2013 No.

Civil Society Coordination Newsletter - supporting independent engagement with the OGP
Dear Colleagues, The past couple of weeks have been intense for the Open Government Partnership. Many countries have started their second consultation processes in Latin America, for example, one of the main challenges assumed by both government and civil society is to broaden the consultation to include more stakeholders (and citizens in general) in the construction of the new action plans. We featured Brazils open consultation process a couple of editions ago where the lessons learned by government and civil society have been quite helpful for colleagues in the region. Broadening consultation was one of the topics discussed in the Q&A section and community chat of the OGP Experiences in Mexico and Peru webinar organized last week by the World Bank Institute and the Networking Mechanism. Speaker presentations and additional materials can be found here. Also in Latin America, Costa Rican stakeholders have continued to work in strengthening the OGP dialogue between government and civil society. The countrys action plan was presented to citizens in an event held on May 28. Civil society will discuss in the coming days the election of the CS representatives that will be a part of the National Commission for Open Government. Materials such as the OGP case studies commissioned by the WBI focusing on Peru, Chile and Mexico have been very useful to inform consultation processes in countries such as Costa Rica. Additionally, a booklet issued by the Peruvian government Action Plan Elaboration Process in Peru is a highly recommendable read for those of you who are immersed in re -thinking consultation processes.

Highlights US Government to make data more open and easily available IRM call for local researchers Ireland and Australia join OGP

Latest news from data journalism in Slovakia

Russia drops out of OGP Inside this issue: Croatian FOI Law 2 Available in English IRM Call for Local 2 Researchers

USGOV to Make 2 Data More Open and Easily Accesible

Resource Govern- 2 ance Index Launched Russia Drops Out of OGP Ireland and Australia Join OGP 2 2

OGP stakeholders all over the world have been busy preparing for regional events. This week the African Regional Meeting was held in Mombasa, Kenya. More information, including the events agenda can be found here. In Uruguay, civil society is preparing for two regional open data events. The first one AbreLatam will be held in Montevideo on June 24th and 25th and is being organized by DATA and Ciudadano Inteligente. Updates on the event can be found easily on Twitter @ABRELATAM and #AbreLatAm13. The second one is a Regional Conference on Open Data for Latin America and the Caribbean to also be held in Montevideo June 26th and 27th. Agenda and registration information can be found here.
The Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) recently released a call for local researchers to work at the national level in 39 countries and assess government progress on implementation of the OGP Action Plans. If you are interested in applying or if you would like to nominate someone, please visit http://www.opengovpartnership.org/work -ogp. Deadline for applications is June 21, 2013. Finally, this past week the Open Government Partnership welcomed two new member states: Ireland (where civil society actively pushed for membership) and Australia. Check-out civil societys response to Irelands membership here. As Russia withdrew its membership - or put it on hold as some say - the total number of countries participating in the Partnership is 59. More information on the decision can be found here, a reaction by Ivan Pavlov can be found in this link (for further reading on Russia check-out this background article). All in all it is a missed opportunity for reform(ers) in Russia inside and outside the government. Last point, a couple of weeks ago my colleague Paul Maassen attended a conference organized by civil society in Bosnia Herzegovina to kick of a push for OGP membership. A highly debated topic at the conference were the proposed restrictions to the Freedom of Information law. All best, Emilene

Data Journalism 3 Promotes Accountability in Slovakia

Upcoming Events and Webinars Rethinking Social Accountability Touching Upon OGP Fundaments 3 4

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Croatian FOI Law Available in English

A new Croatian Freedom of Information Act was adopted last February after a decade of advocacy, public campaigns, law amendments and public discussions. Partially thanks to the work of Croatian CSOs GONG and TI Croatia, the new law eventually entered into force. Croatian CSOs also requested the FOIA amendments to become part of the OGP national action plan, and as one of the tasks for Croatia within the Comprehensive Monitoring Report on Croatia's state of preparedness for EU membership. Now an unofficial translation of the Act can be found here. Check-out GONGs website and find out what the new FOIA exactly entails.

IRM Call for Local Researchers

The Independent Reporting Mechanism is now looking for local researchers to carry out evaluations of the national action plans in the countries of Cohort 2 (i.e. Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, Paraguay, Peru, Romania, Slovak Republic, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Tanzania, Turkey, Ukraine, and Uruguay).

US Federal Government to Make Data More Open and Easily Accessible

Positive news from the White House, where the Obama administration decided to make information generated and stored by the Federal Government more open and accessible to innovators and the public. The White House seeks to fuel entrepreneurship and economic growth while increasing government transparency and efficiency. The actions - including an Executive Order signed by the President and an Open Data Policy released by the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policydeclare that information is a valuable national asset whose value is multiplied when it is made easily accessible to the public. The Executive Order requires that, going forward, data generated by the government be made available in open, machine-readable formats, while appropriately safeguarding privacy, confidentiality, and security.

The deadline for application is June 21st, the aim is to have the independent reports finished by the end of 2013. More information on tasks and qualifications can be found in the call description.
The goal will be to publish all Cohort 2 IRM reports by January 31, 2014. IRM reports for Cohort 3 will be published by January 31, 2015.

Russia Drops Out of OGP

Russia has decided to withdraw from OGP, as reported on OGPs website last week. A letter of intent to join OGP dated April 17, 2012 was Russias only official document posted on the OGP website, and didnt eventually get followed-up by a concrete national action plan. As a Cohort 3 country, Russia was supposed to present its action plan last April during the London meeting, but in the end the country decided to withdraw its letter of intent. No clear reasons were given why the country decided to do so.

Revenue Watch Institute Resource Governance Index Launched

Revenue Watch released its Resource Governance Index which measures the quality of governance in the oil, gas and mining sectors of 58 countries. The nations listed together produce 85 percent of the world's petroleum, 90 percent of diamonds and 80 percent of copper. According to the ranking of this index, which relies on a detailed questionnaire completed by researchers with expertise in the extractive industries, only 11 countries less than 20 % fully achieve set standards of good governance. The Index assesses the quality of four key governance components: Institutional and Legal Setting; Reporting Practices; Safeguards and Quality Controls; and Enabling Environment. Civil society actors in OGP member states can use the Index to check and compare how their governments are doing in regards to action plan commitments made in the realms of natural resources governance.

Ireland and Australia Join OGP

Ireland announced its intent to join OGP May 15th, with an official letter sent to the OGP co-chairs. The decision was welcomed by Irish civil society groups who worked hard for almost a year together with international OGP actors to pull this off. Signatories were the CSOs Active Citizen, TI Ireland and TASC and Open Learning Ireland. Long expected, finally fulfilled: also Australia announced its intention to join OGP, on May 22nd. The announcement was made right before the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative global conference taking place in Sydney. If you have any information or materials that you would want for us to include in our next newsletter please send them to Nout van der Vaart (n.van.der.vaart@hivos.nl) or Emilene Martnez (emilene17@gmail.com).

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Data Journalism Promotes Accountability in Slovakia

Over at the Sunlight blog, guest blogger Eva Vozarova writes about how Slovakian civil society organizations successfully denounced cases of corruption and lobbied the government to proactively and systematically publish public data. The Fair Play Alliance, a Slovakian watchdog organization made up of several former journalists, started gathering data through FOIA requests, collecting and analyzing it, back in 2003. They then created the tool datanest.sk, a website storing loads of information about flows of public money in Slovakia (subsidies, EU funds, funding of political parties). Ever since, the organization has been successful in denouncing various cases of corruption and political misbehave, and has been an inspiration to other NGOs and journalists to develop similar applications. All together, they were a critical factor in lobbying the Slovakian government to become a member of OGP, which happened in September 2011. As part of its commitment, a governmental data portal data.gov.sk was launched. This successful deployment of technology by data journalists as a tool to hold their government accountable, as Vozarova finally concludes, has a significant impact in anti-corruption efforts. A future focus could also lie more specifically on making an impact, by involving people that are able to make meaningful stories out of the data available.

Upcoming Events and Webinars

June 18, 2013 10:00 11:00 AM EST (14:00 GMT) Webinar Strengthening the Demand and Use of Open Government Data Initiatives. Presenters Jennifer Shkabatur (World Bank) and Jay Bhalla (Project Manager, Code 4 Kenya). Register here. June 112:00 to 15:00 Peru Time Virtual Open Classroom What will Open Government mean for Culture in Latin America?. Presenters: Hayde Lachino (South American Dance Network); Mauricio Delfn (Cultura Per) and Emilene Martnez (OGPs Civil Society Coordination). Join the event here. June 4-6 New Cities Summit in Sao Paulo, Brazil. More information can be found here. May 28-30 OGP Africa Regional Meeting, Mombasa, Kenya. http://www.ogpafrica.org (Paul Maassen from the Civil Society Coordination will be participating in the event along with Joe Powell , Deputy Director of the Support Unit). June, 14 OGP Armenia Conference, Yerevan, ArmeniaPaul Maassen will be participating via Skype.

June 18 OGP and Open (Public) Data, Bucarest, Romania (Paul will also be participating in this event).
June 24-25 #AbreLatAm first unconference about Open Data and Transparency in Latin America (Montevideo, Uruguay). June 26-27 Conference on Open Data in Latin America and the Caribbean in Montevideo, Uruguay. More information available here (Emilene Martinez will attend the event). June 29 Open Government: Perspectives and Opportunities . Rome, Italy (participation SC member Veronica Cretu by Skype). July 2-4 Learning event for OGP civil society leaders in chair countries, London, UK July 10 OGP Steering Committee meeting in London, UK.

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World Bank Report: Rethinking Social Accountability Touching Upon OGP Fundaments
On the World Banks Public Sphere blog, Simon OMeally posted a very interesting read, based on his extensive World Bank report on the need to reform thinking on social accountability, and specifically its operationalization. Citizen engagement or some other kind of (social) accountability has been popular with development agencies, which is often framed in terms of voice, demand-side governance, or demand for good governance. There has, in turn, been a mushrooming of useful operational guidance on different "tools" for social accountability - i.e. steps, inputs and methodologies - that guide discrete interventions, ranging from citizen score cards to participatory expenditure tracking. However, O Meally argues, the current paradigm doesnt sufficiently consider the importance of contextual factors that can make or break these tools implementation. He argues that context, or political and social processes provide critical constraints and opportunities for social accountability to take root and achieve its objectives. He suggests a different way of thinking about social accountability and citizen engagement, shifting the paradigm towards a more elemental role for contextual factors shaping the possibilities. The extensive report provides a framework that allows us to better think through, analyze and tailor to context. In order to understand the contextual opportunities for promoting social accountability, OMeally distinguishes between six critical contextual domains in the framework. The first two domains deserve special attention as they directly touch upon some core issues within OGP. Civil Society is the first domain, and a most important key point here is that CS influence is not only shaped by its technical capacities it is shaped by its 'political capabilities', especially the capacity to build change-minded alliances across society and with pro-reform state actors. The second domain is political society (PS), which comprises politicians, political parties, public servants and so on. Fundamentally, the prospects for effective citizen engagement are shaped by the extent to which PS actors and state institutions are able, and have the 'political will' to facilitate and respond to citizen demands. These first two domains are interesting when contemplating and analyzing OGP. First of all, one of the fundamental building blocks of OGP is that sustainable and lasting change will mainly be brought about by building alliances across society. The design of OGP is based on the idea of partnership, acknowledging the necessity to team up, to enable and facilitate cooperation between government and civil society, connecting reformers from within state actors and non state actors. Building change minded alliances as such is seen as a precondition for success. The capacity or political capability - of civil society actors to enforce and equally balance these alliances will obviously greatly influence its success and impact. Another aspect that directly links to the fundaments of OGP is that in OGP political will is a core element. The fact that membership is completely voluntary accounts for this. Political will in the political society as such, is a precondition for change, and therefore obviously also a precondition for effective citizen engagement. OGP recognizes this, as it seeks to build successful partnerships and trust between the different actors. Trust therefore, between state actors and institutions on the one side, and citizens and their demands on the other, is a necessary precondition for successful engagement and lasting change. The other domains OMeally distinguished as crucial contextual variables in citizen engagement are: inter-elite relations', that account for how the power-sharing bargain - or political settlements - of powerful elites in any state shape elite incentives, and room for maneuver to respond to the demand of certain groups. The fourth domain of state society relations highlights the point that there have to be certain assumptions on the responsibilities of the state and entitlements of the citizen in order to make meaningful accountability claims. Also the effectiveness and inclusiveness of existing formal and informal accountability mechanisms have to be considered. The fifth domain of intra-society relations relate to the power relations in society in which the degree of inequality and social exclusion in a given context matter most. The sixth domain eventually is the domain of global dimensions. Many accountability failures are shaped by global drivers, such as international economic processes providing enablers for corruption, global power holder such as multinational corporations, and donor-state relations, with aid flows undermining or supporting the forging of development accountability. Although OMeally emphasizes that there are no magic bullet solutions, in his recommendations for practical implementation of this new way of thinking on the operationaliztion of citizen engagement, one point stands out, build on what is already there. He explains this as supporting citizen engagement in areas where there are organic pressures for change, and ensuring that it builds on local narratives of accountability and the 'social contract'. What may result have been termed practical hybrids where modern bureaucratic and formal standards combine with, or adapt to, locally-accepted cultures and practices. With every country setting differentiated commitments and priorities corresponding to their own national context and needs, OGP might be a right example of such a practical hybrid.