Open Government Partnership New Zealand National Action Plan 2016-2018
Date: December to February 2018
Commitment 5 progress report: December 2017 to February 2018
Commitment 5: Ongoing engagement for OGP
Lead agency: The State Services Commission (SSC)
We will build a flexible and enduring platform for engagement between the New Zealand government and New Zealand communities around the Open Government Partnership.
Milestones
Milestone 1
Work with the Department of Internal Affairs to improve government’s access to, and use of, digital public engagement tools
End date: June 2018
Progress: underway
Milestone 2
Work with the Expert Advisory Panel to decide how best to report on progress against OGP milestones
Progress: completed
Milestone 3
Engage with New Zealanders to develop the approach to the next plan
End date: June 2018.
Progress: underway
What have we been doing?
- Government Information Services (GIS) in the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) has finished the six week discovery phase to understand how digital technologies can best support participation in government. It found that the public seeks meaningful engagement with government, but faces barriers from complex, lengthy documents, tight response time- frames, and a lack of trust that their feedback will make a difference. To meet this need, government needs to use a range of digital technologies to embed openness and transparency, as well as collaborative and deliberative engagement methods. The full discovery report will be published on digital.govt.nz.
- A public survey to discover how New Zealanders would like to be engaged in the next action plan process was launched on Monday 27 November 2017 by the State Services Commission. The survey was sent to the almost 800 subscribers on the New Zealand OGP mailing list, and was publically available from the New Zealand OGP website.
- Results from this public survey indicate that the engagement to develop the next Open Government Partnership (OGP) action plan should emphasise digital tools and livestreaming, alongside in-person events.
- Alongside the survey, officials from the State Services Commission also conducted interviews with community group representatives, who engaged in the development or review of New Zealand’s current action plan. One interview has been delayed until March to accommodate stakeholder availability. Currently key stakeholders from community groups discussed a number of common themes in the 2018 OGP engagement: transparent approaches and outcomes; a variety of engagement channels; and easy to understand and accessible.
- These have been used to inform the approach to the next OGP action plan engagement beginning at the end of March/early April 2018.
Links
- ogp.org.nz
- https://www.research.net/r/OGPConsultation
- https://www.digital.govt.nz/blog/reimagining-participatory-democracy-a-review-of-the-government-online- engagement-service/
What’s next?
- Based on insights from the review and discovery exercise, DIA proposes a work programme to support system level change in government openness, inclusion, trust and broader participation in digital-enabled democracy. The scale of the programme is funding-dependant.
- The proposed approach will be to work with agencies on current engagements and consultations to:
- make it easier for them to use a range of technologies,
- join-up standards and guidance - lifting quality and capability, and
- create an anonymised database of insights.
- This work will be done in consultation with State Service Commission and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
- The State Services Commission will be conducting one further stakeholder interview in March 2018. A report outlining the survey results and interviews will be published on the OGP website.