About the Open Gov Challenge

The Open Government Challenge is a call to action for all members of OGP to raise ambition in ten areas of open government to help strengthen our democracies.

Over the next five years, all members of the Partnership should aim to raise the ambition of reforms in 10 policy areas and demonstrate relevant progress in as many of the areas of the Challenge through their OGP action plans or beyond. Explore each of these areas and relevant reforms to address the challenge here.

We must act together to make a difference, because only when governments, public officials, and civil society work together, we see more ambitious and impactful reforms that transform our communities.

The most ambitious reformers may be recognized regularly in international fora, featured in inspirational stories, and can share their progress across the OGP community.

• How to Participate
• Eligibility
• Rules of the Game
• Timelines

How to Participate

Any public sector institution across all branches and levels of government of an OGP member can participate in the Challenge. Members are encouraged to participate in as many Challenge areas as possible. Challenge commitments should be the most ambitious, flagship actions by members. Where more than one public institution in an OGP member wishes to participate in a specific challenge area, the OGP Support Unit will aim to facilitate coordination between the actors.

Civil society and other partners are strongly encouraged to co-create and support a Challenge, but the Challenge must be owned and implemented by a public sector institution. At the time of awards, partners and civil society could nominate governments, as long as the reform is adopted and implemented by the government.

To participate, OGP members can

• Co-create relevant commitments in OGP action plans
• Submit a standalone action/commitment, independent of the OGP action plan
• Submit entries for the OGP awards
• These are not mutually exclusive options. Members can participate in more than one of the above concurrently.

OGP will also enable members and non members to share stories for inspiration on their work on Challenge areas. Similarly, civil society and partners can share stories of government actions. These will not be used for measurement of Challenge performance, but may be used in our narratives and communication and inspiration efforts to promote the Challenge.

Eligibility

Actions or commitments that meet all of the following criteria:

• Thematic relevance: The action must aim to advance the goals of a Challenge area. Members are encouraged to submit ambitious commitments that are possible game changers for practices, policies, or institutions that govern a policy area, public sector, or the relationship between citizens and state; and/or generate binding and/or institutionalized changes across government. Ambitious commitments may also be actions within the Challenge areas that no one else or very few in the Partnership are addressing.
• Future-oriented: The action must be ongoing or planned, with future milestones. To be future-oriented, submitted commitments must include verifiable reforms that have yet to be implemented at the time of submission.
• Open government relevance: The action must be relevant to at least one open government value – transparency, public accountability or civic participation (see definitions below).
• Government-led: The action must be led by a public sector institution from any branch or level of government of an OGP member. Collaboration with civil society in the design, implementation, and/or evaluation of actions is strongly encouraged.

Challenge submissions must be relevant to at least one of the open government values below:

• Transparency: Government-held information (including on activities and decisions) is open, comprehensive, timely, freely available to the public, and meets basic open data standards (e.g. raw data, machine readability) where formats allow.

• Civic Participation: Governments seek to mobilize citizens to engage in public debate, provide input, and make contributions that lead to more responsive, innovative and effective governance.

• Public Accountability: Rules, regulations, and mechanisms in place call upon government actors to justify to the public their actions, act upon criticisms or requirements made of them, and accept responsibility for failure to perform with respect to laws or commitments.

Rules of the Game

Rules will depend on the mechanism through which members submit a Challenge.

• Commitments included in action plans will need to follow existing Co-creation and Participation Standards, and reporting requirements. They will be subject to the existing Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) methodology for assessing action plans or stock takes.
• For standalone actions/commitments and awards entries, the submissions must meet the eligibility criteria of the Challenge (see FAQ 1). For these, collaboration with civil society in the design, implementation, and/or evaluation of actions is strongly encouraged and expected. Once the objectives of the scope of the mid-term and end-term review of the Challenge are agreed, members will be asked to self-report some information on the progress of these actions, based on the scope of the reviews.

Timelines

Commitments included in action plans will follow the regular action plan timelines. Members that have already submitted their action plans may use the window for amending their action plans or adding “challenge commitments” within the prescribed time frame for these. The OGP commitment templates for both national and local action plans have been modified to enable members to flag commitments as entries for the Challenge.

Standalone actions or commitments may be submitted at any time, through the Standalone Commitments form (available in English, Spanish, and French). The mid-term and end-term review of the Challenge overall will take into account information available at the time of conducting those reviews.

To find out more about the Challenge, including the process to include commitments in actions plans and more, please visit our Open Gov Challenge Frequently Asked Questions page.