Strengthening Democratic Values through Open Government: Zambia’s Road to OGP

Background 

The Open Government Partnership (OGP), Panos Institute Southern Africa (PSAf), Chandler Foundation, Internews and Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative – Zambia hosts a civil society meeting on the sidelines of the Africa Summit for Democracy. The objective of the meeting is to share and discuss the role of open government reforms in strengthening democratic values in Zambia and the critical role of civil society as an active agent and partner in the OGP process.

The OGP, is a global partnership of 77 national and 106 local governments that work with thousands of civil society to ensure that the government truly serves its citizens rather than itself. To achieve this, OGP empowers government reformers and civil society to co-create concrete reforms that make governments more transparent, participatory, inclusive and accountable while engaging citizens and civil society to shape and oversee governments. OGP helps civil society organizations directly reach government representatives and provides a platform and process for ongoing engagement with each other.

Open government strengthens democracy. 

Today, even though citizens in several countries elect their national and local governments through electoral processes, citizen trust in their governments has plummeted. Citizens perceive their governments as disconnected and unresponsive to their needs, or corrupt and captured by special interests.

At OGP, and elsewhere, we see reformers advance innovative reforms that light pathways towards a better democracy. These reforms make governments more open and engage citizens and civil society in areas where they have the interest and capacity, empowering them to shape and oversee public services, policies and institutions, not just once every few years when they cast their vote.  In this way, OGP seeks to renew democracy beyond the ballot box to deliver stronger results for citizens. Open government is not just about governments becoming transparent but fundamentally about governments working collaboratively with citizens and citizen groups to tackle shared challenges.

Open Government’s goal is to scale up three clusters of reforms to build healthier and more vibrant democracies:

1. Opening up opaque institutions to build citizen trust by combating corruption across government.
2. Engage citizens and empower marginalized groups to shape and oversee policies and services that impact their lives at all levels of government.
3. Leveraging digital technology and civic space as critical enablers of transformation and accelerators for opening government and direct citizen engagement.

At its core, open government galvanizes collaborative action between government and civil society as active agents and partners in a shared endeavour. Against this backdrop, this meeting is organized on the sidelines of the Africa Summit for Democracy. The meeting will focus on how civil society organizations in Zambia:

1. Can better advocate and serve their communities and increase citizen engagement and participation through OGP.
2. Can take lessons from other countries on how the OGP platform enhances advocacy agendas, reforms and issues.
3. Discuss how Zambia can join the Open Government Partnership.