Most of the EU Member States support the Open Government Partnership Paris Declaration agreed on last week at the OGP Summit in Paris, France. In signing the declaration, countries say they will pursue further open government reforms, emphasising citizen participation. The conference brought together representatives of 80 governments and hundreds of civil society organisation from around the world.
Currently 75 countries have endorsed the Open Government Declaration, including 22 EU Member States.
Successful open government programmes share six features, conclude researchers Vanessa Williamson and Norman Eisen in their OGP report ‘The Impact of Open Government: Assessing the Evidence ‘published at the summit. “These points can be expressed as a series of questions that we argue proponents of such programmes should pose”, they write.
- Have the proponents identified the specific principals?
- Is the information revealed by the initiative important to the principals?
- Is the information accessible and publicised to the principals?
- Can the principals respond meaningfully as individuals?
- Are governmental agents supportive of the reform effort?
- Can the principals coordinate to change their governmental agents’ incentives?
Topics of discussions at the Paris OGP Summit included anti-corruption measures, climate change, sustainable development, government reforms, and many workshops focussed on technology, from open data to open source software development.
Citizen participation was the focus of two appeals by Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, and Kerry O'Connor, CIO of the city of Austin (USA).
OGP was launched in 2011 to provide an international platform for domestic reformers committed to making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens.
More information:
Open Government Partnership Paris Summit 2016
Paris Declaration