The Open Government Partnership has an ambitious agenda to advance transparency and accountability in government, which it seeks to advance through voluntary commitments, citizen engagement, and progress monitoring reports. It has garnered many adherents since it was launched by eight countries in 2011, and its members have already implemented numerous practical reforms.
At the OGP Americas Regional Meeting in Costa Rica, we had the opportunity to take stock of accomplishments and learn from practitioners about what makes the partnership work and how to sustain it. I was struck by the scale of the effort in several countries despite their resource constraints, as well as the concerns voiced by civil society for the integrity of overall reform.
The first lesson I absorbed from the Americas meeting was that transparency reforms must not only be concrete, they must be tangible. Process improvements in governance must be wedded to socially relevant outcomes in order to credibly serve citizens. As one panelist put it, “OGP cannot remain in a bubble.”
A second, related lesson was that governance reformers should open their doors to other stakeholders as a means to bolster legitimacy and build broader awareness of their efforts. Until a wider range of citizens become aware of OGP in their countries and feel that their interests are taken into account, OGP will not acquire a sustainable base of support. Greater outreach and pluralism in OGP conversations are much needed to build momentum for the open governance movement.
In the spirit of multi-stakeholder dialogue in Costa Rica, the Private Sector Council for OGP, co-chaired by CIPE Deputy Director Andrew Wilson, organized a discussion on public-private partnerships. The panelists, who did not shy from tough issues of human rights and corruption, shared examples of engaging the private sector to solve particular governance challenges. Felipe Gonzalez, President of the Center for the Studies of Institutional Governance at IPADE Business School, shared how entrepreneurs supported judicial reform in Mexican cities. Rodolfo Piza, of the law firm Arias & Muñoz, discussed his experience in procurement reform. Martin Tisné, of Omidyar Network, explained several distinct ways to engage the private sector in OGP and the value of a good process to structure private sector engagement.
Summing up the discussion, Josemaria Valdepenas, Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft Latin America and the Caribbean, appealed to government and the private sector to keep a citizen-centric mindset. The two sectors, he said, must find a common set of goals and metrics for any partnership. Although technology will be a key enabler, the driving motivation behind transparency reforms should be building better, more efficient governments and greater democracy between citizens, governments, and the private sector.
As next steps toward expanding private sector engagement, the Private Sector Council will seek both pragmatic and relevant opportunities to demonstrate the value of partnerships across sectors. The Council’s focus will be at the country level, in places where sufficient demand is expressed by public, private, and civic stakeholders for joint work on implementing national commitments. We came away from Costa Rica encouraged that Latin America could offer good opportunities to model new modes of cooperation on issues that really matter to citizens.
Kim Bettcher is Senior Knowledge Manager at CIPE.
Published Date: December 10, 2014