Various Open Government Partnership countries have starting holding public consultation on their national action plans, according to reports culled from the media, tweets, and government announcements.
News on this front includes:
– Latvia starting a working group,
– Tanzania posting a draft plan, and
– Canada holding a Twitter consultation.
The OGP is not maintaining a central listing of consultations.
In OGP is expected to soon release notes from the Dec. 6 Steering Committee meeting and the Dec. 7-8 OGP conference held in Brazil.
A presentation made there by the International Budget Partnership includes partial summaries of commitment made by the eight founding OGP member countries and suggestions .
The table contains two categories of information for each of five areas of commitments made by the OGP founding members. “These categories do not correspond to the five “grand challenges” around which the OGP approach is structured. Instead, the categories reflect issue areas with implications for openness in public finance, which is the IBP?s area of expertise. The first column highlights commitments already made by the eight founding members of the OGP. The second column provides recommendations to countries joining the OGP in the next months.”
Latvia Approves Working Group
The Latvian Cabinet of Ministers Dec. 13 approved the draft decree to establish a working group to enable the participation of Latvia in the OGP.
The working group would include representatives from all the ministries of the Republic of Latvia and the Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB), possibly NGOs. The working group chairman the Director of the Second Bilateral Relations Department of the Foreign Ministry, Ambassador Rihards Muci?š.
The working group is charged with producing a National Action Plan of Latvia by March 15.
Tanzania Issues Draft Plan
The draft national action plan for Tanzania has been posted and is open for comment.
Canada Holds Twitter Town Hall
Canada held Twitter town hall meetings (#opengovchat, #parlonsgouvert) in English and French and has posted the comments received. (English, French).
The government also has published a “Week One” summary of comments it has received.
The summary was placed on the Canadian Open Government website.
United States CSOs Makes Proposals
The Project on Openness in Government commented on the development of the U.S. national plan and its own proposals. The blog past was written by Dana Liebelson, is POGO’s Beth Daley Impact Fellow.
The government is solicited further comments with a Jan. 3 deadline. (See FreedomInfo.org report.) However, no provision appears to have been made to publish them contemporaneously upon receipt.
Another relevant blog post came from the nonprofit group Expert Labs by Clay Johnson, mainly on the topic of measuring the outputs of the open government directive.
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