2 weeks left to provide views and comments on the 1st Irish OGP Action Plan!

• Last Meeting of the Joint OGP Working Group between 5 civil society group members and the DPER Team. We were never in favour of these closed group meetings as the only way to communicate on drafting the OGP Action Plan. We raised wider consultation, online channels and more open channels of communication at every opportunity but those were dismissed. This is something we would like to see the Government do better on next time round.

Anyway, we attended all these meetings including the last one and here are the talking points we addressed with the comments and answers received by the Team in the Government Reform Unit.

Details about timeline for OGP Action Plan.

Open Data Section of OGP Action Plan (alternative version shared with DPER prior this meeting):

• To achieve some successes early on our proposal is:

  • 1 day workshop led by DPER project manager with commitment owners – put in place a 6 month project plan to pilot OGP commitments

  • benefit is that you can start with a pilot phase straight after publishing the action plan & can work towards having an agile project plan

  • pilot the portal, pull in Insight, pilot open data training and pilot the change agenda. OKF can help deliver these parts and can help prepare such a project plan. The leanings from this pilot will be great inputs for the overall plan

  • amend commitment 1.5 in the open data piece to put in place a ‘project board’ with a DPER project manager rather than waiting until the capacities have been built for for an Implementation Group or a Governance Board

  • This pilot project board can then be reformed to include the strategy boards in time.

[This idea was largely dismissed] DPER’s reason: DPER is in consultation with Insight and awaiting there report. It’s a good idea, but they are in consultation with Insight and awaiting report from them (x 5 times). But they’ll take ‘something’ out of it into account….

Other points:

• Communication between now and publishing draft & final? Who do we contact in case a question comes up or a timeline needs to be confirmed?

A: “Via email”, but they claim that they “don’t know” what is going to happen next. (It was mentioned that Claire is available till the end of May)

• Will there be 4 weeks of public consultations – terms of this public consultation? May 7th – June 7th? how can people provide feedback? Recommending to publish all feedback from a possible consultation next to the final action plan so that people have the opportunity to understand the impact of their contribution?

A: They “don’t know” yet. They’ll let us know soon….

• Comments on the final draft rec’d Tuesday: we will ask DPER to take into account the comments in the document as well as the alternative suggestions for introductions for when they draft their final version.

A: They don’t have time and capacity to deal with them.

• Will they share the final version that will go to government for approval?

A: Most probably not… There is very little time left… etc, etc..

• OGP Action Plan format: We believe that anything aspirational or not confirmed should be deleted. At this time the plan is way too long and commitments should be made up of bullet points & in plain language including the following items:

  • 2-3 lines description of the commitment

  • Supporting Civil Society Organisations

  • Impact and Vision – 1 paragraph

  • Context – 1 paragraph

  • Timescales for milestones

  • Means – who will drive the commitment and who will challenge

  • Feedback Loop – who will be asked for feedback on progress and how will feedback & progress update be published

  • Grand Challenges – which grand challenges are addressed

I’ve read out all the above points about NAP format loud and clear; and I constantly reiterated that we were supposed to learn from the best practice (and was told “Denis will not give DPER golden medal for this consultation”)

In general, DPER:

• Deeply offended by ‘uncivilized’ comments online

• It’s our first plan… There was not enough time, resources etc. etc.

• Yes, we could’ve learned from experiences of others, but it’s our 1st plan, (why should we…)

• Why we are constantly referring to the UK? We should do it in our own way…

• We don’t know “how good NAP is gonna be at the end”; “may be you will be happy”

Ingo’s introduction was dismissed. Anne’s intro was found favorable. We (CSF) should submit our proposed introduction till next Tuesday, 15 April 2014.

What’s going to happen next? They claim not to know….

Stay focused.

4th April 2014, 2.30pm, Custom House – Meeting with Department of Environment on Aarhus and citizen participation

9th April 2014, 11am, 94 St. Stephen’s Green – Meeting with Department of Justice on UNCAC and official secrets

Click to Attend

The group of citizens and civil society organisation involved in collaborating on Ireland’s OGP Action Plan have asked for these meetings to discuss further the opportunities for more citizen participation, transparency and accountability in and of government. As these will be the overarching themes for the conversation. But all interested citizens, organizations or business are welcome to attend. If interested you MUST indicate your attendance by adding your name to via the link above. If you are interested but cannot attend in person you can also add your questions to the same document.

Click Here if you would like to review the current draft of the 1st Irish OGP Action Plan. Please note this is a work very much in progress and the document is open for commentary. We will raise commentary to the Dept. of Public Expenditure and Reform and ask that it be considered when preparing the Action Plan.

Members of the Open Knowledge Foundation Ireland, ActiveCitizen, Digital Rights Ireland, An Taisce, TASC/TI Ireland and one unaffiliated citizen have met with DPER and will take part in a series of working group meetings with representatives DPER to co-create Ireland’s 1^st OGP Action Plan over the next 3 months.

During the 1st meeting of the members of the working group set out the process of how DPER is going to work together with the civil society group and vice versa and created a list of actionable next steps to agree on the commitments the government should make in the 1^st Irish OGP Action Plan. The list is below and has kindly been provided by Evelyn from the government Reform Unit.

In 2013 the government awarded a 12 week contract to TI Ireland to lead a set of public consultation meetings which produced the a report outlining 62 requested commitments + 10 separate submissions. Those were categorised to address the four core principles of open government as recommended by the Open Government Partnership: transparency, citizen participation, accountability, and technology and innovation. But in an initial meeting in October 2013 DPER concluded that the result was not focussed enough and commitments now needed to be prioritized. From experience good OGP Action Plans contain 8-10 actionable and achievable commitments and the aim of the working group is to now co-create such a sound OGP Action Plan.

At the meeting Denis Parfenov, founder of ActiveCitizen and  Ambassador of The Open Knowledge Foundation Ireland reiterated that involving the wider civil society in the development of the national Action Plan is a critical step in improving the dialogue between citizens, civil society and government. This in turn is one of the primary aims of OGP and is an important enabler for a more open government and citizen participation in policy making. With regards to the traditional way of public consultations Denis dittoed that we have a great opportunity to do things differently this time by engaging the public and advertising widely, have an open and transparent process of co-creating Ireland’s first OGP Action Plan and allow for unorganised participation through available online tools.

Representatives of Irish Civil Society who have engaged in the Open Government Partnership (OGP)  process have written this open letter to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Brendan Howlin T.D. We are seeking a meeting with him to clarify the future of the OGP process in Ireland. The letter is signed by 38 members of Irish civil society.

In the context of OGP, Civil Society needs productive meetings that can lead to useful outcomes and clarity of communication between the partners is vital for a constructive outcome.  We are seeking clear information as to the Government’s intentions for the OGP process, with the following in mind:

• An important part of Ireland’s ambition to formally join the OGP is to open up the process for civil society participation.

• Our goal is to open up policy making to the wider public, to raise awareness and allow civil society to influence and take part in generating a plan for Ireland’s participation in the OGP.

• We are offering the government our input, expertise and participation and we see this as an opportunity to co-determine the success of open government practices here in Ireland.

• We have identified ways in which the Irish government, public agencies and industries can become more open, benefiting everybody in Ireland and we see this meeting with Minister Howlin as a means of sharing, collaborating, and voicing ideas, issues and concerns, in the spirit of partnership which OGP promotes.