A big thank you to everyone who participated in the open government kōrero over the past few months, as we concluded the gathering of ideas for our fourth National Action Plan. It was fantastic to hear from hundreds of New Zealanders across the country.
We’ve also been working with government agencies that have commitments in the last Plan, which ended on 30 June.
This note updates you on what happens next with both Plans.
The third National Action Plan, 2018–2021
Our 2018–2021 Plan ended on 30 June. Plan updates from March/April updates are published here.
Our draft self-assessment for the Plan will be available for feedback in the next couple of months.
In the meantime, you may be interested in research by the Policy Project team at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. The survey of community organisations, engagement specialists, and policy practitioners about community engagement in government policy making was conducted in 2020. They used the results to inform the community engagement resources they produced under Commitment 5 of the third National Action Plan. The summary also incorporates poll results from a poll of engagement specialists at the IAP2 Symposium in May this year.
The fourth National Action Plan, starting in 2022
The next step in developing our fourth Open Government Partnership National Action Plan is working with our Expert Advisory Panel (EAP), civil society groups, and others to identify which areas we might develop commitments in.
We’ve received a huge number of ideas in workshops, through our online channel and directly via email. There is a big piece of work to sort through approximately 1400 ideas and comments we’ve had from around the country. To do that, we’re working this month with representatives from our EAP and a group of civil society organisations (CSOs).
Next steps are outlined below. Because of the size and complexity of the work we’re not putting any set dates on these steps, but we’re working towards submitting our Plan in mid-2022.
Over the next couple of months, we’ll be identifying areas for further work based on what we heard from New Zealanders. We’ll also be agreeing the process for developing draft commitments. This will involve the EAP, CSOs, and officials from government agencies.
This will feed into advice to the responsible minister, the Minister for the Public Service, Hon Chris Hipkins. The Plan needs to be approved by Cabinet, so it’s important that we discuss it with the Minister at an early stage.
From there we’ll develop the draft commitments. This will involve agencies who might lead or co-lead potential commitments working with CSOs, potential partners, and others. We’ll be looking for actions that are achievable but have potential for real impact. We’re aiming to finish this mahi by early next year.
In early 2022 we’ll look to get a draft Plan to Cabinet for review and then put that out for wider public feedback. From there we’ll take what we’ve heard and finalise the Plan for submitting to OGP International.
If you want to stay involved and make sure you’re in the loop with progress on any of the above, register for our emails here or follow us on Twitter.