2021 OGP Seoul Summit’s Asian Pacific Community Dialogue

KS Park co-moderated the Asian Pacific Community Dialogue at the 2021 OGP Seoul Summit https://ogpsummit.org/program/view?no=532&listScroll=760.

Date: Friday, December 17, 2021
Time: 11:00 KST | 10:00 PST | 10:00 MNT | 09:00 IND | 10:00 ACT
Duration: 90 (ninety) minutes
Format: Plenary
Language: Simultaneous interpretation available in Korean, English, Indonesian, and Mongolian

Introduction:

Over the past decade, OGP has helped build a global movement of reformers inside and outside of government, who between them have co-created over 4,000 reforms to transform how government serves its citizens. In the Asia Pacific region, membership has grown from 6 members in 2011 to 13 national members and 17 local jurisdictions in 2021; with a total of 721 commitments covering a range of police areas including Beneficial Ownership, Civic Space, Extractive Industries, Gender, Justice, and Open Contracting, among others. However, the region has not been immune to global trends of polarization, closing civic space, and in some countries, stalling or reversal of momentum around open government.

Please join this community dialogue to reflect on the first decade of OGP in Asia Pacific, and explore new frontiers for open government: (re)building the case for open, exploring emerging thematic policy areas, and identifying ways to strengthen the partnership to better support the community in achieving impact. Government and civil society leaders across the region will be invited to provide reflections on how they’ve leveraged OGP for change in their communities and to discuss new focus areas that are necessary for enabling the partnership to fulfill its promise in the next decade.

Representing the most populous region in the world, OGP’s success in the Asia Pacific region has always been critical to the attainment of its mission. Indonesia and Philippines were amongst the founders of the initiative back in 2011 when OGP was launched. Today South Korea is the government co-chair.

The region’s growth is not only measured by the number of members, but also in terms of the number and quality of commitments such as the Republic of Korea’s national core data release program, Indonesia’s Open e-Procurement, and the Philippines citizen participatory audit, which have been awarded the top 3 spots at the OGP Impact Awards.

Yet, a large number of countries still remain ineligible to join–we haven’t seen much progress on this in the first decade. And while the OGP community tries to build more resilient democracies, this region has not been immune to global trends of polarization, closing civic space, and in some countries, stalling or reversal of momentum around open government.

Also, Korea’s success belies weaknesses such as the fact that the country’s OGP efforts is still mono-ministerial as represented by the dearth of nation-wide data sets in the country’s main open data portal (data.go.kr) dominated by granular local-wide data sets submitted by local governments under the influence of the Public Administration and Safety Ministry. These are just some of the issues we need to confront as OGP enters its next decade.

The objectives of the roundtable are to reflect how OGP was leveraged for change in their communities, and explore new focus areas that are necessary for enabling the partnership to fulfill its promise in the next decade.

Today’s dialogue will touch upon the following key questions:

● How can the partnership continue to thrive in the face of some of the challenges we face in the region: closing civic space, increasing populism, misinformation and fake news, and digital surveillance?

●  How can the OGP platform continue to be leveraged to effect change within your communities?

●  For OGP to be fit-for-purpose, what are the value propositions we need to explore to make open government relevant in the next decade?

For snapshots of the ensuing discussion, please review the Mentimeter notes here:

OGP APAC Community Dialogue Mentimeter 17 Dec 2021