The recent Open Government Partnership (OGP) dialogue, which was held at the Nelson Mandela Foundation, involved discussions about the outcomes that attendees hoped to achieve with the dialogues.
The OGP is an international platform for domestic reformers who are committed to making their governments more open, accountable and responsive to civil society. It is a platform that exists to help bridge the gap between governments and civil society.
Delegates were split into five groups to deliberate and come up with big ideas to answer questions such as, “Imagine you had the power to introduce one significant game-changing OGP project, what would it be?” and, “What needs to be done to organise civil society to make OGP work for them?”
At the end of the discussions, delegates were quite enthusiastic, having discussed clear ways forward regarding OGP and getting civil society involved in the process.
Alison Tilley, Open Democracy Advice Centre
“One of the things that we really started to get to grips with is that this is a runway for South Africa and the Open Government Partnership, and we need to grab the space and make things happen in terms of open government.”
Martha Garrick, representing the Bench Marks Foundation
“For me, what stood out the most were the challenges that were posed. Once you get the data available, how do you actually make it real to the people? And I think one of the conclusions is that we must work on a local level to make it real, because people at a local level have contact with the government.”
Paul Maassen, Open Government Partnership
Paul Maassen, who agrees that his expectations of the second stage of dialogues were met, said: “It was really important for South African civil society to come together and discuss OGP and what they want from it. And it will need a lot more discussion, but this was a very good introduction.
“I think the idea of finding a new way to work with the government, the idea of not being a purely confrontational civil society, but thinking about where you can actually meet.
“This morning we had a discussion about open contracting, for example, which is something that both civil society and the government can get enthusiastic about, whereas some of the other topics about open government are more confrontational and might not bring a partnership and a dialogue with government. But if you find the common ground, I think things can move very quickly.”
Damaris Kiewiets, South African National NGO Coalition, Western Cape
“The point that really stood out for me is that we can work together, although we’re from different organisations. And that there’s one thing that we need to do, and that is to make the OGP process real.
“The expectations I had of today’s session were met. I think I reflected on the process when I went back to my hotel room, looking back at the beginning of the process in 2011 and where we are now, and what it is that we can do collectively to get to 2015.”