Openness in Georgia: Open Government Partnership
The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. The Open Government Partnership formally launched on September 20, 2011, when the 8 founding governments (Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States) endorsed the Open Government Declaration, and announced their country action plans.
Since its initiation, the Open Government Partnership has also approved a new parliamentary engagement policy, which more clearly outlines rules for parliamentary participation in the initiative and recognizes the value of legislative engagement in open government reform efforts. Moreover, in 2016, OGP opened to subnational participants in their own right as part of a pilot program.
Georgia has had a number of significant achievements related to open governance processes in the past few years. As an OGP participating country, Georgia’s success is evident by the fact that it was elected as a member of the OGP steering committee in 2014 and as a co-chair in 2016. Moreover, Georgia assumed the chairmanship of the OGP steering committee on September 19, 2017. In spite of these accomplishments, the Georgian government faces a number of shortcomings and challenges in the process of implementing the founding principles of the Open Government Partnership. The purpose of this research is to present an overview of the OGP processes in Georgia and provide recommendations for improvement for the identified shortcomings.