Dear colleagues,
I hope you are all well!
I am updating you all on the progress of the 4th Open Government National Action Plan.
As you may have gathered, development of the plan has again been pushed back since I last wrote to you all.
Currently, DCMS are collecting the signed off commitments from the various departments. Almost all of them are collected now so it is just the last two or three remaining (but are on senior officials desks for sign off). The plan is still to have the plan publishable by the end of the year, although that deadline is slipping each day and chances are that it will be published in January if we are being realistic.
11 December vote
This also all depends on the result of the 11 December vote in Parliament on the Brexit deal. If the vote fails then we go into unknown territory of course and so inevitably all officials will be focused on the outcome of that, meaning that the plan will definitely not get published until January (maybe later?).
In any case, if the plan is published in January (of course I am assuming no objections on the contents from civil society - so that could be another variable) then I would suggest that we as the Open Government Network make a public statement expressing our disappointment at how this action plan has developed.
Happy to hear the network’s thought about this.
Best
Andreas