Peer-To-Peer Knowledge Exchange

Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Exchange

Summary Note

Institutional Arrangements for the OGP Process at the National Level: the Croatian Experience

On June 13, 2014, the World Bank facilitated a first knowledge exchange session between practitioners—government and civil society—from Romania and the Government ofCroatia, with the aim of providing a space for peer knowledge sharing around their engagement in the Open Government Partnership (OGP). This session is part of the World Bank’s efforts to support client countries engagement around the OGP.

Romania and Croatia joined OGP in September 2011 and have completed a full cycle of implementation, which includes elaboration of action plan, implementation, self-assessment and the independent reporting mechanisms (IRM). Both are currently in the process of finalizing their second action plan.The OGP process in Croatia has been recognized for its institutional arrangements and engagement with civil society. Romania, as part of their OGP efforts, plans to strengthen the collaboration with civil society. This video conference provided a space to share the experience both countries have had so far with the OGP process and how to improve their efforts as both countries move forward.

The experience of Croatia

Ms. Sandra Pernar from the Government Office for Cooperation with NGOs in Croatia opened the session by noting that inCroatia since the very beginning of the OGP process there was a notion that civil society needed to work in the implementation of the Action Plan.

To further promote citizen participation in decision-making, in February 2012 Croatia established the Council for OGP. An advisory body comprised of both government and civil society representatives; 6 civil society representatives, 1 media representative and 1 representative of an independent institution. The Council also includes representatives from the Parliament and government agencies including; representatives of the prime minister, office of the President, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Administration, Agency for Electronic Media and Ministry of Justice. This body was designed based on previous experiences of the Government of Croatia in engaging with civil society, mainly the CSO Development Council.The OGP Council is responsible for developing the action plan and monitoring the action plan. Through the OGP Council civil society had the opportunity to provide input for the action plan and be involved monitoring the implementation.

Croatia has also organized public debates to open the space for a wider group of civil society, academics and citizens. Once the OGP Council draftedthe Action Plan, it was submitted for a larger online consultation process.

Mr. Pernar stressed that the OGP Council really helps facilitate the dialogue between government and civil society, and allows CSOs to be involved in the implementation and monitoring of the OGP Action Plan. At the same time OGP Council nurtures learning for both government and civil society and while CSOs remain critical, they become more understanding of the challenges the government may face in the implementation. As a result of this process, CSOs have been eager to help address the challenges faced for the implementation of the commitments.

One of the challenges faced during the first cycle was the lack of resources for the implementation of certain commitments. To identify lessons learned of the first action plan, the Council discussed and identified priorities, which were then submitted to online consultations. The government organized specific meetings to discuss particular issues with government and civil society, which agreed on activities that could be undertaken for the specific period. A draft action plan was prepared based on the inputs from these meetings. Everything received from the Consultations was taken into account for the second action plan and discussed with the government agencies.

AsCroatia moves forward with the second action plan, government and civil society learned from the first cycle and agreed on the activities to implement, being mindful of the period for implementation in order to be realistic.

Q&A Session

After the presentation from Ms. Pernar, participants from Romania noted that so far they have had a limited experience working with civil society and while the first action planhad commitments elaborated in coordination with civil society, the government is interested in strengthening this collaboration especially during the implementation of the Action Plan.

Participants raised questions on the process of Croatia and how to address the challenges Romania is facing to further engage with civil society.

On how Croatia reached an agreement to create the OGP Council, Ms. Pernar highlighted that in Croatia there is also the Council for CSOs Development, established in 2003. The CSO Council is an advisory body comprised by both government and CSOs from different sectors. For the selection of the members from civil society to the Council, each CSO can nominate their representative according to their subsectors, which is then subject to a voting period. CSOs registered in the country vote according to their sector. This CSO Council has been a pillar institution for the engagement with CSOs.Once Croatia joined OGP, the government planned to set up a similar council.

The same procedures of choosing civil society representatives are used for other initiatives such as selecting representatives for working groups on new laws or for other different advisory bodies. These representatives are selected through the Advisory Council for CSOs Development. In the case of the OGP Council, the representatives were selected through a similar procedure to the Advisory for CSOs development. The representatives of media and the independent body (Institute of Public Finance) were already preselected by the government during the OGP process. To ensure the independence of civil society in the OGP Council, it was agreed that everything would be discussed openly as an honest exchange of information.

In Croatia there are over 50,000 civil society organizations registered, but this number includes Sports Associations which represents a large portion of the registry. CSOs involved in advocacy, public services and governancerepresent a smaller number. There are many networks of CSOs in Croatia, which at the same time represent a larger number of CSOs, so the government tends to communicate more with those networks.

Ms. Pernaradded, that the OGP Council reviewed on monthly basis the report on OGP progress prepared by the Government Office of Collaboration with NGOs after the agencies hadcontacted each responsible body for the implementation of the specific commitments. The report provided information on the status of each commitment and problems that needed to be addressed. The report is the main monitoring tool for the implementation of the OGP Action plan and the Council will reach an agreement after each monthly meeting on how to address the challenges faced. The recommendations of the Council are taken into account by the government, which takes action such was the case of the amendment of state procedures, so a report on Consultationshad to be mandatory.

To conduct broad consultations on the OGP Action Plan, the Croatia government organized public debates in the capital and due to the lack of resources the debates wereweb streamed. The debates aimed to discuss the priorities of the action plan and get feedback from the citizens on what needed to be addressed and the best solutions to address those pressing problems.

Open Data has been recognized as the open government challenge of Croatia for the next two years; in that line the government just announced the central portal where the government will open up data, the government plans to open up some data by the end of this year. The government plans to meet every 6 months to discuss what should be the priorities to open data. And as a result one of the priorities for the following period is to change the membership of the OGP Council to include a representative from the business sector.

Croatia is in the process of developing a new platform as part of the state central portal to bring all government ministries and agencies into one site. The platform will be the central point where citizens can see all the open consultations and monitor the developments of certain act. And while there is no provision that mandates the publication of the results of the consultation process, the new action plan includes a commitment to address this concern.

Another challenge highlighted during the session was how to bring OGP to the subnational or local level. It was recognized that this is an ongoing debate among practitioners working around OGP issues and that there are no clear answers in this regard.

To conclude the Romanian participants reflected on the valuable lessons from the experience of Croatia and how it will help inform their efforts to define institutional arrangements for the collaboration with civil society according to the context to Romania.

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