Evaluation of Open Government Plan (IL0036)

Commitment description; What is the public problem that the commitment will address?: Open Government has been a main focus of various governments in recent years. The various efforts to assimilate it relate to transparency and making information publicly accessible, to including the public in the government’s decision-making processes, and to promoting the government’s accountability to the public. In Israel, the work thus far has been guided by the principles of Open Government as prescribed in Government Resolution No. 4515: transparency and reportability; civic participation; accountability; and implementing innovative technologies. However, the Open Government efforts remained focused on the government’s outputs, rather than on creating clear value to citizens. Consequently, the question of whether and how Open Government actually affects the lives of citizens remains unanswered. Due to the need to more effectively implement the Open Government policy, a process of consultation was held with diverse knowledgeable parties, including representatives of government ministries, authorities, academia, civil society and the business sector. The consultations concluded that Open Government should achieve, inter alia, the following outcomes: - Trust. Open Government processes should deepen the public’s trust in the public system, through the fulfillment of commitments (from the level of policy to the provision of service to end-users) and active sharing of information and government decisions. - Performance. Open Government processes should improve the government’s performance and enable it to reach its defined outcomes, with an emphasis on fast, accessible and available service. - Influence. The essence of a democracy is public involvement in and awareness of decisions that are being made, the shared resources and the impact that the public has. Open Government is designed to enable this. - One government. The citizen needs to see a uniform system in place, with a shared interface, compulsory service procedures and uniform standards.; What is the commitment?: Considering the insights produced from the public consultation process, the Government ICT Authority will take action to formulate outcome indices for Open Government in Israel. As part of this, the Authority will ascertain what the desirable outcomes are of Open Government processes that the Authority intends to evaluate, and subsequently, will formulate a methodology for evaluating the outcomes, so that it will be possible to understand the level of government effectiveness in achieving the objectives of Open Government and what courses of action should be adopted in order to achieve these objectives. Within the scope of this commitment, outcome indices will be defined and an evaluation methodology will be formulated, while mapping the evaluation challenges, identifying and recruiting the partners needed for the process and creating arenas for learning from international sources and from experts.; How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem?: Formulating the desirable outcomes of Open Government will help promote a government policy that will generate clear value to citizens and help recruit various partners for the government to achieve these objectives. In order to assess how the Open Government efforts are affecting citizens, an evaluation mechanism should be formulated that will enable monitoring of the government efforts, correlating between the outputs and the outcomes in the field, and redefining of the government efforts, if needed.; Why is this commitment ?relevant to OGP values: Transparency, civic participation and accountability: Although the commitment itself does not directly relate to promoting transparency, civic participation or accountability, the development of a system to evaluate all of the Open Government efforts will enable us to promote a solution for each of the OGP challenges, while improving the implementation of all of the various commitments.; Milestone Activity with a verifiable deliverable: Decision about the selected indicators: Start Date: 01.2018, End Date: 12.2018; Formulating an evaluation methodology: 01.2018 - 12.2018; Integration in the 2019 work plans: 01.2018 - 12.2018

14. Building a system of evaluation of the strategic plan for Open Government

 Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan: [40]

“Considering the insights produced from the public consultation process, the Government ICT Authority will take action to formulate outcome indices for Open Government in Israel. As part of this, the Authority will ascertain what the desirable outcomes are of Open Government processes that the Authority intends to evaluate, and subsequently, will formulate a methodology for evaluating the outcomes, so that it will be possible to understand the level of government effectiveness in achieving the objectives of Open Government and what courses of action should be adopted in order to achieve these objectives.”

Within the scope of this commitment, outcome indices will be defined, and an evaluation methodology will be formulated, while mapping the evaluation challenges, identifying and recruiting the partners needed for the process and creating arenas for learning from international sources and from experts.

Milestones

14.1 Decision about the selected indicators

14.2 Formulating an evaluation methodology

14.3 Integration in the 2019 work plans

Start Date: January 2018

End date: December 2018

Context and Objectives

The one-day consultation to develop Israel’s third action plan (2017–2019) involved discussions within the MSF on how to measure open government and its impact on the public. This question of measurement raises concerns in the government, as the current administrative management approach emphasizes objective quantifiable indicators to assess the outcome of any government action. Therefore, with this commitment, the ICT Authority seeks to develop a methodology for evaluating the outcomes of open government policies and reforms in Israel.

Although this commitment involves the discussion of open government principles, it is not directly related to OGP value because it is largely an inner-governmental affair with little direct bearing on the public. Although the development of an evaluation methodology for open government outcomes could serve as a complementary measure to open government reports (self-assessment and IRM reports) and is not necessary to include as a separate commitment in the action plan itself.

The commitment, in the limited ends of its first two milestones, is verifiable. Should the government produce indicators and the methodology to assess OGP commitments, those should be presented in proper documentation and allow interested parties to review them for verification. The third milestone, and probably the most important, is much vaguer. It is unclear into which working plans this methodology would be integrated, what this integration would look like, and who would carry out the integration. For example, it is unclear whether the methodology will be used to grade the implementation and impact of the different commitments and if the ICT will assess other agencies involved in OGP using this methodology.

Next steps

While this commitment is not a necessary component of an OGP action plan itself, government agencies in Israel place great significance on the how to evaluate open government and that open government measurements comply with the government mode of operation in other fields. As such, the IRM researchers recommend continuing it but not as a commitment in future parts of OGP action plans.

This commitment also emphasizes that there might be other government agencies better placed to lead the OGP process in Israel than the ICT authority. The professional knowledge required to develop an open government impact assessment does not necessarily lie with the ICT (even considering some people more related to the field have joined it). The IRM researchers recommend that this commitment (if not the action plan altogether) be led by a different section of the Prime Minister’s Office. This office is indeed the most experienced in this kind of methodological work, as it runs evaluations of ministries’ annual actions plans. It is also best situated to make other ministries take their evaluations seriously. However other departments not focused on the technological aspects of OGP, for instance, the Governance and Society Department, may be better suited to coordinate the OGP process in Israel.

The IRM researchers also recommend that a list of indicators be created together by government experts and civil society organizations. Indeed, this process is based on CSO input more than others, thanks to the online consultation that took place following the consultation day, but there is much more to be discussed around this topic.

14. Building a system of evaluation of the strategic plan for Open Government

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan: [64]

“Considering the insights produced from the public consultation process, the Government ICT Authority will take action to formulate outcome indices for Open Government in Israel. As part of this, the Authority will ascertain what the desirable outcomes are of Open Government processes that the Authority intends to evaluate, and subsequently, will formulate a methodology for evaluating the outcomes, so that it will be possible to understand the level of government effectiveness in achieving the objectives of Open Government and what courses of action should be adopted in order to achieve these objectives.” Within the scope of this commitment, outcome indices will be defined, and an evaluation methodology will be formulated, while mapping the evaluation challenges, identifying and recruiting the partners needed for the process and creating arenas for learning from international sources and from experts.”

Milestones

14.1 Decision about the selected indicators

14.2 Formulating an evaluation methodology

14.3 Integration in the 2019 work plans

Start Date: January 2018

End date: December 2018

This commitment aimed to create clear and quantitative criteria against which open government policy could be measured. Before this commitment, the government defined four outcomes for open government policies: trust, performance, influence, and uniformity in government. While the identification of these outcomes is presented as Milestone 14.1 of the commitment, they were already defined during the development of the action plan, following a consultation with Israel’s OGP multi-stakeholder forum in July 2017. [65] As with commitments 11 and 12, this commitment was not directly relevant to OGP values, despite its worthwhile purpose. [66]

The commitment was set to create specific indicators that could be measured to assess the achievement of these four sought outcomes. However, government officials report that a review of research from international organizations, as well as consultations with foreign governments, led them to conclude that the commitment’s premises should be reconsidered. [67] As a result of the commitment, government officials working on the action plan are committed to include commitments in future OGP action plans that can be objectively and quantifiably measured, and that the indicators should be tailored to each commitment separately. Given the actions that took place under Milestone 14.1 (identification of desired outcomes) and those measures that lead to the revised evaluation of the commitment, its implementation is considered limited.

[64] “Open Government Action Plan for 2018–2019”, Government OCT Authority, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Israel_Action-Plan_2017-2019_EN.pdf.

[65] “Open Government Action Plan for 2018–2019”, Government OCT Authority, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Israel_Action-Plan_2017-2019_EN.pdf.

[66] Ibid, pg. 41.

[67] Mr. Udi Glass, government Point of Contact in the Prime Minister’s Office, interviews and correspondence with IRM researchers.