Session 3.

1:
Open Government
The 1st Asian Public Governance Forum on Public Innovation
11-12 June 2014, Jakarta

Panelist:
Warren Turner
Senior Public Management Specialist
Asian Development Bank
 My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of
openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust
and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and
collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote
efficiency and effectiveness in Government.
President Barack Obama

I believe we all share the view that openness and transparency are key to an
effective government. These are the virtues that the OGP [Open Government
Partnership] promotes. And these are the virtues that can help governments
respond to the public needs more promptly and appropriately. Such as to
deliver more economic benefits, civic rights, and equal opportunities to
improve peoples lives.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
 For government:
For reformists, open data is a quick
wintechnologies make front-end
Why is the open data portals that interface with
citizens relatively easy to create
government
For civil society and
agenda private sector:
catching on? The promise of greater access to
public information. It is also an
opportunity to showcase new
technologies

For development
Its a partners:
win, win, win The development benefits. Open
data platforms also make
governance support tangible
easier to demonstrate
results
 but there are inherent challenges
Up to government to
create the enabling
environment for
openness
0 Politics:
right to information laws can be a Open Government
political challenge Partnership (OGP)
0 Security: launched in 2011, but
only three of 64
need to balance openness with
secrecyWikileaks!
0 Capacity: participating countries
lack of technical expertise and are from developing East
shortcomings in back-end information
systems and records management Asia and the Pacific
0 Civil society: Indonesia, Mongolia, and
not mobilized and capacitated to the Philippines
demand openness, and maximize use
of open data
Source: Anupama Dokeniya, Enabling Open Government
World Bank (2011)
 Open government is more than
open data
Public policy has increasingly blurred the boundaries between the
technologies of open data and the politics of open government
Harlan Yu & David Robinson, The New Ambiguity of Open Government (2012)

Red flags:
0 Transparency, accountability, and citizen Not strengthening
participation lose prominence in policies the enabling
and strategies
public institutions
0 Passage of right to information laws
floundering, or not being implemented
and systems risks
unsustainable
0 Front-end data portals limited to
repackaged existing information, and data open government
formats prevent easy reuse policies, and a
0 Government success defined in terms of disenfranchised
civil society
number of data sets
0 Under investment in back-end information
systems and records management
 The Philippines: An Example

Progress Challenges
Open Government Politics:
Partnership: 0 Timetable for institutionalizing open
Philippines becomes an inaugural government is narrowingPresidential
member of OGP in 2011 elections in 2016
0 Freedom of Information Bill floundering in
Good governance policy: Congress
Launched in 2012 to promote
transparency, accountability, and citizen Public sector:
engagement 0 Bureaucracy operating in functional silos
preventing inter-agency cooperation
Open Data Philippines: 0 Delays in back-end systems development
Public data portal launched in 2014, due to bureaucratic red tape and capacity
http://data.gov.ph/ constraints

Civil society:
0 Demand side capacity remains
a challenge
Thank you

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