New Plan, New Site

It was a cold gray day in late 2015 when OGP was forced to admit that their website, recently spit-polished but basically held together with bubble gum and paper clips and strength of will, had to go…

Some time later…

The difficulty for OGP was serving two major needs with the website — educationAccountability within the public education system is key to improving outcomes and attainment, and accountability is nearly impossible without transparent policies and opportunities for participation ... of participants and the public at large as well as offering access to a staggering volume of qualitative and quantitative data. OGP’s uniquely broad topical scope presents a unique challenge. Ultimately, between design and function, with help from our developers, Vizzuality, and internal and external stakeholders, we have created what we believe is an immediately usable website but also a scalable structure that can support change and expansion as we and the open government community move forward.

So, welcome to the new OGP website.  We hope you’ll feel right at home whether you are an active member of the OG community or interested in finding out what open government is all about. We’ve got a bundle of new features which should contribute to greater data clarity, personal engagement, and ease of use.

“Super map”. The dynamic map offers the user immediate overviews of a country’s action planAction plans are at the core of a government’s participation in OGP. They are the product of a co-creation process in which government and civil society jointly develop commitments to open governmen... status, the current members of the Subnational Pilot Program, and governments’ starred commitments, contacts, stories, events and main areas of work. As well as access to each type of resource.

Select metrics visualized. Graphs representing IRM’s evaluation of each government’s current action plan in terms of commitment quality: “starred”, potential impact, relevance to OGP values, and thematic focus. Click into the detail page to learn more. (The subnational program is still in its pilot stage, but in our next phase, we will sync subnational and national government data.)

Government pages. From the Participants page, click into a given government for a snapshot with details on each of the active and reviewed commitments as well as associated documents. Use the Activity Stream to find most recent developments or find out who in the OGP network is working in this area.

Stories. The OGP’s blog has been retooled to provide a more narrative perspective on the work of reformers and advocates.  The new Stories page offers new filters for story types and we are inviting visitors to share their experiences with us with the “Submit a story” function.

User paths. Find essential materials in our Resources repositoryAccess to relevant information is essential for enabling participation and ensuring accountability throughout the OGP process. An OGP repository is an online centralized website, webpage, platform or ... either through the comprehensive search or choose your user type for a tailored offering of tools and guidance, research documents and general information.

Search. It works way better.

Design. It looks way better.

And don’t miss Panthea Lee’s beautiful photo, winner of our Instagram contest, on the home page!

On the other side of things, there are features we are still working on:

Translation. You can see the widget offering Spanish, our first language option, in the upper right corner of the site, but our cache of properly translated content is still limited. (We plan to start offering French translation later in the year.) You will see a lot of machine-translated content at this point. We will be working on that — and hoping for suggestions from users — on an ongoing basis. Should you have issues with certain translations, please let us know at web@opengovpartnership.org.

Subnational. Our subnational pilot program will be part of the development of improved and expanded government pages, so, though they are still quite bare, we hope to enhance and grow the pages at the same time as they move through the OGP action plan cycle.

No website is ever finished and every website can use improvements, so please let us know what you think by commenting below or emailing us at web@opengovpartnership.org