Unusual among the action plans by the eight founding member governments of the Open Government Partnership, Norway included gender equality as one component.
Norway is a founding member of the OGP, officially kicked off in New York City Sept. 20. (See FreedomInfo.org overview.) The 46 countries joining the effort agree to write action plans containing their commitments.
According to the summary of its more detailed commitments, Norway has three main pillars in its plan:
Open Public Sector and Inclusive Government:
The Government will develop digital public services. We will develop the Government Communication Policy and The Plain Language Project. We are developing a better system for the compilation and dissemination of official statistics on state resource use and results. We have initiated a major national survey to obtain open, accessible and comparable information about the population’s perception of public services. We will improve user-orientation and a user-friendly culture in the public administration.
Measures to promote gender equality and women’s full participation in civic life, the private sector, the public administration and political processes:
Follow up the recommendations of the government white paper on equal pay; equal pay for work of equal value is a fundamental principle of an open democracy. We will work to have more women apply for top posts in the private sector. We will work to strengthen the role of women in local democracy and develop a gender equality programme with all municipalities.
Transparency in the management of oil and gas revenues, efforts for financial transparency:
The Government will follow up EITI –implementation, and support developing countries’ EITI implementation. We will continue the Oil for Development programme (OfD), providing support and advice to more than 20 developing countries for management of petroleum resources, e.g. with regard to greater transparency concerning revenue flows. We will maintain a consistent transparency policy for the Norwegian pension fund – Global and participate actively in the IMF-coordinated International Forum on Sovereign Wealth Funds (IFSWF), which promotes transparency and good governance in such funds all over the world. We will work to strengthen financial sector transparency.
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