On September 20, 2011 President Obama attended the Open Government Partnership (OGP) summit in New York City. The media paid little attention to the meeting of 46 government leaders, save for the limited coverage of President Obama’s photo-op flop where he blocked the face of Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj – the president of Mongolia – while waving during a group photo being taken to commemorate the assembly.
While the visual is humorous, the bigger issue at hand – and being ignored – is the mission of the OGP and the purpose of the meeting.
The OGP is the product of a September 2010 address delivered by President Obama to the United Nations General Assembly where he called for a sustained global commitment to open governments. In response, a group of civil society organizations and national governments formed the OGP to promote issues of transparency and government accountability. In order to become a member of the organization, governments – with the aid of private citizens – are required to devise and implement action plans that achieve these ends.
The OGP’s website states that their goal is to “make governments better” by making them more transparent, accountable, and with more institutions that enable their respective citizens to track their progress. To reach this goal, consistent political dedication is required to create a system of government accountability and self-disclosure – an admittedly difficult task given the average rate of political turnover in democratic countries. Justifiably, the OGP’s website states
that this takes “sustained effort and investment.” In the case of the United States this may require either passing legislation that requires Federal agencies to provide consistent quantitative proof that they are implementing
accountability improvements, or fostering an environment that encourages greater levels of accountability among these agencies through various incentive programs.
At present, the Open Government Partnership consists of 46 members, including its 8 founding members – co-chairs Brazil and the United States, as well as Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. At their summit, respective government officials from the 46 members seemed genuinely pleased, if not a little surprised, by the level of response and commitment the conference had garnered. Though, perhaps in light of recent international events, particularly the Arab Spring and rising concern of the state of affairs in the Eurozone, we should not be surprised to see so many countries preempting calls for government reform and proactively vocalizing interest in establishing truly accountable and transparent government agencies. (more…)
