UK review of NAP implementation progress and next steps

One year on from publishing our second NAP, Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office and the UK representative on the 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..., met representatives from the OGP UK Civil Society Network to discuss progress, agree next steps and offer his support to ensuring both government and civil society in the UK continues to demonstrate strong open government ambitionAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, OGP commitments should “stretch government practice beyond its current baseline with respect to key areas of open government.” Ambition captures the po....

Today we are publishing our second round of progress updates on implementation of our NAP commitments. With 21% of milestones completed and 57% on track, the Minister is content with progress. In fact he remarked that if everything was ‘on track’ then we wouldn’t be challenging ourselves enough. 

Civil society representatives commented that the NAP contains a number of issues at the centre of civil society interest, and had no concerns about those. In particular they commended the progress being made on beneficial ownershipDisclosing beneficial owners — those who ultimately control or profit from a business — is essential for combating corruption, stemming illicit financial flows, and fighting tax evasion. Technical... More, on which the UK is now leading the way in the G20, and the anti-corruption plan. They also highlighted the importance and the value of applying open government principles to the private as well as the public sector through, for example, open contractingA transparent procurement process, known as open contracting, increases competition, improves public service delivery, and ensures governments better value for their money. Technical specifications: C... More and CoST.

Consistency of engagement, however, was something that was flagged as a possible concern due to the marked difference between commitments in how it is being enacted. All parties agreed the importance of continuing the collaborative nature, seen during development of the commitments, through to the delivery, and the civil society network wondered what the Cabinet Office could do to ensure greater consistency. We don’t want this to become a tick box exercise, where people only come together to provide regular reports, but an embedded process of open policy making in action. We are therefore going to think about how we can better work with people leading implementation of commitments. We want to ensure that the open approach is seen as absolutely fundamental and mainstream in what we are doing, rather than simply being an ‘add on’. 

This is something we will be looking at as part of our self-assessment, due to be published in February 2015, and we will work to share experience between government departments to help 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... leads understand the benefits of working in this way. The issue of retaining knowledge as staff move on was also flagged, and it was agreed there needed to be a re-enforcement of the expectations for collaborative engagement to help both civil society and government.

Our driving force is the desire to ensure the UK’s approach to our NAP remains ambitious and innovative. Numerous countries have reached out to us to learn from how we co-produced the NAP with civil society, but we need to capitalise on this and we’d like our next NAP to explore other new areas. Two key issues emerged here – making the OGP matter more at a local level (i.e. working specifically with the devolved administrations), whilst ensuring it continues to be a national plan and process, and broadening engagement from outside government.

On the former, we are aware that this is an issue being experienced by countries through the OGP. The importance of getting more local interest while maintaining a national view was highlighted, perhaps by looking at commitments that are relevant at a local level and which could also be UK wide commitments. It was stressed that the NAP needs to be seen as something not just being driven by Westminster. With Scotland keen to get more involved and host an event, this was considered to be a good place to start. I have already participated in an event hosted by a civil society network in Northern Ireland so it is gratifying to see so much energyEnsuring universal access to sustainable, dependable, and affordable energy is critical to every aspect of prosperity. Increasing public oversight and transparency in the energy sector can help to ens... More around the country. This was also felt to be an area in which to develop opportunities for peer engagement, for both government and civil society, within the UK and internationally. 

When it comes to broadening engagement, we’re concerned with how we make ‘open government’ relevant to a wider group of people who haven’t thought about the opportunity it offers for them specifically. Having recently launched a crowdsourcing website to develop a UK Open Government Manifesto, civil society see this as an opportunity for government to get involved in broadening participation, both online and through events. We are keen to work with Involve as they crowdsource the manifesto to understand the current mood, what areas are of most prevalent interest and to meet people outside the network we’re already working with to help inform our next NAP.

As the meeting drew to a close, it was reiterated that government and civil society need to work together to continue to take this work forward. It was agreed that a follow-up meeting would be scheduled for early 2015 as part of work to compile our self-assessment. 

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons