Scot Open Gov

Last week I attended the Civil Society Global Leaders Workshop in The Hague, a meeting of 21 civil society representatives from across the world. Led by the Open Government Partnership (OGP) and hosted by Hivos, we spent three days interacting with civil society members of the OGP Steering Committee and the Civil Society Engagement team;…

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…

  Commitment 1: Open contracting discussion – opportunity to provide input Scottish Procurement recently published it’s Open Contracting Strategy as part of their commitments to the Scottish National Action Plan and they are keen to hear what you think. A meeting has been set up to provide a chance for Scottish Procurement to provide more…

  With the independent evaluation of Scotland’s Open Government Action Plan now underway, I spoke with the independent reporter assigned to Scotland, Andrew McDevitt, to find out what happens next with the assessment process. This includes what’s up for discussion at our next Network meeting on 8th November – you can sign up here to…

This blog on why trust is needed between government and civil society to make Scotland poverty-free was written for The Poverty Alliance for this year’s Challenge Poverty Week. It becomes clear after flicking through the pages of Poverty in Scotland that the knowledge base exists to tackle poverty. We also know this simply through the everyday…

Members of the Open Government Network are invited to join us for an informal discussion with Reema Patel and Kayshani Gibbon from the RSA to learn about the Citizens Economic Council.  This is an opportunity for a discussion on how this approach resonates with the work under way in Scotland on financial transparency and citizen…

Collaboration between government and civil society is at the heart of the Open Government Partnership. Without it, trust will go wanting and success hampered by the lack of a strong guiding coalition maintaining the sense of urgency and vision we need. Success will not occur overnight, but we must work to improve this partnership.   Last…

Today (28 September) is International Right to Know Day, so what better way to mark the occasion than to hear from the Convener of Campaign for Freedom of Information in Scotland, Carole Ewart. I met up with Carole a few weeks back to hear her thoughts on access to information in Scotland and the role…

The next meeting of Scotland’s Open Government Network will take place at Hayweight House in Edinburgh on Wednesday 8th November, between 13:30 – 16:30. The agenda for the meeting can be found here: . The independent evaluator assigned by OGP to assess Scotland’s Action Plan will be attending the meeting as part of his plans…

Increasing transparency, participation, and collaboration throughout government requires significant change. Moving away from traditional approaches to policy design and methods of working to more democratic alternatives requires us to think and behave differently, whilst not getting too frustrated with the long road ahead. Many of us are champions and change agents of open government, committed…