State of Open Government During COVID-19

This page provides key insights from the global data collected by the COVID-19 OpenGov Tracker managed by the Analytics & Insights team at OGP. For more details about the data, see the Method section. This page does not provide recommendations or examples of reforms. For these and other resources, please see the OGP Guide to Open Government and the Coronavirus.

This page was last updated March 30, 2021.

All data on this page is publicly available on the COVID-19 OpenGov Tracker, which scrapes and centralizes relevant information from a variety of partner websites. See the Tracker for the full list of sources as well as links to the underlying data and methodology published by each partner organization. The tracker is updated daily. Please contact renzo.falla@opengovpartnership.org with any data-related questions or comments.

• Freedom of Expression
• Gender and Inclusion
• Government Oversight
• Media Freedom
• Open Data
• Physical Violence by Police and Military
• Right to Information
• Surveillance

In early 2020, many countries imposed severe pandemic-related restrictions across a variety of open government issues, including right to information, civic space, and government oversight. Since then, performance has been mixed, with notable improvements in some areas – such as media freedoms – and declines in others, including surveillance and the spread of disinformation. A full breakdown of these trends is below.

Improvements

• Media freedoms: The media in fewer countries face limitations in how they can report on the government’s response to COVID-19 (17 OGP countries compared to 25 in July 2020). Limitations on media access to information related to COVID-19 have also declined. Likewise, rates of verbal and physical harassment of journalists reporting COVID-19-related news declined, although there was a slight uptick at the end of 2020. 

• Government accountability: Although emergency measures in a handful of OGP countries continue to allow the executive branch to rule by decree on issues that may go beyond COVID-19, most countries have restored the role of the legislature.

• Open data: More OGP countries now publish COVID-19 testing data (81% up from 76% in October 2020 and 67% in July 2020). The publication of sex-disaggregated COVID-19 case and death data has also improved, although disclosure of vaccination data remains an important area for improvement.

No change or declines

• State violence: Security forces, including the police and/or the military, continue to use excessive force to enforce emergency measures in several OGP countries. Reports of violence and/or civilian deaths at the hands of security forces occur in 11 OGP countries. This number remains unchanged from July 2020.

• Increased surveillance: The rate of emergency measures in OGP countries that specifically cite citizen surveillance methods has increased steadily since the start of the pandemic. What was once concentrated in European OGP countries has become a global phenomenon.

• Concerns with disinformation: Ten OGP governments are frequently disseminating information about COVID-19 that deviates from official guidance provided by the WHO. This is particularly concerning given that the media in several countries continues to face limitations in reporting the nature of the virus itself.