Open Government Partnership Steering Group minutes: December 2024

Attendees and apologies

Co-Chairs   

• Jamie Hepburn, Minister for Parliamentary Business  (chair)
• Juliet Swann, Transparency International UK  

Civil society  

• Annie Cook, Deciding Matters (apologies)
• Pauline Gordon, Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector (GCVS)
• Jack Lord, Open Data Services Co-operative (apologies)
• Innes Morgan, Act with Purpose   
• Susan Paxton, Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC)
• Alex Stobart, Mydex CIC

COSLA  

• Councillor Steven Heddle, Vice President, COSLA   
• Simon Cameron, Chief Officer - Employers' Team, COSLA  

Government  

• Jennie Barugh, Director of Fiscal Sustainability and Exchequer Development (apologies, Niall Davidson, Change and Stakeholder Engagement Lead deputising)
• Andy Bruce, Director of Communications and Ministerial Support
• Lorna Gibb, Deputy Director, Improving Public Engagement
• Doreen Grove, Head of Open Government  
• Calum Irving, Deputy Director Strategic Third Sector and Public Service Leadership (apologies)
• Catriona Laing, Deputy Director, Climate Change (apologies)
• Eilidh McLaughlin, Deputy Director, Digital Ethics, Inclusion & Assurance (apologies, Christopher Bergin, Strategic Data Policy Advisor deputising)
• Christine McLaughlin, Director of Population Health (apologies, Rachel Dowle, Head of Strategic Design deputising)
• Amy Watson, Principal Researcher

Speaker 

• David Goessmann, Head of Unit (acting) - OECD Open Governance Unit

Observers 

• David Hamilton, Scottish Information Commissioner (apologies)
• Martin Macfie, Head of Open Data, Scottish Government  
• Louise Meikleham, Senior data policy officer
• Pamela Rennie, Strategic Policy and Planning, Glasgow City Council

Steering group secretariat  

• Finlay McCartney, Scottish Government
• Abbie Wilson, Scottish Government  

Items and actions

Welcome

The Minister welcomed everyone to the last meeting for the group in 2024.

The Minister set out the importance of recent findings on trust in government, including the findings from the recently published 2023 Scottish Household Survey, noting it was disappointing to see a decline in trust in government, as well as other public services. The Minister highlighted that the group’s agenda of openness and transparency to make sure people have the greatest possible insight into the workings of government is a key way to rebuild trust with the wider public.

Looking ahead to 2025, the Minister outlined that the steering group will look at the impact of the current plan, and that work to develop Scotland’s next Open Government Action Plan (2025 to 2029) will be collaborative.

OECD presentation

It was noted that David Goessmann’s presentation would be shared with attendees following the meeting. The purpose of the presentation was to consider how Scotland could maximise impact by establishing an Open Government Strategy, alongside Open Government Action Plans.

David outlined the role of the OECD as an international organisation with 38 member countries and many more partner countries. The organisation advises governments on good governance, develops reports and collects data, and provides a platform for policy dialogue and exchanges in many forms.

The Open Government Unit at the OECD supports countries to strengthen, design and implement open government agendas that are based on the principles of transparency and accountability. David noted that this work is to primarily strengthen trust in governments, as mentioned by the Minister.

The presentation outlined that:

• Open Government is an umbrella concept based on the notion that citizens and stakeholders should be enabled and empowered to oversee and actively participate in public decision making. It is a way of conducting public affairs
• The OECD have been conducting research on trust, and findings have shown that confidence in having a say in government is the most important driver of trust in public institutions. The trust gap between those who are confident to have a say and those who don’t is 47 percentage points, on average
• As Open Government develops a culture of governance, there is a need for more integrated approaches that recognise the cross-public service relevance of the principles of open government. In their advice OECD asks member countries “to develop and implement open government strategies and initiatives in collaboration with stakeholders”
• A strategy and an Action Plan would serve different purposes to a national action plan. It would provide a whole of government approach, and establish overarching principals, policy objectives and implementation priorities. An Action Plan would support this strategic framework and act as a road map to action these objectives and priorities
• Benefits of a strategy would include giving a purpose to open government initiatives; help create a clear and compelling vision for the open government agenda; foster the development of a culture of open government throughout the whole public sector; collect data and measure the impact of open government initiatives, which would support knowledge sharing and the sustainability of an open government agenda
• Other countries have committed to open government strategies. Examples of Argentina, Canada and Romania were provided.
• The OECD has proposed a model for an Open Government Strategy. Features of the model were explained to attendees, including suggested governance mechanisms to implement a Strategy, and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms. The model also proposes clustering initiatives into categories, such as principle-based approaches; sectorial approaches; tool-based approaches; open state approaches and target-audience approaches

The Minister thanked David for the presentation and welcomed questions from attendees.

Question and answer (Q&A)

Juliet Swann asked if the OECD had worked with an Open Government Partnership (OGP) local to establish a strategy, and if so what learning was taken from this process.

David confirmed they had not worked with an OGP local member, however in the specific case of Scotland the reflections from the national examples would apply similarly.

Doreen Grove mentioned Spain was being thoughtful on how it was using an Open Government development strategy and lessons could be learned from this experience.

Councillor Heddle noted his disappointment in the UK’s scoring on a graph that was shown during the presentation that outlined trust versus decision making. It was questioned whether there is a direct correlation that could be drawn of the adoption of Open Government principles and the position on the graph.

David noted that there is currently no direct correlation, but this is an area the Open Government Unit are working on. Through establishing the correlation, the Unit are hoping more openness will result in higher levels of trust.

Pauline Gordon raised that the language of open government can be challenging for people to engage with, and that we need to make the communications around this approach more accessible.

Reflections from Juliet Swann

Juliet thanked David for the presentation, and noted it was helpful to have practicable steps to support the group to understand the building blocks that would need to be put in place to develop an Open Government Strategy.

The presentation had also focused on how a strategy can be one way to draw together areas of government that have shared objectives that also align with civil society. Juliet acknowledged this approach could be helpful in setting priorities going forward in Scotland.

Juliet reflected that David had made it clear that the group needs to think about the areas in government where these principles are being applied, and how to put in place trust building activities. An example of a trust building initiative was the recently revised Ministerial Code, which features new powers for independent advisors.

Reflections from local government

Councillor Heddle and Simon Cameron noted that strengthening local democracy has been a long held priority for COSLA.

They highlighted the importance of increasing trust by having collective accountability, and that members of this forum all have a shared commitment, as well as the tools, to strengthen local democracy.

Examples of local and national government working together on shared initiatives to drive openness and participation included participatory budgeting, and the recently convened Democracy Matters Steering Group, which has raised many of the issues discussed through this forum.

Discussion

The group discussion primarily focused on the issue of language, and the importance of accessible communications to support members of the public to understand and see the benefits of an open government approach.

It was noted that the Open Government team at Scottish Government are actively working to review and develop their communication approach. David raised that the OECD Open Government Unit are also conducting research into the language surrounding Open Government, and would be interested to work with the team at Scottish Government to share knowledge and approaches.  

Members also discussed the merits of taking a sectorial approach, as outlined in the presentation. Innes Morgan instigated this discussion point, and members were in favour of strongly considering this method to structuring an Open Government Strategy.

Next steps

The Minister thanked attendees for their participation, and closed the meeting by acknowledging the insights shared by David from the OECD Open Government Unit.

The next meeting of the group will be scheduled in the New Year.

Actions

• Open Government team to share OECD presentation with attendees
• Open Government team to share with attendees the OECD paper ‘Taking an integrated approach to the promotion of transparency, integrity, accountability and stakeholders’ participation: Towards an Open Government Strategy