“The Open Government Partnership has many attributes that make it stand out from other multilateral initiatives. The central role for civil society, the focus on supporting domestic reformers, and the diverse mix of countries in leadership roles, are all cited as organisational strengths. In February it will be the turn of OGP’s unique accountability mechanism, which is set up to be entirely independent and makes all of its findings public, to take centre stage. The Independent Reporting Mechanism will be publishing 35 progress reports over the next month. These are check-ins on how the large group of countries who formally joined OGP at the Brasilia Summit in April 2012 are doing against their open government reform commitments. The reports examine individual commitments from the National Action Plans, as well as the quality of the consultation process and dialogue between civil society and the government. The executive summaries will highlight the star commitments that saw tremendous progress, and were the most ambitious in terms of potential impact. These reports come at an important time for OGP. All the countries receiving reports are embarking on their second National Action Plan, due for publication on June 15th 2014. (Over 2/3 of OGP participating countries are currently developing new action plans.) The recommendations made by the IRM are designed to feed into the process of creating the new plans, making specific suggestions to improve the ambition and quality of new commitments and civil society engagement. However, these recommendations will only be acted upon if they are widely publicized at the national level and used by both civil society and government officials. If the reports remain unread, the likelihood of meaningful reforms through OGP will decrease…”
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