This is the text of a talk by Paul Maassen, the overall civil society co-ordinator for the Open Government Partnership, given by Skype on July 10. Paul will also be with us in person on August 8.

Introduction

Thanks all for taking the time today to listen to me. Let me start with a big congratulation to all of you there in the room for getting Ireland to join the Open Government Partnership. It has been quite a ride – when I started as the independent civil society coordinator for OGP a year ago one of the first people to get in touch with me was Denis Parfenov. I had a long chat with him and Martin Wallace and now a full year later we are actually here to discuss the Irish ambitions for open government.

When I was in Dublin last January to talk about OGP I gave two reasons why Ireland should join.  First of all Ireland really needs a boost in transparency and accountability – I think the banking/economic crisis showed that – as well as all the news the last few weeks around bankers and regulators.  A lot of power is still with a small elite of business, church and politics and decisions are made behind closed doors. It is good to bring discussions and decision making into the public arena. Second, you are well placed to lead on the tech side of this with so many international giants being based in Ireland as well as start-ups.

Let me add a third. You came late to the party – joining as 58th country– but smartly late. Taking the time – as Ireland has done – gives you two advantages. First, there is a lot of experience now within OGP on what it takes to have a good consultation between government and civil society and what a good action plan looks like. While many countries start preparing for their second action plan, trying to improve on their first round, you can comfortably build on this global experience and end up with a much better first Action Plan. I am raising the bar here. Second, you have been able to lay a solid foundation for this process the last 12 months.

OGP Intro

Now, I assume not all of you in the room are fully up to speed yet with OGP actually is. Let me give you the fast introduction – and if you want more you can always check out www.ogphub.org or www.opengovpartnership.org.

OGP is an international, multi-stakeholder initiative where countries that meet an eligibility threshold can become a member. Members – currently 60 – then develop an action plan through a consultation process with civil society. The plan includes ambitious commitments around transparency, participation and accountability. The OGP mechanics has three key elements:

• There is an equal partnership between civil society and government – not just in the consultation, but also in the design and management of OGP, both at national and international level;
• Countries deliver concrete, ambitious commitments on one of the 5 grand challenges and should define them SMARTly;
• A system of independent outside monitoring takes place of progress on process, intentions and commitment delivery.

All sounds very conceptual. In the end it is about better health care and education because we monitor costs and quality, it is about better policies because we include citizens in designing them, it is about less corruption because we watch those in power more closely, it is about better streets because we fix them. All very down to earth.

The idea at conception was that OGP would be an initiative of front runners, of leaders around openness. The founding countries and CSOs wanted all members to demonstrate a track record to open government in four key areas – fiscal transparency, asset declaration, access to information and citizen participation.

With OGP every country should use the national context and dynamic of to decide what commitments it wants to design. They should be new, they should be stretching, they should match national priorities, and they should at least match one of the 5 grand challenges. Let me mention them quickly – I am sure Nuala has shared them:

• Public services – what are you entitled to as a citizen. It is about tracking delivery and results, building feedback loops and co-creation and prioritizing of policies.
• Public integrity – anti-corruption (sunlight is the best detergent as they say), but also public ethics. Building trust with citizens. The role of independent media. Whistleblower protection.
• Public resources – what do we use our limited resources for in times of austerity. Can citizens be involved in shaping the budgets like in Brazil? How do we monitor and use the income from natural resources. How transparent is our government procurement system, what prices are paid and who gets the contracts.
• Creating safer communities – public safety, police and military. What are your rights, their responsibilities? Clarity on budgets, fees and fines.
• Increasing Corporate Accountability—measures that address corporate responsibility on issues such as the environment, anti-corruption, consumer protection, and community engagement.

I am personally most excited about the positive energy OGP brings– innovation and change come from everywhere. There are change agents and reformers everywhere in society and OGP is about creating space for them, connecting them.

Five key lessons

In the first months of the year we asked 40 government and civil society representatives in 15 countries about their experiences and lessons learned from developing their first OGP national action plan. The focus was on the initial consultation process and the mechanisms used for on-going dialogue and co-governance between civil society and government.

A number of common themes have emerged from these interviews. Let me quickly highlight these:

1. Lay a solid foundation – something you have done naturally by taking the time, informing yourself widely, having a coordinator for the beginning of the official process. The start is immensely important to organize well.
2. Get organised – this is for the people on the civil society side, let me get back to this one.
3. Establish a platform of dialogue. One of my mantras is to not see the consultation as a one-off, but as a key moment in the ongoing dialogue that should be at the heart of the OGP process. This platform can be very formal like in Ghana or Peru, or more informal like in Canada. But having some platform for dialogue to support the partnership, with equal representation, space for civil society to self-select its people, clear terms of reference, with regular well prepared meetings and where possible supported by a dedicated secretariat will definitely strengthen the national OGP impact. It also mitigates against political leadership changes or elections.
4. Consult widely in all senses. Take the time for an iterative process with solid feedback. Involve civil society outside the capital. Involve all different kinds of civil society – from grass roots to think tanks. Involve a broad set of government entities. And if you can do so in a truly meaningful way involve citizens actually.
5. Build a partnership – all of the above, with an open attitude, enough time, solid political backing will help you broaden the base of reformers, down the line bringing real change. OGP will not work if it is done in isolation by a handful of civil servants and CSOs. It will also not work if we are unprepared to get out of our comfort zone and try to do things differently.

These interviews led to 15 country articles with much more insights. They are shared weekly via the civil society mailinglist for the next 4 months, and can also be found at the civil society website www.ogphub.org or just follow me on twitter @maassenpaul.

I promised to get back to the second point – get organised. Because that is where I think civil society especially has to do some self-reflection. Let me talk to the civil society people in the room for a moment. We are often not strategic. Not strategic in involving who we need to involve, not strategic in trying to understand the position and the needs of our ‘opponents’, not thinking 3 steps ahead like in a chess game, not keeping our eye on the big prize, not distinguishing between need to haves and nice to haves.

OGP is an opportunity. It will only work if we as civil society get the civil servants and politicians to work with us. What do they need? What do we need? Civil society should know what its collective priorities are – which is different then all of us submitting our 3 preferred commitments. Civil society also needs to think about the tensions between being a partner and being co-opted. What are our bottom-line principles for engagement? And finally, let’s be a bit Chinese, think in centuries. What I mean is, map the change you want to see over a longer period of time – not necessarily centuries – and work backwards.

That all in relation to getting organized and civil society specifically. Let’s get back to the main story.

Now, I wanted to talk about 2 main points. One is the concept of stretch, the second on how to use today to get to solid approved commitments.

Ambition

It is easily overlooked, but the original idea of OGP was to get a race to the top among countries, to push for stretch at national level, to push for innovative reform. Not to repackage existing plans.

So what is ambition for OGP. As a minimum I would argue you would need to strive for getting a maximum score on the 4 eligibility criteria. Easy does it. Ireland is there. Second, your commitments should – at least in part – be new and additional. Ambition here can also mean that existing plans get fast-tracked and finally delivered as we have seen some countries do with EITI or a FOI law.

The current debate within OGP to push on this is as follows:

• Stretch means both quality and ambition, and it means both that for the process (consultation) as for the actual action plan. So that gives 4 elements and from civil society perspective we are thinking of a way to review or rate countries performance on this.
• The official OGP monitoring system – the Independent Reporting Mechanism – now looks at delivery of commitments, progress on eligibility and on the quality of the consultation. But it does so only at the end of the process, so 1.5 year after the consultation and when the AP is finished. Solid but late. OGP is now thinking how it can introduce a sort of a quality check in the beginning, before AP are uploaded to the official website. Checking the quality of the plan early on will facilitate implementation and monitoring, and also make the impact down the line bigger.
• Currently OGP gives a lot of flexibility and little in guidance and rules around the dialogue between civil society and government or designing the action plans. There is also limited capacity to coach countries in their process. This week in London the Steering Committee is discussing some proposals that react to this.

So in summary: ambition is at the core of OGP, as is creating space for reformers. The focus next months will be on improving the rules of the game –in and outside of OGP – and with that over time improve both quality and ambition of the processes and the plans.

Some thoughts on best commitments and Action Plans – and how to get there

1. First, start with an open mind, come to the table to discuss the key issues in Ireland around transparency and accountability, not with your organisations strategic plan of objectives or your pet topics.
2. Try to have an open dialogue, actually listening to the others around the table. Discuss arguments not positions, challenge each other in a spirit of respect rather than attack.
3. Build in space to discuss and challenge the other working groups. One of the charming challenges of OGP is to break down silos among sub communities. I am convinced that any open data commitment will be stronger if it is discussed with FOI policy advocates and people that know little about either of those.
4. The importance with each commitment is to think what the ultimate goal is – which could be in 6 months time or 1 year or 3, and think of milestones along the way and reflect those in the Action Plan. What needs to be there in 1 year and at the end of the 2 year cycle.
5. Also think of what are the right ministries to involve, and who your champions could be there. You can have the right commitment, but if the ministry or the responsible civil servants are reluctant you won’t get far. In Croatia we saw that delivery on part of their plan fell flat after the champion finance minister was rotated to another ministry.
6. Make sure you have time for iterative rounds of prioritisation. With each round take into consideration not only what your own priorities are but also the others, think of political space.
7. Think about your own role in the process of running OGP in Ireland, but also in delivering certain commitments. What can you bring?
8. Get all commitments written down in a SMART way (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound), secure resources, get buy in from bureaucrats and politicians and you will have a good starting position.

And a final one – in advocating for priorities it really helps for civil society to already write down your asks as well-defined commitments, ready to copy-paste – but to also include an analysis and arguments for that commitment. And for government to be very upfront about where the political space is – and is not. This can avoid frustration like what we saw in Hungary for example. And I would urge the government to be very transparent on which commitments it will not include and why. Proper feedback.

Questions

Let me stop here for the moment and see if there are any questions before I close.

Closing words

Okay, so the most important is to be strategic about which commitments to prioritize, to define them SMARTly, which includes looking at the political space, and above all, enter the process with an open mind, not with a fixed agenda. Finally: keep your eye on the goal – real change in citizens lives. I hope to see most of you in person on August 8 and wish you a good workshop!

Paul Maassen: be strategic – and take this opportunity