4th NAP dev starting soon. Open Gov Network seeks for Subnationals

What we started beyond our activities at the Open Government Network Germany with OGP-Baden-Württemberg (OGP-BW) in 2018 on the occasion of the first call for the Local Programme of the Open Government Partnership for sub-national regional jurisdictions is increasingly morphing into an initiative OGP-BB = Beyond Bund (national level).

While Germany's goal to participate in the Open Government Partnership at the beginning of the 10s was a federal government initiative to modernise the administration of the federal and state governments in the IT Planning Council in order to subject themselves to an international accountability mechanism with a reporting system in government reforms towards Open Government and which resulted in a resolution of the Bundesrat in November 2015 things still do not look so rosy at the subnational level of the states and municipalities in Germany. If there weren't the commitment in recent years of states like Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Northrhine-Westfalia in particular and some municipalities such as Moers, Bonn, etc..

There are still no comprehensive freedom of information rights* for civil society - federal state Hesse recently went limp by not including its municipalities in the scope of its Freedom of Information Act - not to mention the proactive provision of information and data (as agreed in 2016 by the minister presidents within the framework of the new state financial equalisation). In the meantime, the OECD and the EU are also becoming more restless - the EC has therefore also felt compelled to have the EP adopt an implementing regulation on the provision of certain Open High Value Data, which recently came into force.

(*The current journalistic research on PFAS or the costs of PCR tests at Germany, for example, is based on several Freedom of Information Act requests, and currently FragDenStaat (FdS) is suing the Federal Employment Agency for information that can provide insight into the guidelines used by case workers in the job centres to impose sanctions to their clients. The freedom of information indicators can be analysed on the Fraunhofer FOKUS dashboard from FdS data).

The two dimensions of cultural and informational transparency (resolving complexity through data analysis) are the basis for evidence-informed decisions, public oversight activities by society and journalism as the fourth power (e.g. for accountability and against responsibility diffusion) as well as joint learning in impact measurement and analysis. Together with open justice and access to justice as well as dynamic information flows (e.g. from areas with smart, intelligent networks), these are the foundations for all other indicator sets and reporting obligations (also of enterprises) and thus prerequisites for negotiating conflicts of objectives, improving target accuracy, better lawmaking and norm control, the analysis of political risks (e.g. for international economic cooperation*), the development of new technologies and the development of new technologies. This is what I outlined last year in a lecture as an expert for the current Enquete Commission "Crisis-proof Society" of the State Parliament of Baden-Württemberg. It is simply a matter of linking and mapping measurement and knowledge with (resource-) planning, implementation and impact for management, negotiation, public supervision and self-effective behaviour.

The importance of accountability, commitment and public oversight for integrity in government responsibility, also at the EU level, was perfectly nailed down by Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law at HEC Paris, Alberto Alemanno, in the France 24 interview on #Quatargate. Alemanno has been advocating the participation of the European Union in the Open Government Partnership for quite some time, as here on the Constitutional Blog in a public letter to the presidents of the European Parliament, the council of the EU and the European Commission.

(*In July 2022, the possibility of privatising Ukrainian state property - such as ports - was strongly liberalised. The state-owned UkraineInvest is essentially responsible for recruitment. Regardless of how one feels about this, it requires even stronger public oversight. In autumn 2022, I was privileged to attend a presentation by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) on the governance of investment for the reconstruction of Ukraine. Potential donor countries and their civil societies as well as some investors, but especially the Ukrainian government, are counting on modern governance and a maximum of open government and open governance. The GMF's 24-point Marshall Plan and the broad RISE initiative set rigid standards in this regard. As a central procedure, for example, the SOURCE platform of the Sustainable Infrastructure Foundation for the design of infrastructure projects, financing, contract and performance management and reporting obligations as well as analyses should be linked with the open data-based Prozorro marketplace for procurement to form an open DBFOM governance - beyond the WTO GPA standards and taking into account the OCDS and OC4IDS standards of our network partners Open Contracting Partnership. This builds on the pre-war activities through USAID's SACCI and in the context of Ukraine's participation in the Open Government Partnership on reconstruction).

We absolutely need a stronger territorial pervasion of Open Government across all levels throughout Europe, but especially in strongly federal structured Germany. Quasi some standards for a kind of "Minimal Viable Openness" on the entire federal territory, so that it makes no difference for citizens and NGOs /CSOs in their participation and information rights whether they live in Hamburg, in Bavaria, in Mannheim or Nuremberg.

A low-threshold nucleus for Germany could be a stronger sub-national chapter in the upcoming 4th National Action Plan (NAP) in the context of Germany's participation in the Open Government Partnership, which has been in place since the second NAP - Spain has brought it to over 50 commitments/projects from more than a dozen local regions/provinces in its 4th NAP.

This requires not only more actors with Open Government and reporting competence in state govs and local governments, but also in (organised) civil society (including business, academia and the socio-cultural sector) as well as associations, chambers and foundations at sub-national level, which contribute with proposals and follow-up with co-creation with their governments. There is still a lot of headroom for improvement in Germany, where journalism, among others, is also responsible for disseminating this more courageously.

Such territorial gaps in Open Government implementation in Germany also represent a distortion of competition in international comparison within the OGP participants compared to the centrally constituted territories and are unfair if Germany does not make more of an effort in federal institutional design on Open Government. Like some other - more adult - nations have done: In Spain, for example, the National General Administration, the Association of Municipalities and Provinces, the Centre for Political and Constitutional Studies, the Academic Network for Open Government, the National Institute of Public Administration, the National Institute of Educational Technologies and Teacher Training, as well as CSOs, foundations and consumer associations work together on Open Government in a permanent commission across sectors and levels.

When I am asked about the Open Government situation in Germany during international exchanges on Open Government, I am usually left with the discreet remark: "What shall I say?: Watch out how much Germany is in, when labled 'Germany'".

In order to strengthen sub-national Open Government reforms in Germany, we at the Open Government Network Germany are urgently appealing to actors/organisations from the sub-national level to become active in Open Government and, in particular, to follow the current calls:

1) Become a member of the Open Government Network Germany*. (also non-german entities are welcome)

2) Apply for the election to the renewed strategy group of the OGN, for which we have created more seats.

In this sense: Here's to a continuing German Open-Gov-Cohesion - Beyond Bund!