Model Open Government Partnership

About Open Government Partnership

Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a global multilateral partnership of governments and civil societies to make governments more accountable, participatory, and innovative in serving their citizens. It was established in September 20, 2011 by eight countries (Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States) and several global civil society leaders. Since then, 64 countries have joined the organization and the number keeps expanding. OGP is the first multilateral partnership to find effective solutions in making governments more efficient and responsive, particularly with the use of technology and the strategic function of co-partnership between governments and civil societies.

OGP activities are led by a special body called Steering Committee (SC). The SC is composed of government and civil society representatives that assist the ongoing development and direction of the organization together. Moreover, the leadership of the OGP Steering Committee consists of a revolving management team, including a lead government chair, a support (or incoming) government chair, and two civil society chairs. Since November 2013, Indonesia and Mexico served as the OGP lead government chair and government support chair respectively, along with Rakesh Rajani (Twaweza) and Suneeta Kaimal (Revenue Watch Institute) as the two civil society chairs, continuing the leadership passed from the United Kingdom as the lead government chair from September 2012. OGP were originally co-led by the United States of America and Brazil during the first year of its existence along with Warren Krafchik (International Budget Partnership) as the civil society chair.

MOGP History

MOGP is a new concept of learning in social studies and international relations. Comparing to the popular Model United Nations (MUN) in high schools and universities, MOGP was first introduced in 2013 by Indonesia, one of the founders of OGP. The first MOGP conference was conducted in Jakarta on October 5–6, 2013 where students coming from high schools and universities were eligible to get a chance to achieve awards at the end of the conference. There were four outstanding delegates of the MOGP conference who won the tickets to London to attend the OGP Global Annual Summit 2013.

Before the conference started, delegate candidates were required to participate in two selection processes, essay selection and focus group discussion with individual presentation. On the first selection, candidates had to write an essay and submit it to the committee. After the committee selected the essay submission, selected candidates were able to continue the second selection, focus group discussion with individual presentation. While the focus group discussion challenged candidates to critically discuss about and recommend improvement of certain action plans of a particular OGP country (which in this case was Indonesia), the individual presentation asked candidates to present country’s OGP eligibility scores that they were assigned to represent.

Steering Committee Meeting

The Steering Committee (SC) is the OGP executive body of the initiative. The main role of the SC is to develop, promote and safeguard the values, principles and interests of OGP. It can consist up to 20 members coming from 10 representatives of OGP member states and 10 civil society representatives. Recently, it consists of 9 member states (Indonesia, Philippines, Norway, Mexico, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States of America, Brazil, and Tanzania) and 9 other CSOs (INESC, MKSS, GESOC, Open Government Institute, Twaweza, Publish What You Pay Indonesia, Transparency and Accountability Initiative, Revenue Watch Institute, International Budget Partnership).

The steering committee is supported by three sub-committee namely Governance and Leadership, Peer Learning and Support, and Criteria and Standards. MOGP simulates SC meeting with its three sub-committees:

1. Governance and Leadership Sub-committee (GL)

GL’s task is to provide strategic leadership to OGP, coordinating the development of proposals on relevant policy and governance issues, overseeing and ensuring necessary resources for the Support Unit, conducting outreach on behalf of OGP, and representing OGP in the media and other public forums.

2. Peer Learning and Support Sub-committee (PLS)

PLS’s responsibility is particularly on promoting peer exchange across OGP countries. Key mechanisms for peer exchange include OGP regional events, webinars, and working groups, as well as resource materials to be shared on the OGP website. PLS committee members are encouraged to assume leadership roles in organizing some of these activities, particularly in terms of OGP outreach events in their own regions. In addition, the committee is tasked with overseeing efforts to study and document OGP’s impact, for example through case studies and impact research.

3. Criteria and Standards Sub-Committee (CS)

CS recommends to the Steering Committee the eligibility criteria for OGP governments and the circumstances in which governments’ actions or record call into question their full participation in OGP. It also recommends guidelines related to best practices for OGP participating countries; develops guidelines for government self-assessment reports; and assesses the need to change, update or complement the eligibility criteria for the OGP and makes recommendations to the SC.

Delegates will be assigned as part of either one of the sub committee to set agendas. Agendas from the sub-committees will be discussed afterwards in a full-steering committee members meeting. This meeting will demand delegates to understand how Open Government Partnership’s governance work. In the first MOGP, delegates were challenged to work on various strategic issues, from membership to international governance to crisis handling, within Open Government Partnership as a new global multilateral movement.

Country Engagement Meeting

The Country Engagement Meeting invites candidate countries of OGP to show their interest to be part of the organization. In the real process, candidate countries are required to do two things:

1. Bring on action plans related to the advancement of Open Government in their countries that are already consulted with their citizens,
2. Present Letter of Intent written by the Head of State/Government of their countries.

In this meeting, government from candidate countries, together with a CSO within its country, will be asked to create country action plan and Letter of Intent.

Country action plan needs to be created during the conference and delegates–both from government and CSO–have to prepare their research accordingly to the country’s situation and problems. Delegates will be specifically assigned as either entity and are demanded to be aware of the limitations in their country possess and find gaps to improve its country’s governance, transparency, accountability as well as open participation for its people. Hence, this meeting will challenge the delegates to research their country’s condition and preference as well as bring up extraordinary and pragmatic ideas to be incorporated into their country’s action plan.

Topics

Most of the topics discussed in MOGP are related to the main objectives of OGP, including:

MOGP and MUN

The following table explains the differences between MOGP and MUN

Organization

With respect to the goals of OGP and one of the priorities of Indonesia’s Lead Chairmanship on meaningfully engaging youth, MOGP is intended to be popularized among youth globally to increase the importance of public participation and youth engagement in government programs, particularly on open government, worldwide. Therefore, MOGP can be organized independently by high school clubs, college clubs, or peer learning classes.