Definition:
Being open and transparent means that people can see or find out why the government does what it does. Accountability means the government is answerable for its work, actions, and decisions.
We want to hear from you:
In the context of future Open Government Partnership commitments, we are interested in building on the work we have been doing on transparency and accountability:
- What would you like to see happening differently to encourage greater transparency and accountability?
- Who should be involved?
- How would that make a difference to you and others?
- What have you heard friends and family members, or others, talking about when it comes to this topic?
Here’s some more ideas on this theme that came out of our 2020 workshops: OGP NAP4 Ideas Transparency Accountability
With the idea generation workshops continuing into July, we’ll also be keeping this challenge open until Wednesday 28 July.
Why?
For people to understand how our system of government works, they need access to data and evidence that will inform government decisions. This allows for effective participation, improved understanding of the decision-making process, and increased trust.
Examples:
New Zealand has developed three previous OGP National Action Plans with commitments to support transparency and accountability. For example, in National Action Plan 3:
- Commitment 7: Official Information: aims to improve the availability of government information by providing advice to the Government on whether to do a formal review of official information legislation to ensure it is fit for purpose; and progressively increasing the proactive release of official information.
- Commitment 8: Review of government use of algorithms: aims to increase the transparency and accountability of how government uses algorithms – automatic decision-making processes used by computer programmes – to identify patterns in data.
- Commitment 9: Increase the visibility of government’s data stewardship practices: the government collects and uses data on behalf of New Zealanders and has a duty to ensure that it is used responsibly and ethically and protected. The aim of this commitment is that New Zealanders will better understand how government is doing this and be able to hold government to account.
What have people said?
In 2018 we received over 200 ideas that expressed in various ways the need to increase government transparency and accountability, that all New Zealanders should be able to access government information, resource, and services easily - in whatever way works for them. There were concerns that information, and government publications generally, need to be written in a way that is more accessible to the general public - not written in ‘government speak’. National Action Plan 3 explains what happened to those ideas.
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