France will chair the Open Government Partnership from October 2016 to October 2017, after the OGP Steering Committee accepted France’s application at a meeting in Mexico on April 24.
France, represented by Thierry Mandon, France’s Deputy Minister for Government Reform and Better Regulation, joined OGP in April 2014, and was elected as a member of the OGP Steering Committee in August 2014.
According the OGP governance rules, "Steering Committee leadership is to be comprised of a revolving four-member co- chairmanship team, elected by the entire SC, including a lead government chair, a support (or incoming) government chair, and two civil society chairs. The support government chair assumes the role of lead chair during their second year, when a new support chair is to serve".
Accordingly, starting October 1 2015, France will replace Mexico as support chair with South Africa becoming the Lead Chair, OGP states in its blog. The French government will then serve as Lead Chair from October 2016 until October 2017.
"This responsibility will be an opportunity for our country to forge new partnerships with a community of innovators from numerous governments, as well as with a vibrant civil society", Etalab, the French Prime Minister’s Task force for Open Data stated on its blog.
"As Co-Chair, France will act to help broaden the community of government reformers around the world; we consider this to be a lofty and useful goal", Thierry Mandon said on the OGP’s blog. For him, this election is "good news because the issue of the relationship between government and civil society … should be a priority in France and abroad", he added in a separate press release issued by the French government.
Action Plan to be published in June 2015
As a co-chair, France also wants "to stress its commitment to participatory and innovative forms of solving major societal challenges such as the fight against climate change".
France will also publish its first Action Plan in June 2015, in which the country will reveal its own Open Government project. Transparency, social Open Data (with data.gouv.fr), openness of decision models (with OpenFisca), collaboration and contribution will be at the heart of the project, Etalab said. Another Open Government initiative in France is the creation of a national base of geo-referenced addresses.