2nd August 2018
At a meeting in Melbourne today with the minister responsible for OGP co-ordination, Special Minister of State and Minister for Finance Senator Cormann, a delegation led by Network Steering Committee Chair Dr Ken Coghill called for action to publicly demonstrate that the government is serious about open government reform. Action along these lines could include A…
15th June 2017
Australia’s first Open Government National Action Plan (2016-18) is a series of reforms that include some ambitious commitments, that set the stage for potentially transformative outcomes for citizens. These include “transforming our information access laws, policies and practices are modern and appropriate for the digital information age”, “building public trust around data sharing and release”,…
26th April 2017
Commitment 2.2 in Australia’s National Action Plan “Australia will build public trust around data sharing and release: We will do this by actively engaging with the public regarding how open data is being used to better communicate the benefits and understand public concerns, and we will improve privacy risk management capability across government.” Milestone three:…
5th April 2017
Following the call for nominations, a new Network Steering Committee has been formed. As retiring Chairman Dr David Solomon told network members the incoming team represents continuity and renewal, includes a mix of CSO representatives and individual members and improves female representation from one to three. Kat Szuminska and Nicholas Gruen continue as members of the…
16th December 2016
Australia’s first Open Government Partnership National Action Plan was published on 8 December. The plan sets out 15 commitments to reform on a wide range of open government measures to be implemented or substantially implemented by July 2018. The Network Steering Committee welcomes the completion of of the plan, particularly the breadth and scope of…
11th October 2016
From Toby Mendel, chair of the Steering Committee for FOI Advocates Network, a consortium of activists to which I and others in Australia belong: “As many of you know, the (Sustainable Development Goals) SDGs have been adopted and SDG Target 16.10 is as follows: “Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with…
11th October 2016
The Open Government Partnership, now 70 strong, has commissioned an independent organization to conduct an evaluation of its performance to date. This evaluation will reflect on the OGP experience of the past five years, help to understand its successes and failures, and refresh OGP’s strategy going forward. DPMG, a unit of the University of Southern…
9th June 2016
Introduction Open government is the simple but powerful idea that governments and institutions work better for citizens when they are transparent, engaging and accountable. The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is an international initiative, bringing together over 65 countries, which aims to create a ‘race to the top’ in open government. Participating countries produce National Action Plans every…
24th February 2016
As Australia moves ahead with its first national action plan we should be mindful of the traps for starting players. Drawing on five years of experience of other OGP countries, Joseph Foti (apology for misspelling in first post) Program Manager for the OGP Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) in a post published on the Open Government…