25th June 2015 – News
News on changes to the OGP civil society leadership, from the OGP blog: “OGP is growing up. At the end of the month, a dozen countries will complete new national action plans, adding to the more than 2,000 commitments already made and many delivered. Several of these countries are embarking on their second national action…
24th June 2015 – News
The Campaign for Freedom of Information, an Open Government Network member, has expressed concern at yesterday’s Commons statement by the Justice Secretary Michael Gove saying that the government would “revisit” the Freedom of Information Act to ensure that civil servants’ advice to ministers was protected so they could “speak candidly”. The Campaign’s director Maurice Frankel…
22nd June 2015 – Points of View
Brendan Halloran has posted some interesting reflections about OGP on his blog following last month’s Africa Regional Meeting. This section on civil society leveraging OGP particularly chimed with me: “Throughout the meeting in Tanzania, civil society members asked themselves the question: is participation in OGP worth it? And if not, when does the time come to walk…
21st June 2015 – News
Last week Matthew Hancock, Minister for the Cabinet Office, gave a speech on public service reform that touched on some elements of open government. The text of his full speech is available from GOV.UK. “Crucial to this is the principle that by listening to user feedback and analysing the data that comes with usage, an…
18th June 2015 – News
Six months ago we launched the Open Government Manifesto to collect ideas for what should be in the UK’s new Open Government Partnership National Action Plan. The intention has been to collect ideas from across civil society in preparation for engaging with the government on developing the action plan. During the six months the manifesto has…
17th June 2015 – News
From the Global Witness blog. Signing up to EITI and creating an open register of who owns companies were both commitments included in the UK’s 2013-15 open government action plan. “Today Britain took a big step towards the kind of transparency that will help businesses and investors everywhere know who they are dealing with. An…
16th June 2015 – News
On 13th July, the UK Open Government Network and Cabinet Office Transparency Team are jointly hosting an event to kick off the development of the UK’s third Open Government Partnership National Action Plan. See the full details and registration for the event >> The UK’s 2016-18 Open Government Action Plan – which will set out specific,…
14th June 2015 – News
The Scottish Government is consulting on extending Freedom of Information Act: “The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 provides a statutory right of access to information held by Scottish public authorities. The provisions of the Act can be extended to bodies that carry out functions of a public nature or which provide, under a contract with…
8th June 2015 – News
The Minister for the Cabinet Office, Matthew Hancock, has responded to the Open Government Network’s briefing paper on “Leading on Open Government“. Download: Matt Hancock’s response [pdf] Dear Tim Thank you for your email of 18 May with briefing from the UK Open Government Civil Society Network on the open government agenda. In our manifesto, we…
7th June 2015 – News
Ahead of the G7 meeting in Germany, David Cameron has written about fighting the cancer of corruption: “World leaders simply cannot dodge this issue any longer. We have to show some of the same courage that exposed Fifa and break the taboo on talking about corruption. I will start tomorrow at the G7 in Germany…