New Zealanders are being asked to contribute their ideas for ways government can improve its openness as part of the international Open Government Partnership (OGP) through an interactive online forum running until this Wednesday, or by coming along to a workshop in Wellington this Friday.
“New Zealand’s second National Action Plan is being developed and we are looking for New Zealanders’ ideas on steps we can take to make government more open, accountable and responsive,” says State Services Commission Deputy Commissioner Al Morrison.
“New Zealand’s government is internationally recognised as one of the most trustworthy and open in the world, but we can do better,” he said.
People need to get in quickly to contribute their ideas for actions to be considered for New Zealand’s second National Action Plan.
In case you're wondering, yes, this is the only press release SSC has issued on the consultation - and indeed the only press release it has issued on the OGP since it appointed its ill-fated Stakeholder Advisory Group last year. You'd almost get the impression that they don't want people to know about it...
The good news is that the co-creation site now has almost 70 proposed commitments. A few are duplicates, some are of questionable relevance and quality, but there's some good stuff in there, and certainly enough to be the core of an action plan. So now we get to see whether the SSC is really interested in co-creation, or whether, having asked us to do all this work for them they're going to round-file it and just do what they were always planning on doing, with the box successfully checked. And if its the latter, then I predict that the next IRM report is not going to look very good at all.