Forum Guidelines

UK Open Government Network
1

Dear all

I hope you are well.

Following recent discussions, I wanted to share the original FAQ for this forum to give some guidance with regards to future posts: FAQ - Open Government Forum

Please read it all, but the headings are a useful summary: This is a Safe Place for Discussion; Improve the Discussion; Be agreeable, even when you disagree; Your participation Counts; If you See a Problem, Flag It; Always be Civil; Keep it Tidy.

Moderators have the right to remove content. Whilst freedom of speech is important, it is not absolute, and most platforms prioritise safety and inclusivity over the unrestricted expression of harmful or discriminatory views.

This forum will be reviewed over the coming months to assess its effectiveness in enabling people to engage with open government.

Best wishes,

Kevin Keith
Chair
UK Open Government Network
Email: UK@opengovernment.org

3

Hi Kevin,

That’s good. I’ll point out that, according to your FAQ’s only Ruchir is a moderator on this forum. You’re down as an admin (only). Just saying.
OK, So you’re saying

That’s good. Doing a review every 4 years is the usual commercial media approach. You’ve pinned this thread, hopefully that means we may be able to use its fixed position as the place where we can start co- designing the next stage of, not just this forum, but inter-relating (open government) projects which are scattered/fragmented around the English-speaking world. PLease! If anyone has anything you think is relevant to my list below, hit Reply and create your own post/list.
The lists will be either GLOBAL, NATIONAL or LOCAL.

OK, Global first.
The OGP projects incorporates Local and National govs and (often, International) civil groups
This is their brochureware.
This is their primary comms. It offers a comms service for any project/person, globally, to promote an open gov event or project.
This is their secondary comms. It addresses OGP Local Government members.

National.
(i’m no expert in the UK) but ours is one of Involve’s projects that attempts to offer an umbrella Nationally, just as the OGP project attempts to do Globally. The
democracynetwork is the main UK project I know of that attempts this.
Its intentions are inspiring.

designed to better support people to get to know and understand others in the (UK) space and identify opportunities for collaborative discussion.

Its implementation? Fail. One irony is that our opengovernment.gov.uk forum - an Involve funded project - doesn’t appear to collaborate with the umbrella at all. We can’t solve this situation by advocating to a government. We might be able to if you (Kevin, ), Chloe, Neisha, James, Max, Vanessa and your peers learn the community management business = how to collaborate. Mind you, we’ll need to have them agree on a shared bunch of tools beforehand.

Local.
After 7 years we have only one thread left in this forum that tries to bridge between a government’s official OGP meetings with its civil groups and this (supposedly) open civil space/ social network.

Enough. what Ive written is dense, I know. But I’m only writing it once, so if this forum gets deleted, no problem. I’ll leave you with one other UK approach, as its the longest running forum for people inside/between the UK gov silos. Where the OGP talks about MSF (MultiStakeholderForum) and “sharing”, they talk about OPDC (Government Project Delivery Community) and “delivering”.

Always useful to compare between an incoming culture and its (dying) predecessor.

1 Like
4

I hear your frustration and tend to agree.
I have sent several emails asking for clarification because I thought we would be bringing up to topics affecting people’s everyday lives.
No wonder no one engages. All I see is old posts regarding insider topics.

As a disabled person, I want clarity on how the government proposes to tackle inequality.

As a home owner of a new Freehold Tenure, I want to know why local councils have clandestine meetings with developers who sign us up to management companies to cut the grass our very high council tax already pays for?

I want to know why, the government makes a deal with developers to build social housing on private estates, then turns a blind eye when tenants leave the place looking like a pig sty with bins flying around and drugs being openly sold?

I want to know why green energy in Scotland is sent to the national grid in England for wider distribution and local people do not benefit?

I want to know why my town has a rubbish dump which smoulders and has caught fire several times. SEPA appears to have no control?

I want to know why the NHS in Scotland is no longer fit for purpose , despite large amounts of money being invested?

I agree with cutting the winter allowance for some pensioners but disagree with the financial cut off point.

I would like to know why Westminster government is not taking action against the Scottish government for the state they have left the country in.

Why are people in the U.K. still using food banks?

I have lots of discussion points which I would like the government to be open about.
Let’s start discussion.
I am not looking for a job with you so, not looking to impress. Let’s look at reality!

1 Like
5

Wouldn’t we all. Just to get an answer to a complete question from a government employee or civil representative. I don’t just “tend” to agree with you Mary. I just :rage: :angry: :weary: :yawning_face: :triumph: :flushed: do.

You know the old saying.

The important questions are the ones a young boy/girl asks and not receiving an answer, stops asking.

These days, we have the World Wide Web, so we can (often) discover the answers ourselves, and not being able to do anything about it, stop asking. There’s no question why people must issue Guidelines when they can do little else.

1 Like
6

Mary all of these are really important and valid questions to ask and in the longer term having more openness across all public services will help. Your views can help to focus future open government plans to try and address some of them. I am sorry you feel this forum is not answering your questions but this forum was set up to bring people together who are prepared to work collaboratively on the existing and future Open Government plans. There are OG plans covering the UK government, as well as separate plans for Scotland, NI, Manchester and Glasgow - i would be happy to share links to these so you can see how it works - and if there are actions you feel are missing or could be included in the next plan in the area nearest to you there would be an opportunity to feed in ideas on plan development, implementation and assessing whether it is working

1 Like
7

Thank you Doreen, however I find the concept of open government planning to be a misguided idea.
My understanding of OGP is that a group of civil servants are being paid to put together a set of algorithms and digital processes which state how the government will engage with the public in an open and honest manner. We all know that this won’t happen!

Public involvement has been requested but from reading the posts, I don’t think this forum is ready to constructively engage.

The planning stage appears to have been years in the making without any significant progress.

From a public perspective, there is a need for transparency in government. People are interested in the issues affecting daily living.
Civil servants on the other hand are approaching open government from a completely different perspective.

I find everything confusing. I find this forum difficult to navigate in particular, to find current discussion points.
My post with the list of questions which I feel the government should be open about, is not what you want to hear. However, without knowing the questions people are asking, how is it possible to devise a plan or an algorithm to incorporate openness into government decision making?
Maybe OGP is not ready for the public’s tuppence worth? However, that begs the question, why not?
Have any OGP been tried and tested?
I really want to know what input you would like from the public?

8

We are very keen to hear from you and yes the views of the public are important to us. But by us I mean both government and civil society. Open Government is a partnership between people in governments and civil society, together we develop the areas of focus for our plan - civil society involvement is vital not just to agree what is important, which routinely helps us to create stronger actions, but also to work with us to highlight areas of concerns and hold us to the commitments made. In Scotland the main contacts are myself (and I am very happy to have a call with you to explain what we do and how you can get involved to advocate for the areas of public service that you want to see covered by open government you can email me directly doreen.grove@gov.scot) and @Juliet_Swann who is the civil society chair.
you can have a look at what OGP does around the world here (https://www.opengovpartnership.org/) to see where it succeeds and Scotland’s current action plan here (Open Government Partnership - Improving public services - gov.scot) where we publish the action plan, the progress we have made on commitments, the notes of meetings and the independent reports into progress. We will complete this plan next year and will be developing our next plan - so please do get in touch with Juliet or myself if you want to be part of that discussion.

1 Like
10

Just responding to @simonfj most recent post which I managed to read, but which seems ti have been flagged now for some reason (and so may not be visible any more):

There is as I understand it some money/resource for OGP in Scotland to support the civil society engagement, but not so for the UK Network. Correct me if I’m wrong please?

11

There is currently no funding to support this forum coming from Scotland, a small amount of funding enables the civil society steering group to operate

1 Like