WHAT CHANGED AND HOW DID OGP CONTRIBUTE?
OGP Commitments Delivered Real Results
- OGP countries have institutionalized the right to information: In 2011, 53 of the 73 OGP countries had RTI legal frameworks. Today, 72 of 73 OGP countries have RTI legal frameworks.
- Concrete outcomes from RTI reforms: Nearly 50 countries have used OGP to make concrete improvements to RTI systems, such as by adopting new regulations, expanding the proactive disclosure of information, building digital RTI tools, or strengthening institutions. Twenty-eight countries alone have improved proactive disclosure practices, while 23 countries have created or strengthened online RTI platforms.
- Legal frameworks: 22 countries have passed, amended, or otherwise strengthened RTI legislation or regulations through OGP. Eight of these countries have established their first-ever RTI legal frameworks through OGP, namely Costa Rica, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Paraguay, Philippines, Senegal, and Spain.
- Public involvement: In 19 OGP countries, there is concrete evidence that civil society directly impacted commitment results, such as by influencing the final text of legislation, shaping policies, or informing the design of digital tools.
- Oversight and accountability: 15 countries improved RTI enforcement, oversight, or adjudication. This includes strengthening of independent RTI oversight bodies, such as information commissioners, and improved redress for information requesters, such as expanded appeals rights and channels.
OGP’s Contribution
- Iterative action framework: Successive OGP action plans enabled Brazil, Spain, and Kenya to sequence their RTI commitments into strategic, multi-year reforms, leading to tangible results.
- Global visibility: Senegal twice made adoption of an RTI law into an OGP commitment, then used the Open Gov Challenge and the 2025 OGP Africa and the Middle East Regional Meeting to catalyze final approval of the 2025 RTI Act.
- Multi-stakeholder collaboration: OGP gave civil society and government officials a formal seat at the table to co‑design flagship RTI commitments. Government-civil society groups in Brazil, Kenya, and Spain each turned long‑standing advocacy into laws, portals and stronger oversight bodies.
A fully functioning democracy depends on the public’s ability to hold those in power to account. The right to information (RTI) is essential to promote transparency and expose wrongdoing. Yet as democratic regression continues around the world, Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions Index found that respondents in two-thirds of the 182 countries scored believe that governments are failing to keep corruption under control, a sign that the frameworks designed for accountability are falling short.
How do we deliver on this demand for transparency and accountability? By creating legal frameworks that give people the right to obtain information held by the government, and the practical means to use it. Collecting and publishing data on how well agencies implement an RTI law can also help measure progress in protecting this right, aid learning and accountability, and prioritize reforms.
When these structures are in place, they help the public identify red flags and corruption risks, turning ordinary people into partners with the government. This access helps people understand their institutions and the rule of law, safeguard other human rights, and hold officials accountable. In general, it’s harder to hide abuses of power and illegal activity when citizens can access key facts and data from the government.
Since OGP’s launch in 2011, members have advanced the right to information by creating and strengthening legal and institutional frameworks.
15 Years of Progress
OGP has helped make the right to information into a global norm. Over the past 15 years, OGP members have normalized the use of RTI policies. In 2011, a little less than three-quarters of OGP countries (53 out of 73) had an RTI legal framework in place. Today, that number has grown to nearly all members (72 out of 73), reflecting a strong commitment to accountability.
Through the action plan process, most countries advancing the right to information have achieved concrete results. To date, 28 OGP members have taken it a step further through improving proactive disclosure practices, while 23 OGP members have created or strengthened online RTI platforms.
- Legal frameworks: 22 countries used OGP to pass, amend, or strengthen RTI legislation or regulations. Costa Rica, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Paraguay, Philippines, Senegal, and Spain established their first-ever RTI legal frameworks through OGP.
- Public involvement: In 19 countries, there is concrete evidence that civil society directly impacted commitment results, such as by influencing the final text of legislation, shaping policies, or informing the design of digital tools.
- Oversight and accountability: 15 countries saw improved RTI enforcement, oversight, or adjudication. This includes strengthening independent RTI oversight bodies, such as information commissioners, and improved redress for information requesters, such as expanded appeals rights and channels.
Explore how these OGP members have turned right to information protections into reality.
The Philippines
Prior to joining OGP, Section 7 of the 1987 Philippine Constitution had long enshrined the right to information on matters of public concern. In 2016, the government issued an executive order, operationalizing this right within the executive branch, and launched an online Freedom of Information (FOI) portal through which the public can submit requests and view requests and agency responses. Between 2016 and 2019, the number of agencies onboarded to the portal grew from 15 to 447 (representing about 98 percent of national government agencies), while the resolution rate for online FOI requests rose from 41 percent to 47 percent, pointing to growing capacity and willingness among agencies to respond. As of August 2026, a FOI bill has passed the Senate and the House. A national law would extend and institutionalize FOI protections beyond the executive-branch framework established by the executive order. The Philippines has also made progress at the local level. While national legislation to institutionalize the right to information had stalled between 2019 and 2022, the country used an OGP action plan to support the passage of local-level FOI ordinances instead. As a result, the number of local governments that had passed an FOI ordinance or executive order tripled, rising from 20 to 61 in two years. The Philippines also won an honorable mention as part of the 2025 Open Gov Challenge Awards for its new framework to implement these local ordinances, which is an ongoing commitment.
Uruguay
Like almost every OGP country, Uruguay has a regulatory framework that grants public access to government-held information. Through an OGP action plan, Uruguay created and expanded the National Transparency and Access to Information Index (INTAI) in 2021 to cover 100 percent of obligated entities, including local governments. The launch of the first edition of the INTAI prompted various government agencies to contact the lead government unit to determine how to eliminate barriers for access to public information. A year later, over 25 agencies had made improvements, while 10 additional agencies consulted the unit on how to improve their score. The index evaluates compliance through website reviews, institutional self-assessments, and transparency reports, while also publishing results through open data and visualization tools to promote proactive disclosure. This approach has strengthened monitoring, accountability, and public oversight, while also building local networks and capacity to sustain transparency at the municipal level.
The Netherlands
Across three action plans, the Netherlands has steadily advanced the right to information through commitments on Open Government Act standards, dashboards, and implementation. The 2018–2020 action plan developed a new standard and dashboard, while the 2020–2022 plan sought toexpand publication nationwide. The current 2023–2027 plan pivots to full implementation through a multi-year public records management strategy to modernize digital archiving and ICT systems, backed by substantial funding to ensure proactive disclosure becomes standard practice. Together, the three plans trace a clear progression: what began as technical groundwork has evolved over time to nation-wide scaling and embedding sustainable, system-wide transparency.
Spain
Spain’s 1978 Constitution recognized citizens’ right to access administrative records, but this had limited practical effect in the absence of a law fully developing that right. Instead, access was fragmented across different laws like archival information, environmental matters, and reuse of public sector information. Passing a comprehensive right to information law became a priority for civil society and government when Spain joined OGP in 2011, and its first action plan delivered the 2013 Transparency Law, creating the country’s first general legal framework for this right. The national Transparency Portal, launched during the second action plan and refined in the third and fourth, has become the main channel for requests and published data: requests rose from 3,151 in 2015 to 14,096 in 2024, and proactive disclosure has expanded to cover statistics, senior officials’ CVs and salaries, budget execution, contracts, and subsidies. The 2013 law also prompted most autonomous communities and many major cities, including Madrid, Seville, Valencia, and Zaragoza, to adopt their own transparency laws. Several of these subnational laws are stronger than the national framework. Since its third action plan, the OGP process has created institutional spaces, including a General Sub-Directorate for Open Government and a multi-stakeholder Open Government Forum, where civil society can propose new RTI commitments and reforms, keeping the right to information on the political agenda.
Brazil
Despite Brazil’s 1988 Constitution guaranteeing the right to information, reforms remained fragmented for decades. This changed when Brazil embedded RTI reform across six OGP action plans, which included enacting its RTI law, training over 1,600 municipalities through the “Brazil Transparent” program, and creating a national Transparency Index. When Brazil’s push to introduce anonymous information requests hit legal obstacles during its third action plan, the Comptroller General’s Office (CGU) and civil society found a workaround in its fourth: Fala.BR, a centralized platform for RTI requests and public feedback that shields requestors’ identities from the responding agency, even as it collects that information as required by law. The platform, which has been widely adopted at the local level, has become a critical tool for journalists and activists working on sensitive topics. By June 2026, Brazil’s federal government had received over 1.6 million requests through the system, with information granted in nearly 99 percent of cases. In one notable case, the non-profit organization Fiquem Sabendo used the law to obtain a former president’s corporate card records, revealing personal and luxury spending that contradicted his public denials and drew widespread media coverage.
Kenya
Despite constitutional recognition of the right to information in 2010, Kenya faced significant delays in adopting and implementing a right to information law. Civil society and government reformers used OGP’s second action plan to pass the ATI Act in 2016, which led to the creation of a national curriculum on this topic adopted at the Kenya School of Government. By 2024, the government had trained over 30,000 public officers and appointed RTI officers in all 47 counties. Between 2016 and 2024, the Commission on Administrative Justice tracked 249,424 information requests and reviewed around 1,000 decisions to deny requests. At the local level, in Uasin Gishu and Makueni counties, members of the public used RTI requests to obtain information on spending and contracts for road construction projects, helping community members compare government spending against the quality of construction they observed on the ground. Retired government employees used similar requests to check on their pension records, confirming that they had not received their full benefits and enabling them to file formal complaints.
Senegal
Although Senegal’s constitution and other national texts recognized the right to access information, implementation remained weak in the absence of a law specifying the scope of that right. Senegal first committed to adopting an RTI law in its first action plan, and in August 2025, after nearly 17 years of advocacy, it passed its first Access to Information Act. The law gives every person a legal right to request information from public bodies, sets response deadlines of up to 15 days (eight days for urgent cases), and requires key institutions to proactively publish information online. It also created the National Commission for Access to Information (CONAI), an oversight body empowered to handle appeals and impose sanctions, including fines and possible criminal proceedings, on officials who unlawfully withhold information. Civil society groups like ARTICLE 19 West Africa and Forum Civil worked with the Ministry of Justice to shape the law’s scope and push for CONAI’s independence, with the support of international partners like the United Nations Development Programme and Support Program for Francophone Open Governments. Senegal’s public pledge at the 2025 OGP Africa and Middle East Summit is widely credited as a key trigger for final passage. Alongside the law, Senegal’s open-data efforts have accelerated: the country made a large jump in rankings (from 100 to 33) in the 2024 Open Data Inventory, with an openness score of 88 out of 100.
Córdoba Province, Argentina
Despite an existing legal framework established in 1999, the provisions in Córdoba Province that regulate the right to access public information became obsolete over time. Through its second OGP Local action plan, stakeholders co-created a new Access to Information bill to replace its 1999 law and align the province with modern international standards. The draft expands the scope of obligated entities to include all branches of government and organizations receiving public funds and strengthens proactive transparency requirements. It also introduces open formats and plain language as guiding principles, establishes an appeals mechanism and oversight bodies, and creates a multi-stakeholder monitoring commission that includes representatives from the government, civil society, academia, and legislators to oversee implementation. The reform illustrates how OGP can serve not only as a platform for adopting access-to-information legislation, but also for modernizing outdated legal frameworks through co-creation. This commitment also received an honorable mention as part of the 2025 Open Gov Challenge Awards.
Looking Ahead
There is a growing gap between how governments are designed to function and how citizens actually experience them. When institutions fail to reflect the diversity of the people they serve, or when legal frameworks remain inaccessible to those most in need of protection, trust erodes and democratic foundations weaken.
As OGP members continue advancing open government reform, they must aim to close that gap by strengthening the structures and norms that hold societies together while ensuring they are genuinely open to all. To accomplish this, governments must reinforce the transparency and accountability mechanisms that keep power in check. In a moment marked by democratic backsliding, disinformation, and shrinking space for dissent, this work is not a technical reform agenda: it is a defense of the conditions that make open government possible at all.
Protecting the right to information is essential to this defense. Fundamentally, this right is the bedrock of open government. This includes not just responsive and effective right to information laws, but also proactive disclosure. OGP members are pushing for more ambitious reforms to continue strengthening RTI frameworks and making it easier to hold those in power to account by advancing proactive disclosure. For example, OGP’s Proactive Disclosure Coalition, led by the Netherlands and implemented in collaboration with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), signifies this progress. The coalition aims to develop and support the uptake of international standards to establish a clear baseline for countries to measure their progress in implementing proactive disclosure and inspire others to adopt similar measures.
This shift to deepen protections for the right to information is also taking place at the local level. In Nandi, Kenya, the local government committed to creating a more inclusive RTI framework, to ensure that women, young people, and people with disabilities can participate in public life. To achieve this, the government is developing a county-level RTI policy, conducting more effective outreach through ward-level information desks and channels like radio and SMS, and producing materials in accessible, multilingual formats. The government will also publish disaggregated data related to these groups in an open format to better understand service gaps.
The next step for OGP members is to move beyond passing right to information laws to implementing them, favoring the reuse of the data provided while protecting privacy, and strengthening records management, independent oversight, and institutional cultures where data is open by design.