Open government matters. Policies and practices that aim to foster government-citizen relationships – the core of the concept of open government – are capturing increasing public attention. Results from the 2021 OECD Survey on the Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions confirm that open government policies are key drivers of citizens’ confidence in government. The Trust Survey results underscore that governments must do better in giving all people a voice and in responding to these voices to meet evolving public expectations.
Countries are increasingly opening their governments to citizens’ inputs and scrutiny. Many countries that have adhered to the Recommendation have made progress in allowing for a more informed debate and participation by making larger quantities of information and data more readily available for the public. Some countries are also proactively publishing increasing amounts of information online and others have improved their capacity to communicate and respond to requests for information. Many countries are now encouraging citizens to provide inputs and feedback and contribute to decision making.
The Open Government Partnership (OGP) has played a key role in shaping countries’ open government agendas. Founded in 2011 by eight countries and nine civil society leaders, the OGP is an international partnership between governments and civil society to promote open government reforms. Today, 29 out of the 38 OECD Member countries and 34 out of 43 Adherents to the Recommendation are part of the OGP and the recurring action plans they have to design and implement are a key part of their national open government agendas.
Open government, intended as a multiplicity of cross-cutting whole-of-government efforts, has gradually transitioned towards new horizons. Open government approaches, policies and practices are increasingly mainstreamed across the branches of the state (“open state”), in critical policy domains (such as public budgeting, government procurement and public investment) and in sectors with a greater impact on service delivery and public integrity (such as extractive industries and the justice sector). The report also shows a greater emphasis on local level applications of open government policies, especially in cities.
Some pioneering countries are moving towards integrated open government agendas. More and more countries are designing and implementing comprehensive open government strategies/policies (e.g., Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Finland, Romania) as an integrated whole-of-government roadmap for their open government agendas. Open government strategies have the potential to raise the political and institutional profile of open government and lead to the creation of new steering mechanisms, as well as increased monitoring and evaluation.
The medium- and long-term impacts of open government policies and practices are not yet fully documented. The global open government movement currently relies heavily on “impact stories” rather than robust and comparable quantitative evidence. There continues to be a strong need to develop better measurements and indicators of the impact of open government reforms.
Civic space, now widely recognised as a pre-condition for, and an integral element of, an open, government, is under pressure in a lot of countries. As highlighted by the results of the 2022 OECD report The Protection and Promotion of Civic Space: Strengthening Alignment with International Standards and Guidance, the foundations for the protection of civic space in OECD Members are generally strong, but changing demographics, tensions related to immigration, polarisation due to mis- and disinformation and threats such as COVID-19 are compounding challenges to civic space. Online civic space is increasingly affected by the prevalence of mis- and disinformation and hate speech and media freedom has seen a significant decline around the world.
