28th February 2017 – Points of View, Scotland
Written by Paul Bradley, SCVO. Last week, the Scottish Budget was passed by Parliament. Last-ditch deals were made to secure support for the bill and compromises prevented gridlock. Many conversations between political parties were taking place over how Scotland’s money should be spent, but the most important conversation was the one we were not having:…
15th February 2017 – Meeting notes, News, United Kingdom
On 1 February 2017, members of the OGN’s steering committee and government commitment leads met to review the implementation of the 2016-18 Open Government Action Plan and the UK OGP process. This note of the meeting was produced by the Cabinet Office. In addition: Progress updates on commitments can be found at: https://www.opengovernment.org.uk/resource/2016-18-open-government-action-plan-february-2017-commitment-progress-updates/ Links to engagement…
15th February 2017 – News, Northern Ireland
(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…
6th February 2017 – Points of View, United Kingdom
Last week, the Institute for Government published our Whitehall Monitor 2017 annual report, which uses open data to chart the size, shape and performance of government in the UK, including on transparency. In short, we couldn’t compile such a report without government openness, but there are some worrying signs for the future. Our report wouldn’t…
6th January 2017 – News, United Kingdom
The Open Government Partnership’s (OGP) Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) – which is charged with tracking the progress of countries on OGP – has just published its latest report for the UK for public consultation. This progress report, prepared by Ben Worthy from Birkbeck University, assesses the implementation of the commitments in the UK’s second open government action plan,…
21st December 2016 – Points of View, United Kingdom
More than 3,000 people gathered in Paris from 7-9th December for the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Global Summit 2016 hosted by the Government of France. Over the 3 days there were dozens of workshops, pitches and panel discussions on themes ranging from transparency, accountability and anti-corruption to climate and sustainable development, the digital commons and…
21st December 2016 – Northern Ireland, Points of View
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…
19th December 2016 – News, Scotland
Scotland was selected earlier this as a pioneer within the Open Government Partnership’s Subnational Programme. This means Scottish Government signed and submitted (to the Paris #OGP16 conference) an action plan for open government delivering commitments in Scotland. This is a pioneering plan, headlined by five top level strategic commitments. It is available from the OGP…
16th December 2016 – Points of View, United Kingdom
Open Government has its own buzzwords – open data, transparency, accountability, participation, scrutiny, anti-corruption, freedom of information, open contracting, digital commons etc. Just like any other policy community this shared language unites those involved, but from the outside it can appear to set a somewhat technocratic and procedural agenda. As someone relatively new to the…
16th December 2016 – News, United Kingdom
Last week the Open Government Partnership Global Summit was held in Paris, bringing together 3,000 representatives from more than 70 countries, including Heads of State, government ministers, mayors, civil society representatives, public servants, members of parliament, developers, researchers, and journalists. Two significant themes of the Summit – particularly showing up in the speeches of the OGP Support…