The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is an international movement for openness established in 2011.  The Philippines is one of the eight founding governments of the OGP together with Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States.

In a nutshell, OGP is a global effort to make governments better. It aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

Currently, OGP has grown to 77 countries, 106 local governments, thousands of civil society organizations, and several multilateral partners. To become a member of OGP, participating countries must endorse a high-level Open Government Declaration[1], deliver a country action plan developed with public consultation, and commit to independent reporting on their progress going forward. As one of the 8 founding members, the Philippines has remained firmly committed to OGP through various commitments and it is through these commitments to the Open Government principles that we have been able to lay strong foundations for our reforms.

The Philippines has remained a global open government champion and has successfully weaved the OGP narrative and framework with various national governance anchors and mechanisms of the administration.

Under its pillar of Building a High-Trust Society (Malasakit), the country’s continued engagement with the OGP is identified in the Updated Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2017-2022’s chapter on Ensuring Responsive, People-Centered, Technology-enabled and Clean Governance as a key strategy to ensure that government policies, programs, and projects are responsive to the needs of the people- which can ultimately lead to restoring the people’s trust in the government.

The commitment to citizen engagement is further demonstrated by the following Executive Orders issued by the Duterte Administration during his term:

• Executive Order No. 2, issued on July 24, 2016 that mandates the executive branch of the government to operationalize the people’s constitutional right to information and the policy of full disclosure in public service;
• Executive Order No. 6, issued on October 14, 2016, that established the 8888 Citizens’ Complaint Center to facilitate timely and concrete action in citizens feedback on the way government services and goods are being delivered;
• Executive Order No. 9, issued on December 1, 2016, that created the Office of Participatory Governance Cluster within the Cabinet that is mandated to exert all efforts to enhance citizen engagement in governmental processes;
• Executive Order No. 24, issued on May 16, 2017, that creates the Participatory Governance Cluster which shall exert all efforts to enhance citizen participation in governmental processes.

The PH-OGP Steering Committee

The direction, programs and activities of the PH-OGP shall be set by the PH-OGP Steering Committee which shall be comprised of an equal number of representatives from government and non-government organizations (NGOs) such as civil society networks, government unions academe, and business groups, among others. It shall be supported by a PH-OGP Secretariat that shall be organized and supported by government and non-government.

Specifically, the Steering Committee shall have the following functions:

• Set policies and trajectory of the Philippine Open Government Partnership:
  • Help craft and finalize the PH-OGP Plan;
  • Monitor and evaluate the implementation of the Plan;
  • Publish an annual monitoring and evaluation report on the accomplishments of the PH-OGP to be represented in a public forum;
  • Provide policy recommendation to the PH-OGP Plan;
• Promote OGP through advocacy and outreach activities;
  • Provide oversight to the secretariat in organizing the PH-OGP and its various activities;
  • Designate an accountable focal person for the oversight of the PH-OGP Secretariat;
  • Provide inputs to matters and concerns related to the OGP at the national and international levels;
  • Through its members, conduct outreach and provide consultation platform to various sectors in support of the action plan initiatives and addressing issues / concerns by OGP stakeholders; and
  • Develop and implement a resource mobilization strategy to support advocacy and outreach activities for various sectors.

The PH-OGP Steering Committee 2019-2022

The Terms of Reference (TOR) of the PH-OGP Steering Committee can be accessed here.

[1] https://www.opengovpartnership.org/process/joining-ogp/open-government-declaration/