The Open Government Partnership is beginning a “refresh” exercise that includes a reexamination of its guidelines for “co-creation” of national action plans.
The refresh initiative was described in a letter to civil society leader by Alejandro González Arreola, Executive Director of GESOC and the Civil Society Lead Chair of the OGP Steering Committee.
“As we approach OGP’s fifth anniversary, and fourth Global Summit in December, the Steering Committee agreed at its last meeting, in Cape Town in May, to undertake a strategic refresh which will set a vision for the next five years of OGP,” he wrote. “This refresh will examine how well OGP has worked in the first five years and will include a review of the basic rules of the game.” he said.
The stated goals are:
– to improve the quality of the national co-creation processes,
– further strengthen the design and uptake of the independent review mechanism, and
– improve our own transparency and accountability as a Steering Committee.
The OGP’s Criteria and Standards subcommittee is developing revised the co-creation guidelines. “These will be discussed at the next Steering Committee meeting in September and then be released for public comment.
His letter also describes steps toward more transparency.
The refresh is also described in an overview document that says the goal is “to deliver evermore transformative change for citizens.” In a more candid than usual look at the numbers, the overview says:
To date only 12% of OGP commitments are assessed to be potentially transformative and only 6% are potentially transformative and completed; these percentages represent an overarching challenge and need to be raised significantly over the next phase of OGP.
The document also describes the refresh process and sets out a process and a timeline. External consultants, the Development Portfolio Management Group, have been engaged.
“This strategic refresh will be completed for the Paris summit in December, and will also form the basis of a renewed approach to OGP funders.”
The document lays out eight key areas that have emerged thus far (abbreviated).
- Improving the support offered to participating governments and civil society
- Increasing thematic leadership within OGP
- Moving to genuine co-creation between government and civil society
- Broadening the sectoral focus of OGP
- Broadening the collective buy-in and enthusiasm for OGP
- Providing stronger capacity building support for the co-creation and implementation of OGP action plans
- Ensuring that OGP events and summits are fully leveraged to become action-forcing moments
- Creating a much more compelling value proposition of OGP
See five years of FreedomInfo.org articles about the OGP here.
Filed under: What's New