[open-government] [Sunlight International] Is OGP vouching for Hungary?

Wed Oct 22 07:22:00 UTC 2014

Dear Julia,

I fully agree with the concluding paragraphs of your blogpost
<http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/10/16/is-ogp-vouching-for-hungary/>,
despite the daunting task ahead that you sketch for all of us!

You make an important point for example in saying that we need to
distinguish better between the government institutions within the same
government. A bureaucracy is not a monolith and progressive reformers can
be found in every part of society and every part of government. Even in
Hungary today.

One of OGP’s core premises is that OGP is a platform that can connect
reformers in society and create space for their agenda. I see it happening
in quite a few of the participating countries. Not in all, and not on all
topics or within all ministries. Perhaps that is too much to ask. OGP will
work on some topics, at some moments, in some countries. It will work when
all elements come together: political will, expertise, actors with the
right drive and power.

For me, in the question ‘Is OGP vouching for Hungary’ both *OGP* and
*vouching* needs further defining.

How do you define OGP? For me OGP is not an organization, but a platform.
OGP is us, the 65 participating countries, the working groups,
multilaterals, 100s of national and international civil society
organisations, the funders, the Support Unit, the IRM, the Steering
Committee etc. All have a role to play in improving the mechanism, making
the national process work, monitoring progress, pushing for ambition,
creating opportunities for peer support and learning. We need all these
actors – and some constructive conflict between them – to get results that
truly open up societies and – even more important - make a real a
difference in the life of citizens.

If you see vouching as checking if countries do what they promised within
OGP and in that you see OGP as the OGP ‘institution’ (IRM, Support Unit,
Steering Committee), then I would say that OGP since the last meeting in
New York now offers two strong tools for checking the sincerity and
progress.

We already have the IRM – a global uniform method applied in all
participating countries by national experts, involving key local actors
from government and civil society, looking at all 2,000 (and counting)
commitments and developed by a set of leading global academics – that has
already delivered a wealth of data
<http://www.opengovpartnership.org/independent-reporting-mechanism> and
insights
<http://www.opengovpartnership.org/sites/default/files/attachments/Technical
paper 1_Executive summary_final.pdf> and is refining its approach further
with each set of new reports. The upcoming Hungary report creates an
opportunity for all involved to reflect on OGP achievements to date. It’s
up to civil society, government reformers, and the international community
to use the findings of the report. Countries that already have received
their progress report show that it can create opportunities for advocacy,
for improving the process, for creating new dialogues on open government
and civic space.

And now we also have the Policy on Upholding the Values and Principles of
OGP, which I wrote about in more detail here
<http://www.ogphub.org/blog/the-ogp-policy-on-upholding-the-values-and-principles-of-ogp-adopted-and-other-highlights-of-last-weeks-ogp-events/>.
This policy is especially there to create a process for OGP (in the
platform sense) to assess if countries are keeping up with the OGP
Declaration and spells out in detail how civic actors can raise their
concerns and what processes will be followed. It’s a policy that will be
refined and improved through actual use and that will be reviewed in a
years time. My team - as well as the civil society Steering Committee
members - are very willing to work with civil society across the world to
understand, shape and use it.

OGP at the core is a domestic policy mechanism. Which creates a special
responsibility for national civil society to use it as a tool to advance
their goals - or not engage when it is not - for national civil society to
be supportive insiders and critical outsiders and for national civil
society to assess if their country is really becoming more open.  They are
the ones that can really understand the local complexities and context and
assess the true value of the commitments and pledges. They should lead at
the national level, all others should support, especially when civic space
is restricted.

Bringing it back to Hungary and the question you raised. Some of the most
active Hungarian civil society organisations working on OGP are on the
so-called blacklist <http://blacklistedhungarians.eu>. If they feel that
the country is not ‘upholding the values and principles of OGP’ they can
use the new policy to raise their concerns within OGP. It’s a new
opportunity to check if ‘OGP’ is ‘vouching’ for Hungary. One we did not
have a month ago.

Best

Paul

On 16 October 2014 16:52, Julia Keserű <jkeseru at sunlightfoundation.com>
wrote:

> 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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-- 
*PAUL MAASSEN | Director, Civil Society Engagement *
*supporting independent engagement with the Open Government Partnership*

e-mail: maassenpaul at gmail.com | skype: maassenpaul |  phone: ++31 646 16 78
56 | twitter: @maassenpaul | *www.ogphub.org <http://www.ogphub.org>* |
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