OGP Local, New & Improved!

The Open Government Partnership has made changes to the local governments program

OGP launched the Subnational Pilot Program (later renamed OGP Local) in 2016, recognizing that many open government innovations and reforms are happening at the local level, where governments can engage more directly with citizens and many crucial public services are delivered.

The program produced strong results both in terms of the co-creation process and the ambition of commitments, and the program was expanded to 20 local participants in 2017-2018.  In December 2018 the OGP Steering Committee lead the development of a new strategy that would allow OGP to scale its local engagement in a sustainable manner, while protecting core OGP values and principles.

The development of the new strategy was guided by a Steering Committee Task Force, and informed by extensive interviews with the local community inside and outside OGP. It was approved at the Ministerial Steering Committee Meeting held on 29 May 2019 in Ottawa, Canada. 

Revisions include discontinuing the IRM assessment and local researcher feature.   Local governments will not be assessed by IRM as in previous Action Plan cycles.  Instead, Austin's 2019-21 Action Plan period will be characterized by self-assessment with less attention to compliance and more attention to adherence to OGP pillars. The pillars will be national/local integration, making the local OGP program more flexible, and developing a learning platform.

The three pillars ensure engagement of open local government:

• Supporting strategic national-local integration to support effective national government and civil society strategies to foster local open government through national initiatives, including the OGP national action plan processes.
• Enhancing the OGP Local program by redesigning the current program to be more flexible, scalable and inclusive
• Developing a collaborative platform for learning that provides easy access to knowledge resources, learning opportunities, peer and expert networks to those working on open local government

Stay tuned for updates on our current Action Plan's 4 commitments!