The Open Government Partnership Aug. 21 requested public comments on a two-year strategic plan built around two key elements “strengthening the core” and “maintaining vibrancy.”
The 14-page document begins with descriptions of OGP “values” and “the OGP offer.”
It then proceeds to outline short-term and long-term goals and to discuss “measures of success.”
Numerous goals and 40 action items are listed.
A variety of proposals are intended to address the aim of intensifying cooperation and providing help to member governments. One of these is: “Convening no less than quarterly in-person meetings and monthly webinars on thematic areas, e.g. the top 10 OGP commitments.”
A few items concern better documenting the OGP effort and publicizing its successes. One such proposal is: “Partnering with leading academic and research institutions (e.g. Sussex University, University of Nairobi) as ‘OGP Learning Partners’ to pick a small and diverse number of countries (e.g. 10) and document their approach to developing commitments, implementing them and monitoring them as a resource for the wider OGP community.”
Another idea is: “Establishing a “buddy system” or ‘twinning arrangement’ among OGP participating countries working on similar issues.”
The plan reflects an interest in engaging with other relevant international bodies. For example: “Engage the High Level Panel on the rethink of the Millennium Development Goals, G20, G8, APEC, ASEAN, AU, OAS, the Bali Democracy Forum, Community of Democracies, and other international initiatives to incorporate open government themes.”
OGP leaders began to review the strategic plan in July after it was drafted by a working group of OGP’s Strategy and Hiring subcommittee. (See previous FreedomInfo.org report.)
The three co-chairs to the Steering Committee asked other committee members for comment by July 20 on the plan, which was not released publicly at that time.
FreedomInfo.org requested a copy of the strategic plan in July. While the request was neither denied nor granted within the 10 working day time frame of the disclosure policy, officials wrote back to say the document was being reviewed by the OGP co-chairs and would be released for public comment.
Comments may be emailed to info@opengovpartnership.org or posted publicly on OGP’s blog “Good ideas come from everywhere.” http://blog.opengovpartnership.org/ All comments will be discussed by the Steering Committee’s ad hoc strategy and hiring working group and will be made public, along with the final version of the Strategic Plan, which will guide the initiative’s work through August 2014.
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