Dear colleagues,
I recently had a call with DCMS to go over the remaining process of the UK’s 4th Open Gov NAP, as things have been quiet recently and we are getting to the end of the year.
As you well know, we are well outside the original timeframes for the NAP, but hopefully this will help set out where we are and what the next steps are.
So far:
Following the end of the public consultation a month ago, we held a multistakeholder forum on 22 Oct to go over the issues raised by civil society groups in the consultation. MSF notes available here.
Since the MSF:
DCMS have written out to department leads to request final commitments (which have been approved through ministerial offices and elsewhere).
As part of this process, departments should have been reaching out to civil society orgs to go over comments, especially if they needed clarification or discussion. I dont think there have been substantial changes made to commitments but I assume the comments have been incorporated or discussed. Please let me know if you have any questions on this.
Finalising the commitments should be completed before the end of November.
Next steps:
At the end of November/start of December, DCMS will activate the writeround process which will take a week-or-so for departments to clear (if all goes to plan and nothing is raised in this process). I imagine this will take us to the second week of December for publishing (should all go well).
This is also a period in which OGN will do a similar parallel process to discuss the overall plan amongst members and raise objections etc (of course you can already do this if you are concerned!). Do not be hesitant in raising concerns, especially if they have not been dealt with already.
Publishing:
The Action Plan is due to be published before the Christmas break.
Please let me know if you have questions - and feel free to openly discuss this on this list!
Best
Andreas