OGP Asia-Pacific Regional Meeting

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.
  

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.

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 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.

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.