[open-government] OGP reflections

[John Wonderlich]

Hi Everyone,


I just finished a post with some reflections on OGP, and would love any
thoughts or reactions.

http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/10/10/ogp-opportunities-and-limitations/

Hope all is well, (and apologies if this is repeated in your inbox),


John

John Wonderlich
Policy Director, Sunlight Foundation
@johnwonderlich <https://twitter.com/JohnWonderlich>



OGP: Opportunities and
Limitations<http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/10/10/ogp-opportunities-and-limitations/>
by John Wonderlich <http://sunlightfoundation.com/people/jwonderlich/>Oct.
10, 2013, 3:22 p.m.

[image: OGP2]<http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/10/10/ogp-opportunities-and-limitations/ogp2/>It’s
been two years since the Open Government Partnership
(OGP<http://www.opengovpartnership.org/about>)
was first announced. As Sunlight
sharesrecommendations<http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/10/10/suggestions-for-the-ogp-national-action-plan/>
for
the US’s OGP National Action Plan, we’re looking forward to attending and
participating in the upcoming summit in London.

OGP has demonstrated explosive growth, with the initial 8 founding
countries expanding to 60 in a very short time, and more likely to be
announced soon. This rapid expansion is an affirmation of government
officials’ desire to grapple with transparency issues, and demonstrates an
appetite -- particularly from the public --  for “open government” and
making it more accessible to the people it serves. OGP has been important
in helping governments move in that direction, particularly Brazil’s
passing a new FOI
law<http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/brazil-takes-steps-on-truth-human-rights-and-the-right-to-know/>
and
the US committing<http://eiti.org/news-events/president-obama-us-will-implement-eiti>
to
implement the EITI.

OGP itself has been quite open in discussing its limitations, and no doubt
there will be more of that at the next meeting. But it’s important, in
advance of the upcoming summit, to offer a few observations about OGP’s
structural limitations to provide context for the new national action plans.

Many of the concerns and observations here are grounded in Sunlight’s
experience with the Obama administration since 2009. It has taught us that
it is important to find the right posture in our response to the Open
Government Partnership -- to take advantage of the opportunities we’re
presented with, while at the same time holding government’s feet to the
fire.

First, in designing an international initiative that governments would be
willing to sign onto, OGP has permitted governments to define for
themselves what openness means. The eligibility criteria do set some
minimum standards for entry, but those minimal
standards<http://www.opengovpartnership.org/how-it-works/how-join/eligibility-criteria>
(like
having an FOI law) only define which countries can join the initiative, and
don’t guide countries’ participation, or the way they are evaluated. The
drive to build national action plans through a “consultative” process is an
effort to overcome this limitation (that governments pick their own
commitments), but consultation is often just a
few<http://www.publishwhatyoufund.org/updates/by-country/us/open-government-requires-aid-transparency/>
pre-planned,
post-hoc conversations with civil society groups.

OGP is built around countries’ national action plans which are voluntary,
self-imposed, often enormously vague (for example, the US
committed<http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/us_national_action_plan_final_2.pdf>
to
using technology to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act, an
unmeasurably vague commitment), and only delivered every two years. The
Independent Reporting Mechanism
(IRM<http://www.opengovpartnership.org/independent-reporting-mechanism>)
--  OGP’s system for measuring progress on action plan commitments --
accepts governments’ commitments at face value, essentially providing no
evaluation at all beyond the terms that governments set for themselves.

The OGP national action plan process does have all sorts of benefits, such
as creating conversations and international connections where they didn’t
exist before. Sunlight has certainly benefitted from our frequent meetings
with White House officials throughout the OGP process, and we assume
governments and outside groups around the world have shared that experience.

The National Action Plans to date have committed themselves chiefly to
low-hanging
fruit <http://globalintegrity.org/blog/whats-in-OGP-action-plans> (like the
frequent, “open data” commitment), resulting in a bias *against* fundamental
questions of power, like military and state power, or money in politics.
OGP’s incentive structure to join the overall effort prioritizes the easy
questions over the hard ones.

But political reality has shown us that the openness we are demanding from
modern democracies has rarely developed through the good will of officials
who hold power. Access to information laws, national regulatory systems,
and accountable public processes -- the landscape of government
transparency that defines our public sphere -- have often come only after
intense struggle, revolution, scandal, elections, and public organizing.
Voluntary commitments -- particularly given their vagueness --  can play a
productive role, but they’re no replacement for the rule of law. And OGP
commitments do not have the force of law, or even a commitment that extends
beyond the term of the current head of state.

The OGP requires extensive consultation with civil society in the
development of their plans. But this emphasis on consultation, with no
guarantee of civil society priorities being represented in country plans,
leaves civil society organizations (CSOs) in a difficult situation. CSOs
need to distinguish between productive meetings that may lead to useful
outcomes, and meetings designed to legitimize whatever governments have
already decided to do.

I suspect that in the end some of these questions may be unanswerable ones,
because the action plans’ primary purpose is to serve as an organizing
instrument among countries. Sometimes National Action Plans will cause
important new reforms (like the EITI commitment from the US), and sometimes
they will not, but in a sense the action plans’ primary purpose is to build
a movement, and to strengthen cultural expectations for government
transparency. If that endeavor is successful, it would be a small price to
pay if we give up verifiable rigor in the evaluations of countries’ action
plans. But we should also be clear about the depth of our expectations.
------------------------------

Just as Sunlight has done domestically, internationally we’re working
hard<http://sunlightfoundation.com/policy/international/> with
allies and peers to raise new expectations for how government transparency
should function, even in the face of often disappointing plans. We’ve
encouraged the proliferation<http://sunlightfoundation.com/policy/opendatamap/>
of
open data initiatives in the US, and done what we can to strengthen our
expectations for how they function internationally. That’s the motivation
behind the Open Data Policy
Guidelines<http://sunlightfoundation.com/opendataguidelines/>,
the Procurement Open Data
Guidelines<http://sunlightfoundation.com/procurement/opendataguidelines>,
the Global Open Data Initiative <http://globalopendatainitiative.org/>, and
OpeningParliament <http://www.openingparliament.org/>, to name a few.

We’ve also gained a new appreciation for the importance of moving beyond
voluntary commitments, working to enact laws to ensure permanence and
oversight. And we’ve deepened our commitment to dealing with fundamental
issues of fairness and power, like money in
politics<http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/07/29/regulating-money-in-politics-a-global-shortcoming/>,
since they’re the issues that are the least likely to benefit from internal
pressure, and are in need of civil society attention.

Many of these same approaches are valid for OGP. We all must push
governments to go beyond voluntary commitments to enact legal requirements
and standards for governmental openness.  We must help governments set
priorities based on citizen’s needs. We must push officials to recognize
their responsibility to address fundamental issues of power, like
surveillance, national security, and the influence of money in politics.
And we have to balance our own priorities, seeking consensus when
appropriate, without giving up on our ability to judge the world against
our ideals.

As we all figure out the right role OGP can play in our work, we should be
mindful of the opportunities and limitations it presents, so that we can
use it for all it’s worth.

*Photo via the Open Government Partnership*
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