This opinion article was written Natalia Domagala, Data Policy, Strategy & Ethics at the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). For more like this, see our government innovation newsfeed.

Open government is a revolutionary concept: that citizens should have the right to access government data and documents, providing public oversight and holding government accountable.

The benefits of increasing government transparency and facilitating dialogue with the public are immense; for instance, citizens are informed about how money and resources are spent; they can express their opinions and offer advice through consultations and open calls; using the openly available data, they can also develop innovative products and services.

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Having a more transparent, more accountable, and more responsive government has the potential to raise the quality of governance, improve the services that citizens receive, and increase public trust.

Overdue commitments

We can all agree that open government is a necessary and valuable concept.

Nevertheless, eight years since the Open Government Partnership (OGP) was founded — the leading intergovernmental forum moving the agenda of open government forward — the challenge is now how to adapt their processes to reflect the dynamic and often unstable realm of global politics.

For open government to be truly impactful, policies should account for the reality of government work. If we get this wrong, there is a risk of open government becoming a token of participation without any meaning.

The rise of “open”, “agile”, and “participatory” attitudes to policy indicate that there is an appetite for more responsive and better-tailored strategies

The collective goal of open government practitioners/community should be to strive for open government to become the new normal — an aim that requires looking at the cracks in the current process and thinking of what can be done to address them.

As an example, there have been an increasing number of letters sent by the OGP in the past few years as a reaction to national action plans being published too or as notifications of late self-assessment returns.

If a large number of countries across the geographical spectrum continuously miss these deadlines, this would indicate that a change of approach may be needed. Perhaps it’s time to move away from the two year cycles of national action plans that seemingly haven’t been working for an increasing number of countries, and experiment with the length and format of open government plans.

Changing the policy rhythm

Longer, 4 or 6 year strategic commitments could lead to structural changes in how governments approach open data, participatory policymaking, and other principles of open government.

Two years is a short time in the cycle of government, and offers insufficient time to deliver desirable results. The pressure to start thinking about the next plan half way through implementing the first one can negatively impact the quality of commitments and their impact.

Having a rolling NAP that is updated with very specific actions for every two years could be another alternative. Open government is a vibrant and fast-growing movement, therefore action plans should reflect it through being living and interactive documents. Perhaps after two or three national action plans countries should be allowed to adjust the cycle to their needs and domestic government planning timescales.

There is an opportunity for open government as a movement in going beyond the national action plan commitments. Open government teams within governments should scrutinise existing policies and advise their colleagues on how to align their policymaking process with the principles of participation, accountability, and inclusion, to eventually embed the open government approach across all policy projects.

Appetite for new strategies

The rise of “open”, “agile”, and “participatory” attitudes to policy indicate that there is an appetite for more responsive and better-tailored strategies, an appetite that the global open government movement could look to satisfy.

The next steps could be focused on raising awareness of open ways of working within governments, and developing the policymaker’s capacity to deploy them through workshops and guidance.

The work of the Open Government Partnership OGP is at the heart of what “open government” means: transparency, accountability, inclusion, participation, and impact

This could be done through identifying projects that could benefit from applying the principles of openness and guiding the policy leads on how to become more transparent and inclusive in their work.

Similarly, informing policy leads from different parts of the government that they could work in the open using resources and experience that OGP provides, and that their projects could be featured in future national action plans, can help raise awareness of open government within our institutions.

To encourage policymakers to engage with the open government ways of working, it might be helpful to demonstrate positive examples from other countries where open government contributed to increasing efficiency and participation amongst other benefits.

Next step for open government teams could be to review the work of other policy leads and suggest practical improvements in line with the spirit of open government.

However, this requires long-term cultural change in the ways of working, and additional resources which might be a challenge for some governments.

Getting to the heart of open government

In uncertain times we need open government more than ever, but in order for it to have real impact, we should refocus our priorities towards the mission that lies at its core, rather than being distracted by the bureaucracy and processes of implementation.

The work of the Open Government Partnership OGP is at the heart of what “open government” means: transparency, accountability, inclusion, participation, and impact - priorities that were well reflected throughout the recent OGP Global Summit in Ottawa.

Being an OGP member is an opportunity to systematise collaboration between governments and civil society groups, working together with government on national action plans allows civil society organisations to be actively involved in the decision-making processes, push for ambitious commitments, and open up more data.

For governments, action plans can be an opportunity to showcase their work on an international scale, and OGP can work as a platform to exchange learnings and best practice with other like-minded countries striving for greater openness. — Natalia Domagala

These are the personal views of the author and not those of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

(Picture credit: Unsplash)