Public Appeal to Ukrainian president to appoint OGP representative

50 public organizations asked the President to designate the body responsible for coordinating and implementing the Open Government PartnershipThe Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on improving government transparency, ensuring opportunities for citizen participation in public matters, and strengthen... More initiative. These NGOs decided to appeal to President Viktor Yanukovych because of Ukraine’s poor implementation of its responsibilities under the OGP. On September 20, 2011 Ukraine officially joined OGP… Since then Ukraine has committed to prepare and submit a National Plan on implementing the OGP initiative to the 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... by April 8, 2012. A mandatory requirement of the process is to develop the National Plan with the widest possible involvement of civil society representatives, who will help coordinate the initiative’s implementation and raise public awareness. The Ministry of JusticeTo address barriers that prevent citizens from having their justice needs met, OGP participating governments are working to expand transparency, accountability, and inclusion into all systems of justi... of Ukraine and Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine drafted the National Plan in November 2011. At the end of January 2012, national and local authorities held discussions on the draft plan.

Unfortunately, the regional coordinators of the Civic Partnership to support the OGP initiative noted the absence of broad public discussions and consultations on the initiative.  In particular, the creation of an interdepartmental Working Group on Revision of the National Plan has still taken place.

Although some suggestions from the public and in particular from our OGP Civic Partnership were taken into account by the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers when they were submitted on January 31, 2012, the main problem, the lack of a responsible authority, persists. Due to the lack of clearness in the question who is in charge of the implementation and coordination of this initiative and for the drafting of the National Plan from the Government, Ukraine risks being eliminated from or deprived of the right to participate in the global initiative “Open Government Partnership.” Representatives of non-governmental organizations in Ukraine ask in the open letter to President Yanukovych to immediately resolve the issue by determining the body responsible for coordination and implementation of the OGP initiative and to inform the public. Along with this letter, the Civic Partnership to support the OGP also submitted an alternative draft National Plan which satisfies all requirements of the Steering Committee and was widely supported by the Ukrainian NGO sector and international partners. This alternate draft National Plan was written by experts of the OGP Civic Partnership, which consists of more than 60 Ukrainian civil society organizations and 11 individual members. The OGP Civic Partnership suggests that the alternative draft National Plan to be examined and discussed at the nearest upcoming meeting of the Coordination Council on civic society development, an advisory body under the President of Ukraine.