[governance] FW: [ogp] Letter from Civil Society to OGP Steering Committee

[Michael Gurstein]

Some of you with some familiarity with the Open Government Partnership (OGP)
process will find this of interest.  It is a quite significant example of a
"multistakeholder process" (although with little or no involvement from the
private sector). Notably it has had very considerable support including
financial with the USA and Brazil being the founding co-chairs and with the
direct support of both President Obama and (former?) Pres. Rousseff.

 

The relevant components of Civil society have taken this process very
seriously with every  intention of making it work, and it has had positive
impacts and outputs in a number of countries.  The attached letter is being
presented I believe, in a spirit of providing positive feedback, however the
underlying message seems to be that the CS organizations involved do not
wish to be part of what is being called "open-washing' i.e. appearing to
undertake the required OG commitments (and gaining the PR and other benefits
from this) while in fact not doing so or acting in such a way as to
undermine any significant advances towards transparency and accountability
that might be achieved.

 

M

 

From: ogp at dgroups.org [mailto:ogp at dgroups.org] On Behalf Of
helen at access-info.org
Sent: April 29, 2016 7:21 AM
To: OGP Civil Society group <ogp at dgroups.org>
Cc: 'OGP Civil Society group' <ogp at dgroups.org>
Subject: [ogp] Letter from Civil Society to OGP SC

 

Dear Paul and Joe

 

We would be most grateful if you could forward the attached letter, along
with the content of this email, to the members of the OGP Steering
Committee, on behalf of the 66 organisations who have signed it. 

 

In addition to calling on the Steering Committee to take note of the very
important concerns that this letter ranges, we note that since it was
drafted and opened for signature earlier this year, there has been
significant feedback suggesting some editing changes, additions and
improvements. 

 

Given the large number of signatures and the widespread support for the
letter, we are sending it as is, but also noting that there is a strong
appetite from the civil society community engaged in OGP to have a full
debate around the issues it raises and for a participative process in order
to arrive at well-framed policies. 

 

>From Access Info Europe and the Alianza Regional who coordinated this
initiative, we therefore also urge the members of Steering Committee both to
act in response to the points raised here and to take swift measures to
ensure that henceforth there is an adequate public space for debate,
reflection and feedback on these issues.  

 

We look forward to hearing the feedback from the Steering Committee. 

 

Yours sincerely, 

 

Helen Darbishire, Access Info Europe

Moises Sanchez, Alianza Regional.

 

 

----------------------------------------------

Helen Darbishire

Executive Director

Access Info Europe |  <http://www.access-info.org/> www.access-info.org

@helen_access, @access_info

Madrid office: +34 913 656 558

Mobile: +34 667 685 319

 

 


 
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