Meeting with TBS: Update
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Hi all, I met with Mark Levene (Mark is acting director open government policy at TBS) and one of his colleagues from TBS today and I received some news on the OGP process moving forward. 1. The government is currently in phase three of the consultations and will be working with departments to post new commitments in the ‘suggested ideas’ section of data.gc.ca 2. The suggested ideas section recently posted on data.gc.ca constitutes the consultation on the ‘draft’ action plan. 3. When the government publicizes the action plan, they will also make public a document that provides details about why the ‘ideas’ posted during the ‘ideas dialogue were included in the final action plan or were not included in the final action plan. In the meeting I impressed upon Mark and his colleague that the ‘suggested ideas’ section posted on data.gc.ca does NOT constitute a consultation on a draft action plan. The ‘suggested ideas’ are brief, vague and include no real commitments. I made it clear that this would be a major issue for Canadian CSOs and that they should consider a consultation on the draft text of the action plan. I also raised the previous IRM and stated that this would definitely be raised again the subsequent IRM. I am only one voice in this process and I think it might be useful if others emailed [hidden email], with a cc’ to [hidden email] and [hidden email] and expressed their desire to provide feedback on the ‘draft action plan’ ie. not a few short ideas with ‘possible’ actions. We could also coordinate a bunch of tweets at the TBS secretariat calling on them to publish the draft action plan. I do think that some coordinated messaging might be helpful. Cheers, Claire Claire Woodside Director/Directrice | Publish What You Pay-Canada/Publiez Ce Que Vous Payez-Canada Unit 600-331 Cooper st. | Ottawa ON K2P 0G5 1-613-237-6768 ext.7 (o) | 1-613-794-3536 (m) | Skype: HelenClaire04 [hidden email] | www.pwyp.ca | @PwypCanada _______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
Re: Meeting with TBS: Update
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Hi Claire, Thanks for sending this along. I don't know that much about the OGP process, but do think that we need a unified and solid message from the community if we're not getting what the feds have signed up for.
Any other thoughts on the government's progress so far on their OGP commitments? On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 3:24 PM, Claire Woodside <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Meeting with TBS: Update
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The OGP has an independent review mechanism (IRM) in place to review country plans.
Mary Francoliwas the OGP IRM researcher and reporter and the results of her work is available here (http://www.maryfrancoli.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=89:open-government-partnership&catid=38:home&Itemid=115).
In terms of our civil society voice, well, what do we want? are those concerns in the plan? and if not then how do we get them in? If they are in the plan then are they up to par? And who are we in terms of civil society? How do we get our voices heard?The IRM reviewers at the EU Regional Meetings held here in Dublin in the spring, have made clear to the OGP the limitations of the IRM process, namely that the timeline alloted for the review needs to be lengthened to ensure broader consultation with public, private and civil society stakeholders and information about the broader context within which these initiatives are situated should be discussed, as was the need for more specificity on what is being evaluated, namely it should not be is an initiative in place, but also what of its quality. The context in Canada is related to the broader issues of the cancelation of data collection (Census, surveys), quashing the voice of scientists, bullying civil society organizations with the threat of non compliace to the 10% advocacy rule, etc. Regarding specificity, the IRM reporter had to give Canada high marks based on the OGP criteria for FOIA, even though most would consider Canada's FOIA process to be flawed. The IRM report for Canada does however elaborate on these issues and a number of others. It is worth the read, albeit, as many of these types of documents are, it is not the juiciest piece of literature on the planet, although, in terms of a democratic process, it is important. The difficulty in Canada is lack of coordinated civil society voice on issues related to open data, opengov, transparency, FOIA, etc. There are however some great minds working at all levels of government within and outside of government. We did have representation at the OGP meetings in Rio by the Canadian Council on Social Development, Harvey Low with some consultations conducted by Harvey and I, and others in the space also attended, most notably David Eaves, Toby Mendel, and Michael Gurstein. The Summits that have to date been led out of BC by Herb Lainchbury, and soon by Open North, are the next best thing, although primarily focussed on Open Data. People who attend those Summits come with a broadbase of knowledge on many related issues. The potential of coordination with OGP and the Summit next year could prove strategically interesting. There has however not yet been a collaborative focus on the OGP. There is of course the Open Government Advisory board to the Federal Initiative, but it rarely meets and when it does meetings are short and are mostly about information exchange and not stragety and issue based. t On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Michael Lenczner <[hidden email]> wrote:
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