Open Government Partnership | December Newsletter

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OGP Newsletter

December 2017: Focus on the Americas
1,700 participants at #OGPArgentina can’t be wrong: #opengov has taken hold in the Americas. Read this month’s Newsletter to hear from government, civil society, and OGP staff who were there.

In This Issue:

Rudi Borrmann: Argentina at the helm of #opengov in the Americas
Scott Brison: what Canada can learn from the Americas
How Buenos Aires is investing in its citizens
Engagement makes openness irreversible: how feedback can help
Building a space for trust in Peru
Fighting for indigenous rights: a story from OGP Academy
Highlights from #OGPArgentina, as told by OGP staff
Plus news from around the world of opengov, jobs, and more

President Mauricio Macri of Argentina on stage at #OGPArgentina.

Argentina Keeps Opening Up to the World

By Rudi Borrmann, Undersecretary for Public Innovation and Open Government, Argentina

Argentina was the home of this year’s OGP Regional Meeting, ands has been working for years to improve the quality of its open government initiatives and movements. Read Undersecretary Bormmann’s piece on how Argentina can keep pushing forward here.

OGP: Putting Citizens at the Center

By Scott Brison, President of the Treasury Board of Canada

Canada’s focus for its future lead co-chair role is on the three values of inclusion, participation, and impact. Treasury Board President Scott Brison and his team traveled to Buenos Aires to get a head start on realizing that vision and learning from reformers from all around the Americas. Read more here.

Did you miss #OGPArgentina? Catch up on all its constituent parts here! And don't forget to check out our Instagram for the Humans of #OpenGov series.

Excitement abounds at the #OGPArgentina Datacamp

Why We Should Keep Insisting: Building a Space for Trust

By Caroline Gibu, Ciudadanos al Dia, Peru

Whatever happened to Peru? The author’s colleague was curious about how a country that had once seemed light-years ahead in open governance seems to have stalled. Join Caroline as she explores what happened in Peru, and what lessons can be learned about in-country processes from the #OGPArgentina meeting. Read the full report here.

Great Expectations: How Engagement Makes Openness Irreversible

By Megan Campbell, Feedback Labs

When government points of contact from subnational entities and countries around the Americas met at #OGPArgentina, they talked a lot about their issues - but were particularly concerned about getting feedback from citizens.Feedback Labs’ Megan Campbell reflects on working with these points of contact and discovers some successful examples here.

What the Agenda from #OGPArgentina Left Us

By Rosario Pavese and Denisse Miranda, OGP

#OGPArgentina had over 90 sessions, pitches, and workshops over the course of the event. A wide variety of topics were discussed - civic engagement, indigenous peoples, participatory budgeting, IRM data - and we walked away with some surprising results. Read more here.

“We have seen in OGP the glimmers of an alternative - a more hopeful path - for the region and the world. A path that puts citizens first. In this room, there are reformers working to ensure citizens in Paraguay can oversee government contracting which can be the hotbed of corruption, so citizens in Honduras can oversee the delivery of life-saving medicines, so citizens in Chile can curb influence peddling by monitoring meetings and gifts between public officials and lobbyists, so young women right here in Buenos Aires can access reproductive health services.”
Sanjay Pradhan
CEO, Open Government Partnership
Click the video to see Sanjay’s full speech from the opening plenary of #OGPArgentina.

Getting Out of the Comfort Zone to Co-Create: Lessons from Buenos Aires

By Maria Soledad Gattoni, IRM Researcher, Buenos Aires Subnational

In Buenos Aires, civil society shared the stage with government - creating fruitful and at times pointed debate. Civil society’s involvement is both an opportunity and a challenge for governments - and they must get comfortable with the discomfort. Maria Soledad Gattoni, Buenos Aires’ IRM researcher, explores the roots of some of the discomfort and explains why it’s important to the co-creation process here.

Faces of Open Government
Graciela Rodriguez Murano

Not far from Argentina’s capital, the Province of San Luis lies nestled between the Sierras de Córdoba mountain range in the north and the Dry Pampas grasslands sweeping out to the south and west. San Luis is home to two of Argentina’s indigenous populations, the Ranqueles and Huarpes, both of whom attach great importance to this arid landscape.

In fact, explained Graciela Rodriguez Murano, “Their whole worldview revolves around the land.” She looked me straight in the eyes as she said this to hammer home the point.

Read Graciela’s full story from OGPAcademy here.

Don’t forget to fill out the OGP Civil Society Engagement survey! Also available in French and Spanish.

OGP in the News - October 2017

By Jacqueline McGraw, Communications Associate, OGP

It wasn’t all #OGPArgentina, though it could have been! OGP news flourished in Africa, in the Kyrgyz Republic, and throughout Southeast Asia in the month of November - alongside over five hundred mentions of the Americas Regional Meeting. Read the full report here.

Employment Opportunities

Publications Specialist
The IRM is seeking a highly organized individual with strong proofreading skills to collaborate with the IRM team to review and publish IRM reports from OGP-participating countries.

Call for IRM National Researchers
The Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) is seeking individuals to carry out research at the national level in a variety of countries to assess government progress on implementation of their OGP Action Plans.

Buzz on #OpenGov

The Government of Indonesia hosted the Asia Pacific Leaders Forum on Open Government on December 14. Read about it here, or check out #APLF2017 on Twitter.

Kyrgyz Republic is the newest participating country in OGP. Read the press release here.

OGP Director for Civil Society Engagement Paul Maassen was quoted in the Economist.

Don't forget to check out OGP's latest film, Food From This Soil, on YouTube.

The World of #OpenGov

The EU Ombudsman is running a public consultation on the transparency of legislative procedures.

The World Bank is calling for nominations for an expert advisory group on civic engagement.

AdvocateEurope is offering funding for projects that can reinvigorate democracy in Europe. Details here.

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