My post last week raised concerns over the staffing and workload challenges facing the Open Government Partnership Steering Committee, Support Unit, and Independent Reporting Mechanism in the coming months. I suspect many agree with those concerns, but I appreciate why they may have rubbed some the wrong way having aired them publicly. My intent in raising them was to hopefully avoid even more acute challenges six months from now, and that’s precisely because we want to see OGP succeed, not fail. The OGP model can work, and work powerfully, if properly resourced; I’m urging that it happens as soon as possible.
One question that has come up since the post: given the concerns I outlined in my post, and Global Integrity’s role in helping to run the OGP Networking Mechanism, does Global Integrity still support OGP?
The short answer: unequivocally yes.
OGP’s unique institutional set-up – a steering committee comprising governments and civil society, and independent support mechanisms such as the Networking Mechanism and Independent Reporting Mechanism – brings with it a unique set of growing pains that few of us have experienced before. One of those is trying to balance the desire to vigorously support OGP while simultaneously providing constructive criticism to strengthen the initiative. I realize there are times when it is difficult if not impossible to have one’s cake and eat it too, and this was one of them. I also failed to provide a courtesy “heads up” to our OGP colleagues before running the post, a boneheaded mistake for which I apologize.
Despite the growing pains, I remain as committed as ever to seeing OGP succeed. We collectively have an important moment ahead of us to make that happen.
— Nathaniel Heller
