[liberationtech] OGP in Eastern Partnership Countries and Russia: Monitoring Methodology

[Yosem Companys]

From: Olena Kifenko <kifenko at ti-ukraine.org>

Hello all,

We are Michael Runey, Policy Analyst, and Olena Kifenko, Project
Coordinator, from Transparency International Ukraine.

TI is in the process of implementing the project "Towards Open Government
Partnership in Eastern Partnership Countries and Russia". We are working
with six states on this project (Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia,
Moldova and Russia), and our aim is to empower CSOs in those countries to
promote transparency and hold governments accountable via the global OGP
initiative.

The necessity of the OGP initiative in the post-Soviet field is hard to
overestimate: in spite of that the Soviet Union has not existed for more
than twenty years, its principals, its patterns and the drawbacks of its
political system are deeply enrooted in most of its successor countries.

In the framework of the project, we conducted research in the six partner
countries on the following topics:

- national OGP experience: coordinating interested parties, the content of
their plans and their implementation

- searching for common ground: what do the governments expect from the
process? What do donors and civil society expect?

- general agenda development for the advancement of OGP goals




Transparency International experts from the countries involved prepared
analytical papers that explicity answered these questions. We held a
conference on September 20-21 where countries' representatives presented
their papers and discussed the OGP problems and successes of their states.
You may find a presentation on the results of this meeting attached to the
letter.

The next step we would like to take is to develop a methodology for
monitoring the aforementioned governments' official compliance with OGP
standards, and here is where we need your help. A number of parties on this
working group have already developed or implemented their own
compliance-monitoring methodologies, and we want to ask if anyone would do
us the favor of sharing their experience as we go about creating our own.
Any help and/or advice would be greatly appreciated. From our side, we
would be happy to send you the materials we already have, such as
analytical papers presented by the countries and other documents connected
with the topic.

We would be very happy to cooperate with you and share our knowledge and
experience with you, as well as to receive your help!

Looking forward to further communication, and have a great day!


With best wishes,

Michael Runey and Olena Kifenko, Transparency International Ukraine
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