Open Governance Patches Things Up Between States and Citizens
published on 17 July 2018
How to rebuild the fragile ties between citizens and public action? In Georgia, over 70 countries are working on the subject during the fifth Open Government Partnership (OGP) Global Summit, organized from 17 to 19 July in Tbilisi. With AFD’s active support, innovation must serve the objectives of citizen participation and transparency promoted by OGP.
Here are two sides which all too often simply stare at each other. On the one side, the public authorities, on the other, citizens and their demands for effective and inclusive public policies. To reconcile all this little world, representatives from over 70 countries are gathering from 17 to 19 July for the fifth Open Government Partnership (OGP) Global Summit in Tbilisi, Georgia. The objective: promote transparency in public action and invent new forms of participation and cooperation with civil society, in particular through technological innovation. Governments are seizing upon new tools – via open data, citizen consultations and accountability mechanisms – to bring citizens closer to public affairs.
The Open Government Partnership is a multilateral initiative which has the advantage of rallying the reformers of public action who work on a daily basis in their administrations on initiatives for more transparent public action. They bring concrete experiences which they agree to share and disseminate here.
"Governance is not a thing, it is a process. It's not an institution that exists, it's how people interact with each other." - Debbie Wetzel, Sr. Director of @wbg_gov at the #StatesofDisruption Conference #goodgov pic.twitter.com/NiWiXRyv7C
— World Bank Gov (@wbg_gov) 3 juillet 2018
AFD will be at the summit, where it will be presenting its areas of work and action to promote innovative modes of public governance based on closer relations between the State and citizens. An AFD-funded project, the Open Government Support Program in Francophone Developing Countries (PAGOF) is one example. The objective is to help administrations and civil societies develop this type of initiative.
With PAGOF, the objective is to improve governance in several French-speaking African countries – in particular Côte d’Ivoire, Tunisia and Burkina Faso. The priority targets: central administrations, territorial authorities, parliaments and civil society in the broad sense (NGOs, media, data journalists, digital community…).
The program also aims to contribute to networking and capitalization on successful experiences in partner countries in order to promote the spillover effects. Finally, PAGOF paves the way for promoting French experience and expertise in this field in support of partner countries – and in complete transparency.
