OGP Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting

Registration to acquire your badge for the 2018 OGP Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting.

Registration to acquire your badge for the 2018 OGP Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting.

The 2018 OGP Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting is hosted by the Government of the Republic of Korea in collaboration with Korean civil society focusing on the themes of promoting participatory democracy, improving governance for a better life for all, and renewing public trust through government innovation.

Civil Society Day is the principal gathering of civil society leaders and representatives from across the Asia-Pacific region working on the open government agenda. The overarching objective of Civil Society Day is to provide the community with the time and space to connect, learn, strategize, and forge collaborations to boost our collective impact and build on discussions held at the OGP Global Summit in Tbilisi, Georgia earlier this year.

The event is designed to be a practical how-to for addressing current challenges and emerging priorities for civil society organizations working on OGP and open government in the region.

Basic public services are one of the primary touchpoints between citizens and governments. Delivering basic public services that are responsive to citizen needs while managing fiscal resources prudently is a critical function of government. Yet governments are no longer sole stakeholders in this. With the growing demand for improvements in the delivery of public services, some crucial trends that have emerged include: a) citizens and civil society playing key roles in co-designing, monitoring, and co-delivering public services b) the private sector stepping into this space, through public-private sector partnerships and providing services to citizens directly and c) increasing use of technology in delivering and improving public services.

In light of these trends, open government principles of transparency, accountability and participation can be crucial in facilitating government responsiveness to citizens’ needs and better accountability for use of public resources, leading to improvements that are observable and experienced by citizens in their daily lives. Several OGP countries in the Asia-Pacific region have made commitments on opening up data on public services, establishing feedback mechanisms and involving citizens in the design, delivery and monitoring of services. Yet, the Independent Reporting Mechanism findings show limited potential for transformative impact, particularly as the reforms are scaled beyond pilot phases.

There’s a need to develop a better collective understanding of the ways in which the knowledge, skills, networks and capacities of governments, civil society, and other stakeholders can be better leveraged for ensuring that public services remain accountable, citizen-centred and responsive. A stock on the extent to which ongoing or planned open government initiatives tackle the problems they intend to address, gaps that remain and steps for improving outcomes and impact is essential. This workshop to be held at the 2018 OGP Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting will bring together various stakeholders in the service delivery chain - government, civil society, donors, innovators - to explore these issues and develop a community of practice for enhancing the uptake and delivery of ambitious public service delivery commitments through OGP action plans.

Objectives of this workshop are as follows.

• Participants strengthen and expand existing relationships  for open contracting implementations actors & advocates for peer-support and learning.
  
• Participants learn about approaches, tools and experiences of implementing open contracting.
  
• Participants agree on an individual & explore country-level commitment to pursue over the next 6 months.
  

The 2018 Open Government Partnership Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting will be held in Seoul, the Republic of Korea, on 5-6 November, 2018. In what has become a tradition, OGP will convene a meeting for Government Points of Contact (PoCs) before the official opening.

At the time of this meeting, most OGP member countries and local governments in the Asia-Pacific region will be implementing and monitoring action plans. Discussion will focus on these issues, as identified by participants ahead of and on the day. In line with feedback received from the meeting of Points of Contact at the 2018 OGP Global Summit, parts of this meeting will be shared with the meeting of civil society representatives, to enhance common understandings of OGP rules and guidance, and explore how PoCs and civil society can support each other in advancing open government.

Broadly, the meeting aims to:
1. Strengthen peer networks amongst PoCs, and facilitate learning and exchange to help identify, develop and facilitate adoption of best practices across the region
2. Deepen understanding of practices to strengthen implementation and monitoring of action plans

The Opening Ceremony of the 2018 OGP Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting will take place at the Grand Ballroom of the Westin Chosun Hotel in Seoul, South Korea.

Master of Ceremony

• Seung-yeon Na

Welcome and Cultural Performances

Opening Remarks

• H.E. Boo-kyum Kim | Minister of the Interior and Safety, Republic of Korea
• Sue-jung Park | Secretary General – Citizens’ Coalition for Better Government, Republic of Korea
• Sanjay Pradhan | Chief Executive Officer – Open Government Partnership

High-Level Panel: New Frontiers of Open Government

• Shyamala Gomez | Executive Director – Center for Equality and Justice, Sri Lanka
• H.E. Daisy Fuentes | Governor of South Cotabato, Republic of the Philippines
• Hercules Jim | Project Coordinator – Consultative, Implementation, and Monitoring Council, Papua New Guinea
• H.E. Irina Pruidze | Member of Parliament & Chair of the Permanent Parliamentary Council on Open and Transparent Governance, Parliament of Georgia
• Oyun Sanjaasuren | Director of External Affairs – Green Climate Fund & Former Minister of Environment and Green Development, Mongolia
• Jong-soo Yoon | Chair of C.O.D.E. & OGP Forum Korea

High-Level Panel: Bridging Divides, Building Trust

• María Baron | Global Executive Director – Fundación Directorio Legislativo & OGP Steering Committee Member
• Chiara Bronchi | Deputy Director General and Chief Thematic Officer – Asian Development Bank
• Damian Carmichael | Open Government Project Lead – Department of Industry, Innovation, and Science, Australia
• Soonhee Kim | Professor of Public Administration – Korea Development Institute School of Public Policy and Management
• David Moore | Vice President of Legal Affairs – International Center for Not-for-Profit Law

Closing Message

• H.E. Yong-sun Lee, Senior Secretary to President for Civil Society, Republic of Korea

Welcome Reception for all participants of the 2018 OGP Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting hosted by the Korean government and civil society.

Registration to acquire your badge for the 2018 OGP Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting.

More than a dozen national and local governments across the Asia Pacific have committed to participating in the Open Government Partnership to drive reforms to promote government transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

Join government ministers and civil society leaders from around the region as they reflect on national experiences and regional trends in building and harnessing popular and inclusive citizen-led movements to drive open government, and help renew trust in our public institutions. All participants are welcome to attend this session and participate in the interactive discussion.

Since the adoption of the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, there has been much excitement and rallying surrounding achieving the set goals to progress the globe. During this session, we will explore how the inclusive and comprehensive goals have launched in respective countries and share and exchange experiences of its implementation and monitoring.

In this session, we will take a look at how governments, civil society, and development partners have supported the development and implementation of civic technology projects designed to better engage citizens in governance, and whether these efforts have resulted or not in improving the way that business is done in government, especially in delivering quality public goods and services. After a technology launch and demonstration, a fishbowl session with high-level panelists will follow. The panel is designed to be a cross-country peer-learning discussion where representatives from different organizations shall be sharing success stories, as well as, lessons and challenges they faced in implementing such initiatives.

The Asia-Pacific region is full of potential to continue to develop their human and economic capital. However, recent scandals of illicit enrichment of public officials and the use of enablers of corruption such as money laundering have mired this potential and weakens public trust. The OGP provides an opportunity to commit to ambitious anti-corruption commitments in a participatory manner. There are positive trends in the region which seek to increase beneficial ownership transparency, asset and interest declarations for public officials, and integrity in political financing. Successfully tackling these issues will contribute to create a conducive ecosystem that promotes integrity in the public sector and to increase public trust in government institutions. This session will discuss the opportunities and lessons from OGP participants of advancing beneficial ownership transparency, asset and interest declarations, integrity in political financing and other anti-corruption policies that can have a great impact in preventing corruption and restoring public trust.

Objectives:
1. Exchange country experiences in advancing beneficial ownership transparency, asset and interest declarations, and transparency in lobbying/political financing.
2. Debate and learn on the different approaches and challenges within OGP to tackling these issues.
3. Discuss how to secure meaningful commitments and implementation within these issues.

The format proposed is a series of moderated conversations between government officials and civil society representatives. Audience members will actively participate by asking questions via Sli.do, which will be incorporated into the discussions by the moderator. The session will stimulate and look towards the attendants to show their commitment to lead on Anti-corruption for public trust. The conversations will focus on recent events in the topic area, country commitments, and how civil society and government can work together to advance anti-corruption reforms, the field of BOT, asset and interest declaration and lobbying/political financing.

Outcome:
1. Increased number of countries in the region to commit to implement ambitious commitments in on BOT, asset and interest declaration and lobbying/political financing.
2. Increased knowledge of participants of the options and type of commitments possible in the field of BOT, asset and interest declaration and lobbying/political financing.

This session highlights different feedback mechanisms and how they can improve the implementation of government programs and services. The session will cover these five pillars of good governance:
1. Diverse participation
2. Open information
3. Incentives
4. Responsiveness
5. Closing the loop

Integrity Action will showcase how it enables citizens to monitor public services and projects using a mobile technology tool in Armenia, while the Armavir Development Center (ADC) will highlight how it engages communities and civil society in this mechanism. SAI Philippines will highlight the country level action in the process of citizen engagement and the effective implementation of reforms.

Open government principles of transparency, accountability & participation can be crucial in facilitating government responsiveness to citizens’ needs & better accountability for use of public resources, leading to improvements that are observable and experienced by citizens in their daily lives. Several OGP countries in the Asia-Pacific region have made commitments on opening up data on public services, establishing feedback mechanisms and involving citizens in the design, delivery and monitoring of services. Yet, the Independent Reporting Mechanism findings show limited potential for transformative impact, particularly as the reforms are scaled beyond pilot phases.

This session will feature stories from practitioners in the health, education, and water sectors as they endeavour to bring about improvements in basic public service delivery while utilising open government principles. We will hear about how governments & civil society are implementing accountable, citizen-centred, & responsive public service delivery initiatives. Interested participants will also have the chance to learn how to design ambitious public service delivery commitments.

Lunch for all participants of the 2018 OGP Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting.

Since 2011, the 79 countries and 20 subnational governments that have joined the Open Government Partnership have made over 3,100 commitments to make their governments more open and accountable.

This session is specifically tailored for those who are new to the Partnership, and will explain how OGP brings together government and civil society leaders to drive reforms to make governments more inclusive, responsive and accountable. It will feature guest speakers who will share their OGP experience.

The session will present the results of the research conducted in Indonesia and the Philippines on the challenges and opportunities of making Open Government Processes more inclusive for women and other disadvantaged groups. Speakers from the Philippines, Indonesia, and other selected representatives will be asked to react to the research findings. Small group discussions will then follow to reflect on the discussion and explore suggestions on the research question.

This session will explore the crucial role of parliament in the open government agenda. It will focus on how parliaments can open up and embrace transparency, accountability and public participation. It will also touch upon the crucial role of parliaments in overseeing government commitments, ensuring sustainability of the reform agenda between administrations, and legislating and resourcing the implementation of open government open government reforms. Finally it will look at the important role of civil society in engaging parliaments in the open government agenda.

Deliberation is emerging as a way for governments to address declining levels of public trust and for it to collaborate with citizens and organizations to address complex issues. Deliberation works where consultation fails by changing the rules of engagement.

In this session, you will:
1. Get a preview of a new briefing book about deliberation by an Open Government Partnership working group.
2. Hear about some case studies that show how deliberation can help governments collaborate to address complex issues.
3. Explore together the factors that makes deliberation work in a Knowledge Café.

Up to 30% of infrastructure investments is lost to inefficiency, mismanagement and corruption. From Malaysia’s East Coast Railway to Hong Kong’s MTR Shatin-to-Central Link, it is clear that innovations to safeguard infrastructure investments are necessary. This interactive session will explore the role that open contracting can play to renew trust through public infrastructure procurement.

See yourself as an opengov decision-maker?! Join us for this fun and interactive Dragons’ Den style workshop, which will explore practical experiences and innovative ideas for strengthening youth participation in open government processes.

Hear from pioneering young implementers and advocates who are working with their governments to deliver ambitious youth-focused commitments, and participate in an open discussion with representatives from governments, civil society and youth networks who are all interested in strengthening youth participation through the OGP.

You will also have an opportunity to vote for your favourite idea, with the most popular solutions shared with the OGP co-chairs as a formal outcome and recommendation from the workshop.

Bring your ideas, energy and votes!

This session aims to demonstrate the link between legal empowerment and open government by building on the conversations begun at the OGP Global Summit in Tbilisi. We will spotlight exciting innovations in Asian countries where government and civil society are working together to scale-up legal empowerment initiatives that promote citizen engagement, increase access to justice, and enhance accountability.

This joint government-civil society event will raise awareness of how governments can address transparency priorities—such as for anti-corruption, anti-money laundering, or counter-terrorism financing—without doing harm to civic space. From their sectoral points-of-view, the speakers will discuss the competing interests between transparency and civic space; the impact of disproportionate measures on civil society organizations to satisfy transparency requirements; and principles for striking the proper balance between pursuing transparency priorities and respecting international norms for civic space.

• Trust by citizens is influenced by how the government performs in terms of core competences and values. Since the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis and resulting recession, trust has come to the forefront of the public debate in many countries.

This session analyzes trends in trust in government in OECD countries in 2006-2017; identifies key drivers by looking at the relationship between confidence in government and Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGIs) as well as quantitative performance measures such as economic growth; and draws lessons by looking at policy measures designed to improve trust in government.

This session will highlight the experiences, challenges, and lessons from the Philippines, Indonesia, and South Korea on how government, civil society, journalists, and the private sector have used open contracting data to address sector-specific problems they have faced. By the end of the session, we hope that participants will have concrete ideas on how to apply the lessons they've learned to improve citizen and government engagement in their own countries.

A mix of fireside chat and lightning talks of practitioners working on public sector innovations that focusses on building citizen engagement. We will feature the unique and game-changing approaches used by practitioners when it comes to creating, strengthening, and sustaining citizen engagement around open government reforms. Participants will hear stories of successful attempts, current experiments, lessons gleaned from the bumps along the way, and results of explorations into new ways of initiating participation and renewing the involvement of citizens around open government.

The session will cover a wide range of topics such as
1. Transparency of judicial decisions, exploring if Artificial Intelligence can detect irregularities in judicial decision-making, and how civic monitoring will be critical to this.
2. Implications of blockchain technology to enhance civic rights and the internal transitions and risks that government needs to consider with the emergence of this technology
3. Creating a Participation Officers Network within government to break silos and spur innovation
4. Building and sustaining a civic tech community to influence the creation of open government reforms at multiple levels of government
5. Leveraging unconferences and ‘cafes’ to reach out to new user groups and build new public spaces for citizens to assemble
6. Tactics and metrics for generating political will where available and elicit it where absent, both from within and outside government

Diversity management in civil service, known as ‘representative bureaucracy’, plays an important role in enhancing democracy by improving the transparency and responsiveness of the government.

The objectives of this session are as follows.
1. To find out the theoretical backgrounds of diversity management in public human resources management and best practices related to it
2. To share the performance of OGP member countries’ diversity management policies and discuss improvements for going forward
3. To encourage participants to recognize the importance of diversity management and inspire them to reflect it in policy making and implementation

At the subnational level, government is closest to its citizens and has the opportunity to foster transformative change to be more transparent, responsive, accountable, and effective government benefiting all citizens. OGP reforms at the subnational level commenced as pilot project in 2016 while also advancing through national action plan processes.

This session aims to showcase good practices, innovations, and challenges of open government reforms at the subnational level in the Asia-Pacific region. In the panel discussion local government officials, civil society representatives, and local government network leaders will discuss their experiences, views and challenges to open government reforms at the subnational level within the Asia-Pacific region.

Open government advocacy must be personal. It must be grounded in the advocates’ personal interests and part of a live conversation shared with the community. It has to be about you and I as people engaging the government, which makes it necessary, relevant and urgent. In this session, you bring yourself and your stories of personally experiencing your government. We’ll build on these very personal experiences as we try to understand what will constitute as compelling reason for people to join the open government movement and have the burning desire to practice its principles.

The session provides an opportunity to showcase some great open election innovations that have been created through collaboration between government and civil society. The collective efforts from both sides have seen these innovations bringing citizens participation into the election process. Citizens are not only involved in observing thenumber of votes that candidates receive, but also participate in monitoring the whole process of election such as electoral boundaries, ballots qualification, campaign financing, and voter registration results. This session aims to reach an agreement on short-term and mid-term joint regional agenda across countries on improving cooperation between electoral management bodies and civil society organizations to foster election transparency and accountability.

Development of tools and metrics that are designed to measure policy performance can lead to better policy making. However, such effort creates added complexities especially in the context of open and digital government. For instance, when good governance is evaluated, how could we accurately and objectively measure good governance in a more open and digital environment?

Speakers will share their expertise on challenges and successes they have encountered in their efforts to measure government performance during the transformation toward more open and digital government. With the help of these measurements, they further delve into how such transformation becomes an asset for monitoring and improving public policies.

Closing Plenary of the 2018 OGP Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting.