NAP 5 – Open Contracting – Wk4 – Readout
As part of the co-creation process of the UK’s fifth National Action Plan for Open Government (NAP5), thematic areas agreed to during the Multistakeholder Forum in March 2021 have been turned into biweekly Working Groups. These Working Groups bring together government policy leads and civil society, and are charged with developing commitments for inclusion in NAP5.
The fourth and final NAP5 Open Contracting Working Group was held on June 23rd, 2021 at 14:00 BST. The meeting was co-chaired by civil society and government.
Potential areas for a commitment were solicited, as well as an open forum to suggest issues that had not yet been addressed or included in the draft commitment, which remains open for civil society comments and editing. As NAP5 represents a two year time span, participants were prompted to think strategically.
A suggestion was made regarding drafting: The commitments can be grouped into sub themes to make them easier to understand.
Additional areas for consideration that arose included:
- Concerns regarding alignment with the government’s Public Procurement green paper, ‘Transforming Public Procurement,’ in anticipation of a white paper and/or bill being released
- Overlapping and contradictory guidance for publishing with both local government and the NHS
- Mechanism for verification of publishing in correct standard
- Legislation reform to facilitate a central location for publishing data
The next stage of the co-creation process involves an offline discussion between government facilitators, the civil society co-lead, and government policy leads. The output of those discussions will be brought back to the wider group, likely towards the end of August, for discussion and, ultimately, final approval.
The draft commitment and the Open Government Network Open Contracting Forum remain available for additional input around this thematic area.
For additional details or to get involved, please contact:
- Sam Roberts – Head of Open Government: [email protected]
- Kevin Keith – Chair, Open Government Network: [email protected]
- Ruairi Macdonald – Civil Society Lead: [email protected]