Access Info Europe is leading a new campaign to create Open Government Standards and promote them around the world. The idea is to set standards on what open, transparent, accountable and participatory government really means.

Open Government is a hot topic right now, but what does it really mean in practice? What should governments be doing in the areas of Transparency, Participation and Accountability to qualify as “open governments”? What are the uses of new communications technologies which really advance openness as opposed to merely perpetuating existing bureaucratic practices in a digital environment?

Over the next few months, we aim to answer those questions, drawing together all the standards already developed by civil society into a coherent structure around the emerging concept of open government.

Our aim is to reach an agreement on the basic elements of what constitutes open government so that we can call on our governments to meet this standard. The Open Government Standards will be designed for all countries, with a particular relevance for members of the Open Government Partnership.

We will also identify the actions that governments should take in order to make real progress in promoting the three core pillars of open government:

Transparency, accountability, and participation.

Other groups involved in this process include the Alianza Regional

Once the standards have been developed, as the result of a consultative process, we will use them as indicators to measure the open government action plan of participating state in the OGP as well as other national and sub-national openness initiatives.

What we are asking of you

If you have ideas about what should be included in the standards, we would love to hear from you. Otherwise, what we are looking for at this point is a simple expression of interest, by writing to ideas@opengovstandards.org.

For more information visit our temporary web site: http://www.opengovstandards.org/

SOURCE: http://www.access-info.org/en/open-government-data/272-call-for-input-for-ogs