The OGP Steering Committee Meeting in Berlin

Results and Impressions The OGP Steering Committee Meeting in Berlin

Friday, 28 February 2020

Foto mit den Mitgliedern des Lenkungsausschusses — Group photo of the OGP steering committee (Berlin, 25 February 2020)

Photo: OGP

The OGP’s steering committee met in Berlin from February 25 to 27 of 2020. Since October 2019, Germany has a seat on the body. During the three day meeting, the participants from governments and civil society discussed a range of organisatory and thematic aspects that have been prepared since the previous meeting during the OGP Global Summit in Ottawa in May 2019.

Since its inception in 2011, the OGP has grown to 78 participating states. The steering committee is composed from eleven governments and eleven civil society representatives. It is co-chaired at the moment by the Government of Argentina and Robin Hodess of The B-Team.

Among the organizational agenda items were the reform of the Independent Report Mechanism towards more flexible reporting formats, the three year plan of the OGP team to further the professionalization of the organization as well as the response to rules violations of participations (for example Pakistan was declared an inactive OGP participant).

Among the thematic angenda items were the extension of the OGP Local Program (where Germany provided an update to its regional Open Government Labs project) and the role of the OGP in the global discourse on digital policy. Unfortunately, the ongoing problem of shrinking civic spaces (also in some OGP participant states) was again illustrated by the circumastance that one member of the steering committee was barred from travelling to Berlin.

For some agenda items, externel expertise was brought in, so for example inputs by the OECD, from Apolitical, the European Union Agency for Fundamendal Rights as well as Reporters Without Borders.

Following the committee’s meetings, the OGP Secretariat’s board met as well.