General election: what should we be asking candidates about Open Government?

#1

It’s election time… again.

Although the big issues of Brexit, Climate Change, the NHS and the Economy might not seem at face value to be open government issues - there are some big underlying open government issues in here, and if we are not to see continued backsliding on transparency and accountability, we need to make sure candidates and elected politicians are committing to future actions.

So: what questions on Open Government should we be asking candidates at hustings or on the doorstep?

I thought it might be useful to get an open thread of ideas. Perhaps if there are enough good questions this could become an Open Gov Network blog post?

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#2

This is a great idea. Can post something more lengthy when I get the time but as a starter for ten I think there are two areas to kick off with; campaigning regs and an increased use of deliberative democracy.

So we’d be looking for commitments to things like PB and citizens assemblies as well as things like imprints for digital campaign materials as well as increased transparency around party political funding.

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#3

We’ll likely be doing something small around the fact that current government has commercialised or privatised effectively all medical data analytics. We expect something to be up in the next fortnight

#4

Hi everyone, and thank you Tim for opening this topic.

Apologies for my delay in responding.

In previous elections the OGN has written to political parties about incorporating open government promises into their election manifestos. While that might be a bit late now, we could still write to the parties, and/or monitor any commitments made by party leaders? Sort of like a living webpage, but which will need feeding in from everyone in the network as best possible!

Am open to ideas (knowing that the simpler it is, the easier it will be to implement due to lack of capacity/resources), or if there are any blogposts with people’s thoughts and comments about the election (with an opengov focus), that is more than welcome.

Andreas

#5

Could we just post updates on this thread?

#6

Yes of course, people can share updates here.

If people have something that is more substantial, liek an opinion piece or a blogpost (for example, because it is about research they are doing, or an action of some kind), then the offer is still open to post stuff on the OGN website, which of course can have the conversation continue here.