On 12th of February, 2015, the Parliament of Georgia expressed readiness to join the Open Government Partnership (OGP). In particular, with the command of the Chairman of the Parliament of Georgia, Inter-Factional Working Group of Parliament was composed by the members of Parliament from majority and minority factions. The Inter-Factional Group of Parliament of Georgia aims to back implementation of the principles of Open Parliament in Georgia, the integration of the Parliament in Open Government Partnership (OGP) and the creation and commitment of Action Plan of Open Parliament of Georgia.

The Inter-Factional Group carried out its activities on the basis of close cooperation with non-governmental and international organizations (e.g. United Nations Development Programme, IDFI, the European Union, Georgian Young Lawyers' Association, Transparency International Georgia, National Democratic Institute etc).

As a result, the cooperation of Inter-Factional Group of Parliament of Georgia and the Working Group of representatives of civil society turned out to be successful and the Bureau of Parliament has approved the Action Plan of Open Parliament of Georgia on the basis of the following cooperation, on 17th July of 2015. The Action Plan consists of 18 commitments and the Parliament is supposed to implement them in the years of 2015-2016. Action Plan intends to promote citizen’s engagement in the legislative activities, implement innovations in governance and support openness of the information.

It is notable that the Inter-Factional Group of Parliament of Georgia considered almost all recommendations coming from the civil society in the National Action Plan development process.

The Open Government Partnership team announced the OGP Government Champions Award in September 2015. The Award is intended to showcase the ideal co-creation dynamic between the government and civil society while elaborating the National Action Plan; to provide a high-level political visibility to the key actors who have played an immense role in upholding the OGP commitments and award the team that shared responsibility, authority and co-created the Action Plan, successfully managed safeguarding the voice of civil society actors in the National Action Plan development process and embraced the recommendations from civil society regardless political sensitivity of initiatives and difficulty for the government.

“Institute for Development of Freedom of Information” (IDFI) has nominated the Inter-Factional Working Group of the Parliament of Georgia as the participant of the competition. Moreover, IDFI prepared a video and the description of the involvement of Parliament of Georgia in Open Government Partnership, which was presented to the organizers of the competition. As a result, the Inter-Factional Group of Parliament of Georgia was selected as a semi-finalist and the award winner will be determined by a public vote. Voting procedure has begun and will last till 27th of October. Please, follow the link and express your support for Inter-Factional Group of Parliament of Georgia.

Winning the competition will give the opportunity to Georgian team of OGP to gain international recognition, which will further strengthen Georgia’s position in the framework of Open Government Partnership.