Highlights and Reflections from the OGP Peer Exchange Workshop in The Hague, 2 – 4 September

From Tuesday 2 September to Thursday 4 September, the OGP Civil Society Engagement team together with Involve organised a civil society peer exchange meeting at the Hivos head office in the Hague, the Netherlands. Approximately 20 civil society representatives from past, current, and future OGP Steering CommitteeThe Steering Committee is OGP’s executive decision-making body. Its role is to develop, promote and safeguard OGP’s values, principles and interests; establish OGP’s core ideas, policies, and ru... member countries gathered to share experiences, knowledge and learning, and to strategise together. The workshop built on the one held in London in June 2013, and this time representatives from South Africa and Mexico had the chance to learn from their peers from current and past chairs Indonesia and the UK, and prepare for their (co) chairmanship, to be assumed after the OGP High Level Event on September 25, in New York. Representatives from France and Georgia were present as well to prepare for and strategise around their countries’ Steering Committee membership.

One theme of the discussions was the importance of ensuring that OGP countries recognise and seize the opportunities presented by the OGP platform. There were conversations on how to harness the scale of OGP to put greater pressure on governments. If one country makes a big gain, it can open up the space to scale this gain and put pressure on other governments to make similar commitments. How this is achieved was discussed, including how best to connect key OGP people on strategic activities who wouldn’t necessarily usually engage with each other, and how to enable them to learn from each other.

Discussions covered various models of government-civil society engagement, including the merits of formalised versus informal, organic networks, what a formalised network should look like, and who is best placed to create and maintain those networks. Participants were asked to share some of their experiences and plans in their country; the level of inclusionOGP participating governments are working to create governments that truly serve all people. Commitments in this area may address persons with disabilities, women and girls, lesbian, gay, bisexual, tr... More and participation and the set-up of dialogue mechanisms differed per country, and for some countries the process hadn’t been satisfactory. A shared concern was that there is a need to raise the bar of (guidance on) consultation and to establish fora for regular dialogue everywhere.

Another theme discussed in the workshop was how to achieve a balance between being ‘inside the tent’ – close to government but not able to be too critical – and being ‘outside the tent’ – able to criticise and put significant public pressure on the government, but with less influence. A number of member countries appeared to be currently grappling with how to achieve this balance. Some of the answers pitched to the question of how to leverage a country’s steering committee membership to secure good partnership were: by defining a clear terms of reference from the beginning between involved parties; identifying the boundaries/political space; identifying civil society priorities; co-creating a clear definition of the mechanisms and procedures to be used and followed; and by ensuring high level political engagement.

Also discussed during the workshop were OGP internal standards; a particular focus was the rapid response mechanism and the issue of the “carrots” and “sticks” that the OGP has at its disposal. Discussion centered on the best way to safeguard OGP’s reputation and integrity whilst providing an inclusive, supportive network that encourages a “race to the top”. There is concern in some quarters that OGP has only “carrots” to offer member countries, whereas there needs to be harder criteria for defining when countries have fallen short, for their own benefit and for the benefit of OGP’s reputation. Representatives discussed these criteria, and the criteria for a “bad” IRM report.

Participants agreed that OGP is a very different form of multilateral structure; crucially, it is not a traditional multilateral organisation, but a platform. Its role is to enable and facilitate countries who join the OGP to share in a network with a common set of principles and values pertaining to open government and 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, but without a rigid set of rules dictating how government and civil society should move forward with this agenda. As such, rather than being something OGP member organisations work on, it was agreed that the OGP needs to work and deliver for member organisations.

Over the second and third day, representatives worked in sub groups on developing specific strategies for civil society engagement in their respective countries. In the first session on strategy development, participants had to define priorities and objectives for their countries’ Steering Committee chairmanship/membership, formulating national advocacy wins; how to strengthen the national partnership process; and how to leverage international civil society objectives. Subsequently, they had to prepare a context analysis (with a view to their previously defined objectives) – considering the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in their countries’ OGP context.

In the second strategy session, participants conducted a stakeholder analysis, listing relevant national and international stakeholders and categorising them according to their alignment and influence. Afterwards, they identified the resources (funds, skills, people, connections) they would need from the OGP structures and network to make OGP work in their country. The different analyses reflected the different country contexts, with some participants having a more crystallized view on the playing field for OGP in their countries, how to mitigate unwilling actors, leverage champions and nudge the willing allies.

Participants closed the three-part CSO strategy development series by identifying how to best work with the incentives and against the disincentives of all key stakeholders in their country. Specifically, they looked to define 1-3 key messages that speak to the person’s incentives, reinforce his/her existing motives and speak against his/her disincentives. For making sure the high-level political OGP decision makers would in the end take up one’s message, one strategy could be to insert the message indirectly through other ‘influential persons’ that are close to the decision maker, who might in turn influence the decision makers in question. As such, it proved a strategic step to identify the so-called ‘influencers of the influencers’, for one’s OGP message to be heard and one’s mission to be achieved.

In one of the last sessions participants discussed past and future OGP (regional) meetings. For the coming Americas (November 2014), Africa (spring 2015) and Global (Mexico, fall 2015) OGP meetings, participants defined priorities and necessary steps to take, pitfalls to avoid and actors to include, learning from the past Bali, Dublin and London experiences. Some of the recommendations were to establish goals and a shared civil society agenda and approach, set up a collaborative planning committee with the government, and above make a timely start with all preparations to ensure high-level 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... of all actors involved.

Overall, over the three days representatives were able to reflect on their own experiences and formulate future wins and strategies, and hear from colleagues in the open government movement about shared challenges and opportunities for learning. A Storify of the event can be viewed here.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Charles Voogd.