08.11.2016

Transparency International Ukraine calls on the Government to immediately proceed with  the approval of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Initiative’s Action Plan for 2016-2018. The organization states that according to the initiative’s schedule, the deadline for approval  has already passed. Civil discussion of the draft action plan including its approval at the Initiative Coordinating Council meeting took place in June 2016.

Ukraine is among many countries that still  have not adopted the action plan for the Open Government Partnership. This question will be raised at the global summit of the OGP Initiative, which will be held in December 7-9, 2016, in Paris.

«Despite the overall success of the OGP’s implementation with the active participation of civil society and international community, the control mechanism for the initiative still requires a radical transformation. This was emphasized at a previous meeting of the Coordinating Council. We have to implement news standards of responsible and good governance. This is important for the initiative’s mechanisms development as an integral action system. Mutual trust and confidence must be established between governmental institutions and civil society that is based on the delegation of authority, transparency, accountability and co-responsibility,” stated an expert in governance at TI Ukraine, member of the Coordinating Council of the OGP Initiative Olesia Arkhypska. 

According to the reportOpen Government Index 2015’on the World Justice Project, Ukraine was ranked 43 in 2015 among 102 countries. Ukraine was ranked 4th in the Western Europe and Central Asia group coming after Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia. The countries were ranked according to their  implementation of the international OGP Initiative. The assessment was analyzed under four criteria, namely:

 Public accessibility of laws and governmental data

The right to information

Citizen participation,

The referral mechanisms.

The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a multilateral initiative that currently brings together 70 participating countries, and was officially launched on 20 September 2011, during the session of the UN General Assembly. Ukraine joined the Initiative in September 2011.