Open Government in Romania: how far from the tipping point?

The story I’ve heard is that at a recent meeting of political advisers from US Embassies in the Eastern Europe countries, OGP was on the agenda, and Romania stood up as one of the most advanced countries. Being a civil society activist with an interest on the topic, I was a little puzzled: yes, we have made some important steps but in fact I expect more from my government. Of course, it is a matter of perspective: Romania is ahead its neighbors but behind more advanced countries.

Romania joined OGP at the end of 2011 and submitted its first Action Plan in the spring of 2012. The Plan, written with substantial input from CSOs, was very ambitious, maybe too ambitious, and too broad. And it landed in a very complicated political landscape: in 2012 we had three changes of Cabinet, before the elections held in December brought some stability. Our independent monitoring report from the same month showed that nothing was done.

The pleasant surprise was that our main recommendation – to create a structure responsible with OGP directly under the prime-minister – was taken into consideration and early in 2013 this new department was established, and a small but dedicated team was appointed. Since then, we had some results, the ones that placed Romania on the OGP map ahead its neighbors. Most visible result is the new national open dataBy opening up data and making it sharable and reusable, governments can enable informed debate, better decision making, and the development of innovative new services. Technical specifications: Polici... portal, at data.gov.ro, which has 161 datasets at this moment (some more valuable than others). Most important change is the willingness to cooperate with other sectors of the society. The second 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..., recently adopted, is more realistic (but still ambitious, given the context) and we may honestly say that it is the result of a dialogue between the government and civil society.

We are moving in the right direction, and it shows. But in most cases the vehicle of change are open minded individuals from various public institutions. The culture of openness is not institutionalized, the open government is not prioritized and is not championed by high level politicians (for example, none of the 14 candidates for presidential electionsImproving transparency in elections and maintaining the independence of electoral commissions is vital for promoting trust in the electoral system, preventing electoral fraud, and upholding the democr... More scheduled in November makes open government one of its priorities). The focus of the open government in Romania is clearly on open data and it is poorly coordinated with other relevant components. More notably, there is a growing demand from the business sector to better coordinate e-government services, which should be linked with the open data efforts.

Both the acknowledgment of the progress and the above mentioned concerns gave substance to the newest report of the Foundation for open society, called simply Open Government in Romania, made public on 30th of September (the report is only available in Romanian at this moment). Together with colleagues from civil society, united in the Coalition for Open Data, we asked our government and our politicians to create the framework for an efficient public policy on open government.

If we want to reach the critical mass of systemic change, we need high level political support, better coordination of efforts, and adequate resources to build the basis for future work. As a side note, Romania has the possibility to use EU funds in this respect, in part thanks to the efforts of civil society, which requested open government to be prioritized in some of the relevant strategic documents. There is growing demand for open government and open data from the business, civil society and the general public, and there are more and more supporters in the public administration. But if we want to reach the tipping point, the active implication of the political decision makers, at high level, is a must.

Until then, Romania remains an interesting case study and many lessons may be learnt from our experience. But it is up to us to convince our leaders to embark on open government and transform this case study in a nation success.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.