Open Government Partnership
The Path to Open Government In Australia
Everyone benefits from open, transparent and accountable government. In Australia and globally, Transparency International is a key part of the Open Government movement and strongly supports the OGP.
Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a multilateral, international initiative aimed at enhancing transparency, accountability, and public participation in government. With 75 national members, and more than 150 local jurisdictions, the OGP’s vision for big-picture goals includes:
- the building of a growing, committed, and interconnected community of open government reformers, activists, and champions
- making open government central to how all levels and branches of government function and deliver on their priorities
- protecting and expanding civic space
- accelerating collective progress on open government reforms
To achieve these goals, OGP members through a co-design process with government and civil society develop national action plans (NAPs) every two years that outline concrete commitments to enhance transparency, accountability and public participation in government.
Australia’s role
Australia has been a member of the OGP since 2015 as the Open Government Forum (OGF), a multi-stakeholder body comprising representatives from government agencies, civil society organisations, academia, and the private sector. The OGF, in which Transparency International Australia has played a key role as a civil society member from 2015, has the primary role of facilitating the co-creation and implementation of Australia’s National Action Plans under the OGP framework. The required co-creation process under this framework was designed to gather input from a wide range of stakeholders, and was undertaken by a series of working groups comprising OGF members.
Transparency International Australia CEO Clancy Moore chaired the OGF’s Working Group 2 on Government and Corporate Sector Integrity, steering critical commitments on whole-of-government integrity strategy, the establishment of a public beneficial ownership register, and improvements to protections for public sector whistle-blowers.
The NAP3, published in December 2023, focuses on eight key commitments, including areas such as responsible use of artificial intelligence, establishing youth advisory groups, and enhancing truth in political advertising and transparency in donations. Other significant commitments involve protecting whistleblowers, improving integrity in procurement and grants, and tackling misinformation in non-English-speaking communities.
Challenges to the co-creation process
These commitments are laudable, and their achievement would be critical to the healthy functioning of Australia’s democracy.
However, the co-creation process and the implementation of the plan have not been without their challenges. One major hurdle was the gap in progress following the previous Coalition government’s draft action plan in 2020, which ultimately went unsubmitted. This inaction, and the subsequent stagnation in engagement with the process, created a disconnect, requiring the new forum to not only establish fresh, ambitious commitments but also to rebuild trust and re-engage with stakeholders across sectors. The shift in OGF responsibility to the Attorney-General’s Department also saw some inevitable delays while processes were developed.
Re-engagement of these stakeholders was complex, and led to a delay in the commencement of the co-creation process. The OGP’s Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) found that this led to insufficient time and publicity being allocated to public consultations, a lack of diversity of voices, and a short timeframe for development and finalisation of the plan. Many of the civil society members of the OGF were troubled by the narrowing of commitments to those that the Government felt were achievable in the two-year time-frame, as well as by the lack of dedicated consultation of Australian First Nations peoples – a community whose views are critical in underpinning the progress of Australia’s integrity landscape.
Challenges to reporting and implementation
Implementation of the plan has also thrown up problems; this has led to Transparency International Australia introducing a commitment tracking initiative to closely monitor not only progress but the transparency and visibility of the implementation process. We have developed an implementation tracker following detailed analysis of the reports. This document was developed with input from the Attorney General’s Department, and is available here.
In June 2024, at the OGF’s implementation update meeting, reports provided lacked clarity about the progress of the different commitments. Transparency International Australia’s analysis found that terminology used across the commitments was inconsistent, with no clear delineation between ‘Commenced and ongoing’ (2.3), ‘Substantial progress’ (4.1), and ‘In progress’ (6.3).
Further, the reports provided could have had more detail and specificity about the activities that are being undertaken in relation to commitments. For example, ‘targeted consultations’ under Commitment 4.1 (Beneficial ownership reform) do not outline who is being consulted; engagement with parliamentary groups under Commitment 7.2 (Transparent political donations and truth in political advertising) has not been reported on with any further visibility that would support additional advocacy. More information, and consistent use in terminology in future monitoring reports will build greater trust, transparency and accountability for NAP3.
With the NAP3 going through to the end of 2025, 29 of 47 (61.5%) milestones across the 8 commitments have not yet been completed. While Transparency International Australia applauds the Attorney-General’s Department for the 30% of completed elements and their hard work gaining consensus across many challenging stakeholders to make this happen, the timeframe for completion of the remaining commitments is shrinking fast.
We will continue to monitor and track progress against the commitments, as well as continuing to engage in dialogue with government representatives to push for clarity and transparency in the implementation process.