South Africa has made eight broad commitments in its Open Government Partnership action plan.
South Africa 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.
The South African plan is less detailed than those of the other seven founding countries who unveiled their plans in New York. Under each topic is some general information on the goal and what agency will work on the project.
The elements of the plan are:
1. Develop and implement an accountability/consequences management framework for public servants.
2. Formalise partnerships with civil society organisations in all nine provinces to establish Service Delivery Improvement Forums (SDIFs) at local level to provide timely citizen report cards on service delivery levels at community level, especially in relation to primary health care, water, sanitation, environmental management and housing.
3. Enhance the capacity and capabilities of communities to access and claim their socio-economic rights through the roll-out of national public education campaigns, specifically a public outreach campaign on Know Your Service Rights and Responsibilities (KYSR&R) to inform citizens about their service rights, responsibilities, and legal mechanisms available to hold government accountable.
4. Enhance national integrity through institutional capacity-building of National Anti-Corruption Forum (NACF) and Anti-Corruption Hotline.
5. Approve guidelines on sanctions for corruption related cases
6. Develop a Citizen Participation guideline for Public Sector departments that would ensure that every public sector department across all spheres have a functional, resourced and capacitated citizen engagement unit which regularly and proactively engage with civil society.
7. Enhance the involvement of civil society at every stage of the budgetary process across all spheres of government to enhance the progressive realisation of socioeconomic rights and enable citizens to track public expenditure.
8. Explore the feasibility of establishing a single agency mandated by Government to develop a comprehensive and publicly accessible portal of environmental management information.
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