Theme

In 2016, OGP took one of its foundational values - transparency – and asked applicants to show its real promise for both governments and citizens. Governments and government-controlled entities collect, commission and produce vast quantities of data and information as part of their day-to-day activities. When these are made transparent - readily available and accessible - citizens can creatively use, analyze, visualize and share them for public benefit. This can potentially lead to a wide range of impacts such as improved civic participation in public life, more efficient functioning of government and the creation of new services with social and commercial value. So what does transparency’s real promise look like for you? Did you use the right to information law in your country to hold your government accountable? Have you used government held data to develop an app that citizens widely use to better access public services? Did you help organize data in a way that makes government functioning more effective and save money? The winners of this year’s Open Government Awards show us some ways they have made transparency count. What is remarkable about the winning initiatives is that they did not just end their efforts at advocating for open data or even developing an app, but rather pushed far beyond that to create awareness among user communities (from media to citizens), modeled data use, and collaborated with the government in implementing this initiatives.

Participation

Civil society organizations from all OGP participant countries were eligible to apply. OGP received 42 applications, with 28 passing to the evaluation stage. While civil society organizations were the primary applicants, all applications had to be validated by a government agency working on the initiative in the application. Additionally, initiatives were required to be directly related to an OGP National Action Plan or specific commitment.