[open-government] Is OGP vouching for Hungary?

Thu Oct 16 14:52:47 UTC 2014

Hey all,

Some reflections on the OGP outcome statement
<http://www.opengovpartnership.org/sites/default/files/141009-Outcome-Statement-Revised-with-Annex_0.pdf>
and the country pledges announced after the High-Level Event at the United
Nations a few weeks ago.

Best,
Julia

http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/10/16/is-ogp-vouching-for-hungary/

Is OGP vouching for Hungary?
<http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/10/16/is-ogp-vouching-for-hungary/>
by Júlia Keserű <http://sunlightfoundation.com/team/jkeseru/>

   - policy <http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/policy/>

OCT. 16, 2014, 10:22 A.M.
Viktor Orban, currently serving in his third term as Prime Minister of
Hungary, during the 2014 elections. Image credit: Szilard Koszticsak, MTI

Celebrating its third anniversary a few weeks ago, the Open Government
Partnership (OGP) has come a huge way, with the initial eight founding
countries expanding to 65 participating nations. The explosive growth
demonstrates a strong appetite — especially from the public — for making
governments more accessible, and is evidence that OGP is a platform
<http://tisne.org/2014/09/23/ogp-as-a-platform/> that has the potential to
offer an incentive structure that “encourages countries to experiment with
innovation and race to the top.”

As time goes by, however, the limitations and challenges
<http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/10/10/ogp-opportunities-and-limitations/>
of
OGP are becoming much clearer too. And so are its dangers. One of these is
especially striking after a careful read of this outcome statement
<http://www.opengovpartnership.org/sites/default/files/141009-Outcome-Statement-Revised-with-Annex_0.pdf>,
a result of the High-Level Event held at the United Nations in late
September.

OGP announced country pledges that offer peer-to-peer learning
opportunities, both from governments and civil society. This is, in itself,
an encouraging sign, as it demonstrates continued involvement from
participating countries in the initiative. However, taking a look at the
list of countries pledging support to their peers leaves us with some
serious doubts.

The fact that Hungary is among one of the countries
<http://www.opengovpartnership.org/blog/open-government-partnership/2014/10/10/countries-and-ogp-partners-detail-their-pledge-support>
offering
“valuable experience” in “increasing public integrity in public
administration” is surreal, to say the least. We don’t need to be Hungarian
citizens (as, in full disclosure, the author of this post is), to be aware
that the government of Hungary is *by no means* a champion of democracy. At
least not in the good sense
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/opinion/a-test-for-the-european-union.html?_r=0>
.

Taking a look at the more detailed description
<http://www.opengovpartnership.org/sites/default/files/141009-Outcome-Statement-Revised-with-Annex_0.pdf>
of
the their offer of assistance is even more disturbing, though: “The
National University of Public Service has developed curricula for teaching
public ethics, anti-corruption and integrity.”

Just a reminder, the very same administration that is now offering to help
“change people’s attitude towards corruption” — through its own
scandal-ridden
<http://k-monitor.hu/adatbazis/cimkek/nemzeti-kozszolgalati-egyetem>
educational
establishment — is the one that systematically disabled democratic control
mechanisms <http://k-monitor.hu/files/page/k-monitor_ciklus_pdf.pdf> by
making amendments to all significant Hungarian laws and rewriting the
country's constitution, launching an attack against independent watchdog
institutions, the free press
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/opinion/hungarys-crackdown-on-the-press.html?ref=opinion&_r=0>
 and civil society
<http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/06/12/sunlight-stands-with-hungarian-civil-society/>.
And, probably most importantly, by creating a whole new dimension in state
capture <http://www.transparency.hu/National_integrtity_study> and grand-scale
political corruption
<http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/09/19/snap-shot-hungary-the-connection-between-messy-political-funding-and-the-rise-of-the-illiberal-state/>
.

This is just one of the many governments offering its “valuable experience”
— one that we happen to know a bit better and thus feel more entitled to
criticize heavily. What about the rest? It is one thing to accept voluntary
commitments from different administrations, and it’s another thing to say
that a highly anti-democratic government should teach other countries’
public officials on how to increase public integrity or fight corruption.

Is OGP vouching for Hungary’s ability to strengthen democracies, even as it
clearly works to undermine its own?

Beyond those important tensions within OGP, though, we need to think ahead
as well: Is OGP really in the position to judge what real openness is?
Probably not. It might even be counter-productive, as OGP’s judgements may
well be seen as imperialistic and arbitrary. So should OGP rely *more* on
what its civil society members have to say about their *own* governments?
Most definitely yes — especially given the unanimous backing from the
transparency donor community, one that has slowly turned OGP into an
inescapable point of reference for all of us working in the open government
space.

That said, the real task here is not for OGP, nor the donor community. The
real task is for us: civil society organizations and citizens at large. It
is precisely *our* job to find better and more sophisticated ways to judge
our own governments, and to be able to tell meaningful openness from fake
transparency. We are the ones who need to better distinguish between the
performance of government institutions within the same administration — and
sometimes even between the different levels of the same institution — and
tell what those different layers mean for the bigger picture of our
societies. We should keep creating indexes and comparative studies on a
wide range of topics from budgets, parliaments, procurements, aid,
revenues, lobbying, campaign contributions, etc., but in order to keep our
long-term credibility, we might eventually need to look beyond those
indexes to find more powerful ways to tell these complicated narratives.

Constructing positive incentives is clearly an important part of catalyzing
government reform internationally. It’s incumbent on all of us, though, to
be sure that we keep our eyes wide open about what governments are doing —
and whether we’re moving forward or backward.

-- 
Júlia Keserű
International Policy Manager

1818 N Street NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20036
(1) 202-742-1520 *246

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