[open-government] Fwd: OGP Rules of the Game - Blog

Sun Jun 16 18:50:43 UTC 2013

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Martin Tisne <mtisne at omidyar.com>
Date: Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 12:48 PM
Subject: [open-government] OGP Rules of the Game - Blog
To: Open Government Partnership - Civil Society UK <
ogp-cs-uk at lists.openrightsgroup.org>, open-government at lists.okfn.org, OGP
Civil Society Coordination <emilene17 at gmail.com>, "OGP Criteria and
Standards (CS)" <ogp-cs at opengovpartnership.org>,
ogp-civilsociety at opengovpartnership.org, ogp-africa at googlegroups.com, FOI
Advocates <foianet at foiadvocates.info>

*Please comment/send around*
*
*
*http://blog.opengovpartnership.org/2013/06/ogp-rules-of-the-game/*
*
*
*http://tisne.org/2013/06/13/ogp-rules-of-the-game/*

*OGP - The Rules of the Game *
*
*

I worry that civil society advocates working on Open Government Partnership
are making a tactical mistake.****

There has been a lot of activity - rightly - around which OGP countries
should be 'in or out'. There were discussions in the past year around South
Africa's media bill <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22298825>(the
so called 'secrecy bill') and whether it might impact the country's OGP
eligibility. Most recently the discussion has centered on Russia's decision
<http://www.globalintegrity.org/blog/russia-withdraws-ogp>to 'postpone' its
entry into OGP. Many had informally questioned whether Russia should have
been eligible in the first place.****

Whilst important, such a strong focus on eligibility misunderstands the
nature of the Partnership. The Open Government Partnership is not a 'good
performers' club'. If it was, it would entail setting a high bar for entry
and focusing civil society attention on getting new countries in to meet
the entry standard and monitoring those that fall behind with a view to
expelling them. OGP is different. It purposefully sets a low bar for entry
and then seeks to encourage countries in a 'race to the top' by rewarding
excellence and penalizing backsliding or inaction. Here is where as a
community we could do a lot more to ensure OGP succeeds in these precious
formative years.****

There are currently three basic rules of the game for OGP - we should
refine and strengthen these and I would suggest to also add a 'relevance
check'.****

*(1) Civil society participation*: this is the defining factor of the Open
Government Partnership. Civil society sit on the OGP steering committee,
are represented at co-chair level, are involved in the drafting,
co-creation and implementation of OGP national action plans. Yet the OGP
guidance <http://www.opengovpartnership.org/consultation> on participation
of civil society (which the Independent Reporting
Mechanism<http://www.opengovpartnership.org/independent-reporting-mechanism>uses
as the standard to measure countries against) is far too broad, weak
and focuses only on the drafting of a country's initial action plan.There
are just five basic steps that focus on 'consultation': we could and should
do better. There is so much more we could be doing here, from using
platforms like OpenIdeo <http://www.openideo.com/how-it-works/full.html> to
co-create action plans, to setting up innovative civil
society/government/private sector collaborations to make them happen. More
on this in a future post.****

*(2) The OGP 'stretch':* no country action plan should merely coast on past
successes, or bottle prior commitments under the pretense of new. The only
reason to be part of OGP is  to 'stretch', to innovate and try something
new, different, possibly uncomfortable at first. This idea was present from
the very genesis of the Partnership - countries should make 'stretch
commitments' in their action plans that take them beyond their comfort zone
into new territory. It is then that OGP really starts to makes sense:
countries then need support from their peers to make it happen, the networking
mechanism <http://www.opengovpartnership.org/ogp-network> matches
idea/innovator/implementer etc. We need to be much much clearer on defining
what 'stretch' means. More on this shortly.****

*(3) A 'relevance check':* even if we get the above two right, there will
always be countries where the finished product - the country action plan -
may be completely off the mark and perhaps not even have much to do with
open government at all (e.g. 'faster marriages for pregnant women',
'cleaner beaches', 'tweets about drug
traffickers<http://www.opengovstandards.org/index.php?idioma=en>')
! This could happen for a number of reasons (we failed to connect with open
government reformers, civil society was not engaged etc.). At present,
there is no safeguard: an action plan is finalised and is put into the
system, no questions asked. We need a better relevance check.****

*(4) The Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM): *this is where the heart of
the action has taken place so far. OGP watchers will have a view on this,
but regardless of how well we do on the IRM and how much it incentivises
government and civil society to implement better open government
commitments, it will always be post-hoc. By definition, the IRM comes after
the action plans have been designed, implemented etc.  So we need to worry
about the totality of the process described above as well as engage with
the reporting mechanism.****

This won't be enough - these are necessary but not sufficient rules. But if
we can at least get these right, we will I hope have helped towards
building and iterating towards an even better Open Government Partnership
that delivers meaningful change.****

Comments are valued, please let me know your views.****

** **
________________________________

Martin Tisné
Director, Policy
Omidyar Network UK Limited
Cell: +44 782 388 7414
Landline: +44 20 7033 8655
Email: mtisne at omidyar.com
Twitter: @martintisne

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