Together for OGP

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“Two years ago I was in this alone and now it’s seventy of us” – said the national coordinator for OGP in Macedonia, Irena Bojadzievska, in her opening speech for the second public consultative meeting for the 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... for OGP (2014-2016).

The Government of Macedonia has committed itself to the objectives of 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 in the beginning of 2012 and prepared the first action plan by April the same year. In this short period, little was known about the initiative and the first action plan was drafted with limited participation and partnership between government institutions and the citizens.

However, during the preparation of the second action plan for OGP the Government showed more preparedness and willingness to include civil society as representative of citizens’ interests in the process of drafting the action plan. At the same time, civil society’s awareness about the OGP process and the opportunities for contributing to it grew. The Centre for Research and Policy Making (CRPM), a leading think tank based in Skopje, which is a partner on the regional project funded by the European Union, Advocacy for Open Government: agenda-setting and monitoring of country action plans contributed greatly to increasing public awareness about the OGP Initiative in Macedonia. The project’s activities in Macedonia were directed to (1) increase the awareness of CSOs about the OGP Initiative, (2) increase the 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 of citizen associations that operate outside of the capital in the process of decision-making, and generally (3) contribute toward the quality of the action plan.

Around 70 CSOs were invited to join the coalition. More than 40 of them attended the three coalition-building meetings that focused on specific priorities of the action plan: (i) participatory policy making, (ii) public service deliveryTo ensure that citizens of all groups are better supported by the government, OGP participating governments are working to improve the quality of and access to public services. Commitments in this are... More at the local level; and (iii) fiscal 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. The coalition members discussed commitments of the national action plan and offered their recommendations – which were submitted to the national coordinator for OGP and included in the first draft of the new national action plan for OGP 2014-2016.

CRPM further fostered participation of the civil society organizations on the second public consultative meeting held on 26th of March 2014, attended by around seventy representatives of the civil society and government institutions. They were seated in seven working groups and together revised the specific parts of the action plan that fell under their expertise and interest. Generally CSOs recommended that state institutions publish citizen budgets in their webpages; improve electronic forms of participation in decision-making; regular publication of 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... and proactive discloser of public information; whistleblowers’ protection; and the improvement of public procurementTransparency in the procurement process can help combat corruption and waste that plagues a significant portion of public procurement budgets globally. Technical specifications: Commitments that aim t... More measures. With the participation of civil society in the process about 30% of the proposed content of the action plan changed to the satisfaction and acceptance of both partners, CSOs and Government.

As a direct result of the process of facilitation of CSO participation in the development of the national action plan for OGP the contribution of civil society increased from 26.6% for the first action plan for OGP (2012-2014) to 51.1% for the second one (2014-2016). Markedly, Macedonian civil society has shown more interest and ownership over the OGP initiative, this time also by initiating to be implementing parties of many measures included in the action plan.