OGP Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting

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.

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.

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.