Thank you for contributions to the UK’s next National Action Plan for Open Government

UK Open Government Network
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Hi Rachel, and all the OGN,

So I had been hoping that this week I could give some good news on the development of the action plan further on from my Update on the 4th UK NAP a couple of weeks ago.

Thanks for the prompt, but it is unfortunately not good news.

Last week, I had a chat with DCMS to talk through the situation regarding the National Action Plan and work out the next steps to keep it moving. Out of that conversation it seemed the best course of action was to submit the final Action Plan to the OGP before the end of the year, and then do a public launch in January (‘a la Scotland’ as i’m calling it). Following that, DCMS was keen to continue working to add commitments to the plan in the lead up to the Ottowa Summit in May 2019 (possibly on a gender-related issue as is the topic of that summit).

However, after that chat came the omnishambles on the non-vote in Parliament and the Conservative leadership non-election. Therefore, the sign off from ministers got delayed, and because of that it is now impossible to get the plan completed and submitted to the OGP before the end of December. In fact, one commitment (open policy making) is still awaiting sign off although it is on their desk. DCMS are discussing with the OGP what that will mean for the UK (probably moving into the next cycle of country action plans) and still planning to get it done and published in January.

As you can imagine, this is wholly disappointing (albeit probably not surprising) from UK Government. I feel that we as the OGN need to make sure we are vocal in our disappointment/frustration etc of all this.

This is my planned course of action which I hope people will support:

  1. Continue with the action plan publication in January (Produce civil society foreword - see draft here)
  2. Publish public statement by OGN about the fact the action plan has not been delivered in deadline - to do in January
  3. Work on development of commitments to adopt before Ottowa OGP Summit in May 2019.
  4. Continue to push developing commitments on Open Justice, as per letter from Ministers on the issue.

I am keen to hear people’s thoughts on this development. It is not ideal to get this news at this time of year, and sorry it could not be more positive!

Best

Andreas

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