2nd November 2015
The UK Government published the following press release from last week’s OGP Summit in Mexico City. The Summit was attended by Lord Francis Maude (Minister of State for Trade and Investment, previously Minister for the Cabinet Office) and Sir Eric Pickles (Anti-corruption Champion), along with a number of senior officials. UK government leads the way in…
29th October 2015
On Tuesday I was fortunate to moderate an in depth discussion, convened by OpenTheGovernment.org, to share practice on how civil society can best work together and with government on the OGP. Below is OpenTheGovernment.org’s summary of the workshop. I’ll be posting some of my own thoughts here shortly. On October 27, 2015, OpenTheGovernment.org hosted a workshop on…
29th October 2015
In my last post from the Open Government Partnership summit in Mexico this week I talked about the ‘magic of OGP’ being the focus on the collaborative development of national action plans. The trouble is that both the words ‘collaboration’ and, even more so, ‘magic’ hide a lot. As a result they aren’t that helpful for those not directly involved…
28th October 2015
A particular focus for a number of us who have made the trip over to Mexico City for the OGP Global Summit is how the OGP can be deepened to involve subnational governments and civil society. Indeed, tomorrow we’re hosting a session on “Taking OGP Subnational”, with participants including Colm Burns (Chair of the Northern…
28th October 2015
One of the great things about the Open Government Partnership is the principle that member countries are all on an equal footing, all have something to learn from each other and all share the goal of working to achieve more open governments worldwide. In other words, OGP is a community. In the words of…
28th October 2015
The Open Government Partnership (OGP) Summit kicked off yesterday with 1000 civil society activists from 94 countries attending the pre-summit Civil Society Organisation (CSO) Day. There were some genuinely rousing and moving speeches. We heard lots of powerful stories highlighting how the OGP is making a significant difference to the way member governments do business…
27th October 2015
Open Government Network member, OpenCorporates, has released a new paper outlining how open company data was used to uncover the powerful elite benefiting from Myanmar’s multi-billion dollar jade industry. Today, we’re pleased to release a white paper on how OpenCorporates data was used to uncover the powerful elite benefiting from Myanmar’s multi-billion dollar jade industry, in a…
27th October 2015
I’m writing this having just got off the plane that took to the Open Government Partnership Summit in Mexico. It’s never a good sign when the person next to you spots what you are writing and decides to challenge you on how useless democracy is. How money has corrupted democracy and it is just a…
15th October 2015
The Campaign for Freedom of Information and ARTICLE 19 are holding a briefing meeting for NGOs and media organisations on the consultation paper published by the Commission on Freedom of Information. The consultation suggests the Commission is considering sweeping changes to restrict the FOI Act, including: imposing charges for requests making it easier to refuse…
13th October 2015
The Campaign for Freedom of Information, an OGN member, published the following press release in response to the Commission on Freedom of Information’s call for evidence. Sweeping restrictions to the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act are being considered by the body set up to consider the legislation, according to the Campaign for Freedom of Information.…