From the international OGP Support Unit:

Deadline: 7th November 2016

At the heart of the Open Government Partnership is collaboration between government and civil society.  This is reflected in the membership of the OGP’s Steering Committee and the requirement that country National Action Plans are developed in partnership between government and civil society.

In February, the OGP’s Criteria and Standards subcommittee agreed that the Support Unit and IRM should draft a new set of guidelines for co-creation in OGP that would better reflect and encourage such a partnership.

The draft co-creation guidelines, here, have been developed based on the comments and guidance of the Criteria and Standards subcommittee, as well as colleagues from the OGP Support Unit and IRM.  They seek to improve the practice of co-creation in OGP by:

1. Making existing requirements more specific and easy to follow;
2. Introducing a focus on the quality of the consultation; and,
3. Providing guidance on the ongoing dialogue between government and civil society in all three phases of the OGP National Action Plan Cycle: development, implementation and monitoring.

Each proposed guideline specifies a set of general basic requirements and, in line with OGP’s philosophy of incentivizing best practice and rewarding ambition, each also has a set of best practice stretch ‘requirements’. Countries will not be obliged to meet these best practice ‘requirements’,  but they will be supported and encouraged to do so. Countries that meet the best practice guidelines will be awarded a star for their quality of co-creation (comparable to the starred commitments).
How to respond

These draft co-creation guidelines will be out for public consultation for one month, from 7th October to 7th November. We invite you to help further improve these guidelines by contributing your comments and suggestions.

There are a number of ways you can respond.

Comment online

You can respond to the guidelines with others via the social blogging platform, Medium:

• Leave a general reflection – by commenting via the Response box at the bottom
• Agree with another Response – by clicking the ? next to it
• Make a specific (in-public) suggestion – by selecting the relevant text and clicking the speech-bubble
• Make a specific (in-private) suggestion – by selecting the relevant text and clicking the speech-bubble with a padlock (this will only be seen by us and you)
• Share a section you agree/disagree with – by selecting the relevant text and clicking the Twitter icon

Email us your thoughts

Word and OpenDocument format versions of the draft guidelines can be downloaded via these links:

– Word [.docx]
– OpenDocument [.odt]
Add your comments to the document and/or send us your thoughts via this email: consultation@opengovpartnership.org

Join a regional call

A series of regional calls will be held during October for Government Points of Contact and civil society members. Please complete this form to register to take part in a regional call.

Region	Governments	Civil society
Asia-Pacific (in English)	October 26, 6:00 am EST	October 27, 6:00 am EST
Africa & Europe (in English)	October 26, 9:00 am EST	October 27, 9:00 am EST
Americas (in Spanish)	October 26, 12:00 am EST	October 27, 12:00 am EST

EST is (US) EST-16 hours behind Sydney for example