Open Government Partnership
Scotland's membership of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) supports our commitment to openness, transparency, and citizen participation across everything we do as a government.
Our second OGP Action Plan promotes trust and co-operation between government and civil society.
About open government
The OGP aims to secure commitments from governments around the world to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.
After launching in 2011 with eight founding governments, the OGP now has more than 90 member countries, as well as hundreds of civil society organisations.
When governments join the partnership they must endorse the Open Government Declaration and commit to the following principles:
- increase the availability of information about governmental activities
- support civic participation
- implement the highest standards of professional integrity through administrations
- increase access to new technologies for openness and accountability
Scotland in the OGP
In 2016, Scotland was selected as one of 15 pioneer governments around the world to join a programme to bring new leadership and innovation into the OGP at all levels of government.
We developed the first OGP Scottish Action Plan in partnership with civil society to set out how we would use the opportunity to improve the lives of people living in Scotland, to learn from others, and to share our experience of Open Government. We delivered the first Action Plan over 2017.
We have been invited to speak at a number of international conferences, and the Scottish Civil Society Network Chair has been selected to attend the International OGP Steering Group.
Second OGP Action Plan
Our second OGP Action Plan was published in January 2019 and contains five commitments to be delivered by September 2020. This follows approval by the Open Government Steering Group and Scottish Ministers.
In response to independent recommendations regarding our first Action Plan, we took the following actions in developing our second:
- improving governance via an OGP Steering Group co-chaired by the Cabinet Secretary for Government Business and Constitutional Relations and the Chair of the Scottish OGP Civil Society Network
- widening our public consultations
- using open planning methods that allow others to view our progress and get involved
In developing the content of the plan, we opened up the process for wider public input. This engagement included running a series of public events in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Inverness and Stirling to gather ideas for the Action Plan, as well as crowdsourcing potential commitments through the website: https://www.ideas.gov.scot/open-government
Blog
We provide regular updates on progress and recent news on our open government blog.