[open-government] OGP Liveblog

Wed Oct 23 16:05:09 UTC 2013

Hi,

Between now and the end of the OGP summit next week my colleague Christopher Wilson and I will be maintaining a live blog of sorts over at TechPresident and I wanted to let you know in case you're interested in shaping the coverage at all. Feel free to suggest projects or individuals we should be speaking with.    

The permanent link is:

http://techpresident.com/ogpsummit

Here's the first post, a quick outline of the central issues we'll be watching out for.

First Post! 7 Issues to Watch Out For at the OGP Summit
This year’s OGP summit is a big deal for those involved, partly because the OGP is at something of a crossroads. In its first two years, membership has ballooned from 8 to 60 countries, the first tranche of independent reports evaluating country implementation have been released, and the initiative has attracted an increasing amount of attention among people working on transparency and accountability around the world. All this has provoked hope and criticism, and raised expectations about what the initiative might be able to achieve as it continues to develop.

It has also highlighted a number of critical issues that the partnership will need to address in order maintain its credibility and aspire to actual consequence in countries. There’s been a lot of talk about these issues in recent weeks (and they aren’t new, you can find most of them in accounts of how the partnership was founded), but there’s still a lot more to be said, questions to be answered and negotiations to be had.

Here’s our take on the issues:

Accountability: The OGP architecture seemed to hold a new promise for accountability by placing civil society on equal footing with states. But full government discretion over planning and implementation has led to mixed results across countries, and civil society’s experience using action plans to hold governments to account varies widely. What’s working and what’s not, and does this call for rethinking how action plans get developed and implemented?

Local Networks:The OGP has been encouraging local events to strengthen open government networks. This doesn’t seem to have led to much activity yet, raising questions about how active local communities will be in OGP processes in these countries. What else can the international partnership do to facilitate local community-building and engagement? Or should this be left entirely to local civil society?

Ambition: Commitments in early action plans have varied dramatically in their ambition (from the laudable but impossible, to the already accomplished or non-contentious). To encourage a race to the top, the UK has asked each country to bring a flagship commitment to the October Summit. But country’s incentives to take bold and ambitious commitments are far from clear, and there is a danger of window dressing. We’ll take a look at what gets showcased, and consider the risks.

Civil Society Space: Many governments around the world are actively constraining the political space in which civil society functions as a watchdog and counterpoint to power. Some have suggested that this is taking place in OGP countries, which raises the question of whether the OGP process is capable of supporting real change in state-citizen relations, and whether civil society is capable of performing its OGP role in these countries.

Eligibility: Countries’ OGP eligibility is currently determined by their scores on international governance rankings and handful of subjective indicators. Some have argued that this sets the bar for membership too low, while many countries argue that comparative indices are biased and inappropriate in the first place. What are the most convincing arguments for constraining, expanding or totally rethinking these criteria?

Measurement: Countries’ OGP performance is measured by self-assessment reports and an Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM), which is conducted by national researchers according to a common template. The IRM has now been completed in 8 founding countries with plenty of lessons learned, but there’s still a fundamental tension between the desire for comparable data and country-specific measurement frameworks. What makes most sense and is most useful, for governments, for national civil society, and for the wider community? How can independent reviews lead to better planning and implementation?*

Comfort Zones: As the OGP grows and solidifies it’s footing, it’s coming face to face with a number of issues and areas that it hasn’t dealt with before but can’t ignore. Should the OGP be working tostep out of its comfort zones? How does a transparency, tech and accountability movement deal with privacy and  whistleblowing? How should the partnership delimit it’s mandate to avoid being all things to all issues?

We’ll be posting short posts on each of these issues between now and the end of the summit. We’ll aim to combine important background information with running coverage of how the issues are being addressed in panels and in the corridors.

* Disclaimer: The engine room, which is based in Norway, formed part of the research team for the Norwegian Independent Reporting Mechanism
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SUSANNAH VILA

the engine room
[Skype] susannahvila  [Twitter] @_svila @engnroom 

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