Increasing Public Engagement in Open Government Partnership Reporting

The Open Government Partnership (OGP) works with governments of more than seventy countries to strengthen their commitment to transparency, anti-corruption, citizen empowerment, and responsive governance. As part of the process, OGP utilizes the Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) to evaluate each country’s progress towards their commitments on a regular basis.

Problem

The IRM implements a public engagement mechanism, where each report is open for a two-week commenting period by the general public. With OGP’s stakeholders being located all over the world, the non-profit needed a way to host draft reviews for the IRM online.

Solution

Since the end of 2017, OGP has been using Konveio to facilitate the commenting process.

• Using the Konveio App, OGP uploads relevant reports for each participating country or region for public commenting.
• The OGP sets a two-week deadline for commenters to evaluate each document and post their feedback, ensuring enough time for thorough document analysis, but also reasonable turnaround times.
• Commenters have the choice to include their personal information or to comment on the documents anonymously, allowing for a broader range of participants.
• Users leave their comments directly on top of the text it relates to, cutting down on the time it takes OGP to track and process comments.
• To ensure international engagement, OGP publishes some of the reports with two available versions—one in English and one in the relevant local language.

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Impact

Konveio provides an easy-to-use platform, which has fostered higher public engagement with IRM reports than before. “The greatest advantage of Konveio has been for commenters. We have seen more citizen uptake, because it is such an easy platform to use. Thus far, we have not received any questions or complaints from commenters and we have seen an increase in the number of people engaged throughout the commenting process.” – Jessica M., Website Manager at the Open Government Partnership.

The app allows OGP’s team to download comment reports in three different formats in order to easily analyze the most pertinent information. Konveio also provides the opportunity for the commenting process to be more inclusive, particularly due to language selection and the option to comment anywhere on the report.

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