning

    FR0027, 2015, Environment and Climate

  49. Open Data and Climate/Sustainable Development

    FR0028, 2015, Open Data

  50. Collaborate with Civil Society on Climate and Sustainable Development

    FR0029, 2015, Environment and Climate