This past week, I happened to catch up with some friends in the open government world to trade updates and COVID-19 lockdown coping mechanisms! All are involved in one way or another with the Open Government Partnership (OGP). It’s been a year since I stepped down as OGP co-chair (and began a new job, and moved to a new city!) and one of those friends reminded me of some remarks I gave back in 2015 at a terrific open government symposium in Austin, Texas gamely trying to forecast the next five years of the movement. I hadn’t thought about those ideas in forever, so it was fun (and not too cringe inducing) to read them again. Surprisingly, the main arguments in that piece stood the test of time (I think): that open government is by nature and necessity a “big tent” play; that subnational and local governments are key to the work; that digital openness and transparency must be an integral part of the discussion; and that diversity and inclusion are essential to effective open government efforts.
One friend then prompted me: “Thought of writing an update? Would love to read it!” To whit, a brief refresh on where I think open government work might/should go in the next five years. TL;DR version: most of the 2015 ideas remain relevant and important!
Local government matters because public services matter to citizens and voters. It’s almost cliche to repeat this but it’s incredibly important: the reason local government matters to open government is that “local” is where the action is from the perspective of a citizen. We rarely interact with our national governments; we often interact with our local governments around health, education, public safety, regulatory, and environmental issues. If you want to mobilize communities around openness and transparency, start local and ladder your way up…not the other way around. We know from research that public service delivery is also the Achilles heel of would-be autocrats; critiques around their failure to deliver effective public services are the ones that stick most and can actually move the needle of public opinion (as opposed to policy critiques or “s/he’s a terrible person!”). See Trump and the response to COVID-19 in the United States as a real-time case study (regardless of the eventual electoral outcome in November of this year).
Digital openness matters more than ever. When I wrote the 2015 remarks I was focusing primarily on the aftermath of the Snowden revelations and state-sanctioned digital surveillance. Those concerns persist but have been complemented by well-earned angst and worry around algorithmic transparency and bias, as well as the irresponsibility of leading social media and digital platforms to rein in abuse and disinformation. It’ll be hard to manage effective open government efforts in the coming five years - work that relies on the accessibility of actionable information to communities - if leading digital platforms don’t do more to actively combat misinformation and propaganda.
Open government won’t work if it’s only a white man’s game. I focused heavily during my OGP co-chairmanship on gender and inclusion as crucial (and historically overlooked) dimensions of open government work. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that open government efforts must embrace the lenses of racial justice and equity to be truly inclusive and successful. Open government needs to be “open for all,” not just the privileged elite.
Open government will always remain a “big tent” effort, touching everything from access to government information to public sector procurement to participatory decision making. But if I had to stake the next five years of successful open government work on a few “tentpole” concepts, I’d still bet on local service delivery, a free and open internet, and genuine inclusivity.