19th October 2017
The UK Open Government Pioneers Project aims to raise understanding and awareness of the UN Sustainable Development Goals amongst citizens and decision makers and to encourage the use open government approaches to progress the Goals. The project is formally linked to the International Open Government Partnership. We are inviting bidders to deliver the independent evaluation of…
16th October 2017
(via ScopeNI) Written by Nick Garbutt Why can’t local people get to decide how money invested in their communities is spent? Like all powerful ideas it is simple, obvious and hard to contest. After all residents know what the needs of a community are because they live there. They are therefore just as much experts…
7th July 2017
Written by Colm Burns, NI Open Government Network Chair When it comes to Brexit, who’s speaking for us? The short answer is “no one”, because our political parties have chosen to abdicate this responsibility. The DUP and Sinn Féin are clear on one thing: they have diametrically opposing positions when it comes to Brexit. Alliance,…
5th June 2017
Written by Ryan Miller for ScopeNI Scope talks with the Northern Ireland Environment Link about their plans to improve awareness and understanding of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Some of the major issues in the world would best be tackled by unity across national borders. When some of the truly global institutions set targets for…
2nd June 2017
Pupils from three schools participated in a Democracy Games event at Parliament Buildings. The session, organised by the Northern Ireland Open Government Network and the Grassroots Challenge, was based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. As well as having some serious fun, the event aimed to enhance political literacy by introducing pupils to party politics…
30th May 2017
Written by Colm Burns, NI Open Government Network Chair Scotland and Wales have clearly set out their position on how they see their roles during the period before and after the U.K. leaves the EU. On the day the Great Repeal white paper[1] was published, both the Scottish government[2] and the Welsh Government[3] released strongly…
17th May 2017
Written by David McBurney, NI Open Government Network Coordinator What is Open Policy-making? Open policy-making means enabling people to influence and enhance policy during its formulation. An open policy process must involve stakeholders from outside of the usual policy making bubble. It’s not just about canvassing opinions; it’s about opening up the whole policy making…
8th May 2017
Written by Peter Osborne The outcome of a consensual ballot on what form of democracy people wanted for Northern Ireland was a clear win for deliberative democracy – or an Assembly Plus. That was at Democracy Day in April as part of the Imagine Festival when the 100 or so participants were asked to cast…
15th February 2017
(via ODI Belfast) Well, it doesn’t seem all that long since we were frantically crowdsourcing live elections data for our ElectionsNI project. In fact, it’s only been ten months, but we’re back to another round of elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly. This time round it’ll be every bit as interesting, perhaps more so as people…
21st December 2016
It’s dry and sunny in Paris, but at the OGP Civil Society Morning there’s a somber mood. The Results of Early OGP Initiatives report launched at the Summit, captured OGP success stories and showed that the participation of civil society can have a significant impact. But the usual optimism of open government reformers has been…