Points of View 19th September 2018

An action plan for a more open UK government

by Andreas Pavlou

The full version of this blogpost was originally published on: https://blogs.ncvo.org.uk/2018/09/18/an-action-plan-for-a-more-open-uk-government/


Open government is the simple but powerful idea that governments and institutions work better for citizens when they are transparent, engaging and accountable.

By increasing transparency, enhancing citizen participation or adopting strong accountability mechanisms, reform in favour of open government has led to change across the world:

  • In Madrid and Paris, residents are now able to propose laws, decide how council budgets are spent, and take greater control over the development and services of their cities. Recently, each city has allocated €100m of spending to be determined via participatory budgeting.
  • Ukrainian citizens and watchdogs can now see how much money is spent on government-procured services because contracts are published online and in comparable formats, all on one site. This has exposed corruption and reduced procurement costs to the Ukrainian taxpayer.
  • In Nigeria, an estimated £140m that was otherwise lost through corruption has been recuperated via a whistleblower portal, developed together by government and civil society.

These examples show why you should take the opportunity to provide feedback on the UK open government action plan.

To read more, follow this link: https://blogs.ncvo.org.uk/2018/09/18/an-action-plan-for-a-more-open-uk-government/