Vital signs report - Executive Summary
The Open Government Partnership (OGP) has grown rapidly since its founding ten years ago. OGP today includes 78 countries, 76 local governments, and thousands of civil society organizations. Together, they have made more than 4,500 reform commitments in more than 300 action plans. Moving into its next ten years, OGP has an important opportunity to look back and assess whether the platform is working as intended: Are governments and civil society collaborating to design reforms? Are governments implementing the reforms they commit to? And, importantly, what predicts success, and what can we do about it?
To address these questions, in this report, we—the OGP Support Unit—review data covering nearly 200 OGP national action plans submitted between 2012 and 2020. This includes assessments from OGP’s Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) and from other governance organizations. The goal is to understand where the action plan process is working well, where it needs improvement, and what this means for future OGP strategy.
The report covers four main areas of analysis. This summary outlines the key findings in each:
• Civil society engagement: OGP member progress in involving civil society during the design and implementation of action plans
• Institutions: The stability and placement of government offices participating in the OGP process
• Action plans and commitments: The quality of action plans, including their thematic scope, levels of ambition, and results
• Policy areas: OGP country performance in key areas such as anti-corruption, public services, and civic space.