10. Provision 9: Leverage innovation and digital technology
Promote innovative ways to effectively engage with stakeholders to source ideas and co-create solutions and seize the opportunities provided by digital government tools, including through the use of open government data, to support the achievement of the objectives of open government strategies and initiatives.
Provision 9 of the Recommendation focuses on the use of innovative mechanisms and digital technologies to better involve citizens and stakeholders in decision-making processes, and to support the implementation of Adherents’ open government agendas. It builds on provision 8 by inviting Adherents to move from consultation to more engaging mechanisms, while harnessing the potential of digital government tools.
Evidence collected through the OECD Open Government Reviews and Scans suggests that countries are becoming more innovative when implementing their open government agendas. In particular, regarding the usage of citizen participation methodologies. Adherents such as Spain and Colombia are using digital tools to co-construct the commitments and priorities for their OGP Action Plans and to allow the public to follow the implementation. In 2017, Portugal launched the first-ever national Participatory Budgeting, which combines both physical meetings throughout the country and online participation methods in order to select projects to fund. The 2018 edition distributed EUR 5 million among the winning projects (OECD, 2022[1]). In a similar vein, country-wide representative deliberative processes have taken place across 15 Adherents. Notable instances include the Irish Citizens’ Assembly (2018), the French Citizens’ Convention on Climate (2020), the Climate Assembly UK (2020) and the Citizens’ Assembly on Democratic Expression in Canada (2020). Other Adherents are using open innovation mechanisms1 to solve public problems by partnering with non-governmental stakeholders through hackathons or public challenges. This is the case of the Desafios platforms implemented in Brazil (OECD, 2022[2]), and similar practices can be found in Argentina, France, Mexico and the United States.
The subnational level of government of Adherents remains at the forefront of democratic innovations, with a high number of innovative practices such as participatory budgeting, representative deliberative processes and open innovation. Evidence collected by the OECD shows that the majority (65%) of representative deliberative processes have occurred at either the local or the regional level (Figure 10.1). There are opportunities for Adherents to scale up innovation implemented at the subnational level and better link those initiatives to the broader open government agenda.
Adherents have been moving the deliberative wave forward.
A representative deliberative process is a process in which a broadly representative body of people weighs evidence, deliberates to find common ground and develops detailed recommendations on policy issues for public authorities (OECD, 2021[4]). Common examples of one-off processes are citizens’ assemblies, juries and panels. The use of these processes, named as a "deliberative wave", has been growing since the 1980s, gaining momentum since around 2010. In such a process, citizens are selected by civic lottery, meaning that they are selected by lot and statistically stratified to constitute a microcosm of the community they aim to represent. The “assembly” then listens to expert testimony and other stakeholders to deliberate in an informed manner about an early defined public problem and come up with policy recommendations. Representative deliberative processes are one of the most innovative citizen participation methods existing today.
The OECD collected evidence on the use of representative deliberative processes and published the first global report on the use of this type of method of participation called Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave (2020[5]). It registers the existence of a “deliberative wave” meaning an increased use of such processes for public decision-making. The wave started in 1979 and has been growing ever since. This is especially true of Adherents.
More than half (26) of the 43 Adherents have implemented representative deliberative processes at either the local, regional, or national level, as shown in Figure 10.2. Japan, Germany and Australia have the most processes (167, 64 and 56, respectively). Countries that have higher numbers of processes tend to be the countries where specific methodologies were developed, such as Planning Cells in Japan and Germany and Citizens’ Councils in Austria.
The usage of such processes among Adherents has particularly grown since 2008, when 20 processes took place. The wave kept growing and reached its peak in 2012 when 50 processes were registered. It has since remained steady, with 42 processes in 2019. See Figure 10.3 for details.
The usage of such processes among Adherents has also showed their versatility, as they have been used for a wealth of issues, most prominently urban planning, strategic planning and the environment. However, they have also been used for other topics, such as health, infrastructure and even constitutional questions – especially when done at the national/federal level.
Climate Assemblies have become an ever more important part of governments’ climate policy toolboxes. Although they can be undertaken at any level of government, they have often been convened at the national/federal level.
One such example is the French Citizens’ Convention on Climate (https://www.conventioncitoyennepourleclimat.fr/). After months of social unrest in 2019, President Macron announced the creation of a French Citizens’ Convention on Climate, which would gather 150 randomly selected citizens to deliberate on how to achieve a 40% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2030 while respecting social justice. They met for 21 days spread out over one year and heard from over 100 experts, academics and stakeholders. In 2020, they produced a final report comprising 149 recommendations on the issue, a large part of which was subsequently adopted.
Other examples include the Climate Assembly UK (http://www.climateassembly.uk/) and the Climate Assemblies in Poland.
Source: OECD (2020[5]), Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/339306da-en.
Beyond ad hoc processes, Adherents are also at the forefront of a new democratic paradigm: the institutionalisation of public deliberation. The OECD identified eight different models, which are all implemented by Adherents (2021[4]), as shown in Table 10.1:
Public deliberation through representative deliberative processes can have instrumental and intrinsic benefits for policy making. Evidence gathered by the OECD demonstrates that Adherents have been fundamental at building the deliberative wave over time and are almost singlehandedly responsible for its increasing use in public life. Nevertheless, public deliberation has often been undertaken in isolation from other citizen participation practices, and more generally, remains quite distant from other aspects of open government. Many opportunities for synergies are possible from the joining of forces from deliberative democrats and open government communities in open policy making.
Evidence gathered by the OECD shows that Adherents are making use of digital tools to support their open government agendas. Adherents are communicating about their open government agenda through digital channels. For example, The OECD Survey on Open Government (OECD, 2020[6]) shows that when communicating about the OGP-process, social media is the most used channel (for Adherents who are part of the OGP). When communicating about the launch of their OGP Action Plan, 74.2% of Respondents communicated through their official social media account, compared to the 6.5% that used traditional communication channels (TV, radio and press releases combined) (see the analysis of Provision 6 above).
Adherents are also increasingly creating digital spaces for citizen and stakeholder participation. In 2020 and 2021, online deliberation was the most commonly used medium for conducting a deliberative process (OECD, 2021[3]). Beyond deliberation, all Adherents are using digital portals to support citizen and stakeholder participation. 40% (14) of Adherents had a centralised government-wide participation portal and 48.6% (17) had multiple portals in place. 70.7% (58) of those platforms allow governments to inform about participatory opportunities, and 69.5% (57) have interactive functions for citizens to participate (see the analysis of Provision 3 above). The creation of centralised participation platforms, where public institutions publish consultations and engagement opportunities, have the advantage of providing a “one-stop shop” portal for citizens and stakeholders to learn about past, current and future opportunities for participation (OECD, 2022[2]).
For example, in Estonia, the E-draft and Osale platforms are mostly used for public consultations and citizen-initiated policy discussions. In addition to the government-wide portal, information on participation opportunities is available on ministries' webpages, which all have standardised sections for participation and engagement (OECD, 2022[7]). In addition, data from the OECD Survey on Open Government (OECD, 2020[6]) shows that Adherents are also using digital channels to receive stakeholders’ inputs, as 40.4% of the policy documents submitted involved online consultations, and 28% benefitted from virtual public meetings.
These findings show a positive trend but there are further opportunities to harness the full potential of technology for open government. The OECD (2020[8]) found that the absence of digital-savvy and skilled civil servants can hamper the correct and coherent implementation of digital government tools and policies. On this matter, Adherents are making efforts to build digital capacities in the public sector, both by providing resources and trainings. 89.5% (34) of Respondents have toolkits and/or guidelines for civil servants on open government data and 55.3% (21) on the use of digital technologies to foster open government. The situation is similar when it comes to providing trainings to civil servants, as 73.7% (28) of Respondents are offering trainings on open data and 60.5% (23) on digital technologies to foster open government.
When implementing digital participatory processes, Adherents could take into consideration the existing “digital divides” (i.e., the fact that societies can be divided into people who do and people who do not have access to – and the capability to use – digital technologies) and avoid the emergence of new forms of “digital exclusion” (i.e., not being able to take advantage of digital services and opportunities). A final challenge that Adherents could take into account when implementing digital tools is the protection of the digital civic space. Freedoms and rights could be protected online as they are offline, to ensure an equal and inclusive participation and reduce discriminations.
This trend reflects the wider use of digital tools in government and the extensive cooperation between public authorities and non-governmental stakeholder, mainly civictech and govtech, in developing and deploying such tools. Adherents could continue exploring the synergies with these ecosystems of technologists, and create further opportunities of collaboration, to develop new set of digital tools and to promote a more inclusive and more efficient use of technology for participation and for broader open government goals.
It is broadly agreed that the rapid digitalisation of societies, economies and governments is changing and challenging the traditional institutional mechanisms supporting the functioning of democracies (OECD, 2022[9]). The open government, digital government and innovation fields have always been synergic, and have partly developed in parallel. Open government data promotes transparency, accountability and citizen participation. By making their datasets available, public institutions become more transparent and accountable to citizens. By encouraging the use, reuse and free distribution of datasets, governments promote participation in policy making as well as in service design and delivery (Rivera Perez, Emilsson and Ubaldi, 2020[10]). These synergies are reflected in the OECD Recommendation on Digital Government Strategies (2014[11]) which understands open government data and digital government strategies as vehicles to increase openness and engagement.
Adherents’ interest in those topics is reflected in the commitments those Adherents that are part of the OGP have included in their Action Plans (OGP, 2022[12]). E-government and Open Data related commitments have been constantly present in Adherents’ Action Plans. In some countries, open data has even been one of the cornerstones of the open government agendas (e.g., Brazil, France, Canada and Estonia).
Data from the Open Government Partnership (OGP, 2022[12]) points to an increasing interest from Adherents to use their OGP Action Plans to advance the use of public innovation and emerging technologies to support an open government. Analysis of the commitments submitted by Adherents shows an increasing number of commitments related to “govtech”, “algorithms”, “artificial intelligence” and “blockchain”. For example, France, the United Kingdom and Canada are using the platform of OGP to advance algorithmic transparency and government accountability through policy discussion in the Open Algorithms Network and by advancing standards for open algorithms. This trend is also visible in the portfolio of the institutions responsible for the open government policy documents submitted by Adherents to the OECD Survey on Open Government. Policy areas related to innovation and technology are the most associated to those institutions. 72.2% (83) of the policy documents submitted by Adherents are implemented by an institution responsible for public sector reform and modernisation. In 65.2% (75) and 62.6% (72) of cases those institutions are also in charge of digital government and open government data. Lastly, in 61.7% (71) of cases, these offices are also responsible of public sector innovation (Figure 10.6).
Source: OECD (2020[6]), 2020 Survey on Open Government.
Adherents have made some progress in promoting innovative ways to involve citizens and stakeholders and seizing the opportunities of digital tools and open data. In particular:
9.1: Adherents are experimenting with innovative approaches to implement the open government principles, notably in the area of citizen and stakeholder participation. For example, many Adherents are now involving citizens and stakeholders through multilevel consultation, participatory budgeting and open innovation. Many Adherents are also at the forefront of democratic innovations and have been very active in experimenting with deliberation at the national and subnational levels. Moving forward, Adherents could scale existing good practices at the subnational level and move from experimentation to institutionalised deliberation by embedding these practices into formal mechanisms of decision. Moreover, efforts could be made to better integrate democratic innovations into the open government agenda.
9.2: In recent years, digital tools have become an important means for Adherents to implement their open government agendas. For example, most Adherents are using digital tools to communicate with the public, to increase transparency, monitor the implementation of the OGP Action Plan and involve citizens in public decision-making. Moving forward, Adherents could invest in digital skills and capacities in the public sector, take concrete actions to bridge the digital divide and protect the online civic space to create a digital ecosystem that is inclusive and accessible to all.
9.3: Open government, digital government and public sector innovation are policy areas that are interconnected and can yield positive synergies. Many Adherents initially built their open government agendas around the publication and re-use of open data as a way to foster transparency and accountability. Recently, this focus has been broadening, as OGP commitments also show a convergence among Adherents to use their open government agendas to advance policies focusing on the use of emerging technology, such as artificial intelligence, or to improve accountability of public sector innovation through algorithmic transparency. Moving forward, Adherents could pursue these efforts.
References
[1] OECD (2022), Guidelines for Citizen Participation Processes, OECD Publishing, https://doi.org/10.1787/f765caf6-en.
[9] OECD (2022), “Initial Scoping Background Note on Transforming Public Governance for Digital Democracy”.
[2] OECD (2022), Open Government Review of Brazil: Towards an Integrated Open Government Agenda, OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/3f9009d4-en.
[7] OECD (2022), The Protection and Promotion of Civic Space: Strengthening Alignment with International Standards and Guidance, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/d234e975-en.
[4] OECD (2021), “Eight ways to institutionalise deliberative democracy”, OECD Public Governance Policy Papers, No. 12, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/14e1c5e8-en-fr.
[3] OECD (2021), OECD Database of Representative Deliberative Processes and Institutions.
[8] OECD (2020), Digital Government Index: 2019 results.
[5] OECD (2020), Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/339306da-en.
[6] OECD (2020), OECD Survey on Open Government.
[11] OECD (2014), Recommendation of the Council on Digital Government Strategies, https://www.oecd.org/gov/digital-government/Recommendation-digital-government-strategies.pdf.
[12] OGP (2022), OGP Explorer, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/explorer/all-data.html (accessed on 1 December 2020).
[10] Rivera Perez, J., C. Emilsson and B. Ubaldi (2020), OECD Open, Useful and Re-usable data (OURdata) Index: 2019, https://www.oecd.org/governance/digital-government/ourdata-index-policy-paper-2020.pdf.
Note
← 1. Open innovation practices, such as crowdsourcing, hackathons, or public challenges, are a way for public authorities to tap into collective intelligence to co-create solutions to specific public issues (OECD, 2022[1]).