On September 25th, 15th working meeting of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Forum took place in Tbilisi Marriot. Representatives of the non-governmental, international and public organizations attended the meeting. Among them were the representatives of the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI): the director of IDFI and OGP Forum Chair - Giorgi Kldiashvili, Chairman of the Board of IDFI - Levan Avalishvili and the project coordinator - Davit Maisuradze.
The OGP Forum Secretariat, which is formed by the staff of Analytical Department of the Ministry of Justice, presented the mid-term analysis on fulfillment of the commitments laid out in the OGP 2014-2015 Georgia Action Plan. The report reviews the fulfillment of commitments by June 2015.
There are 27 commitments in the OGP 2014-2015 Georgia Action Plan, 9 from them have been completely fulfilled, 11 are mostly fulfilled and 7 are partially fulfilled.
The commitments that have been completely fulfilled are: Voice of the consumer, New customer comfort-oriented service - Justdrive, Transparency and impartiality of civil service recruitment process, Publishing financial declarations and other related information on political parties in machine readable format, Develop online public consultations tool and Ensure accessibility of webpage of Ministry of Interior for people with disabilities, Proactive publication of surveillance statistics, Public e-procurement system extended: "Everyone Sees Everything" and Develop alternative channels to connect to "112".
Following commitments have been mostly fulfilled: Insurance services at the Public Service Hall, Services of the National Agency for State Property Management in PSH, Development of Community Centers in Georgia, Transformation of public libraries for regional development, Digital Signature and online authentication, Create open data portal (data.gov.ge), Elaborate Freedom of Information Act, Open Government Georgia's Forum - coordinating mechanisms on the national level, Set up public officials' asset declaration monitoring system, Raise public awareness on the electoral process, Increase openness and accessibility of National Archives and Create and publish electronic catalogues of the documents preserved in the Ministry of Internal Affairs Archive.
Partially fulfilled commitments: Develop Citizen's Portal www.my.gov.ge, Introduction of e-Governance in local self-governments, E-petitions portal I-Change.ge, Establish an effective mechanism to inform the public on budgetary processes, Develop electronic human resources management system for civil service, Digital preservation system: e-archive, Increase efficiency and transparency of public finance management system and Interactive Statistics and Crime Mapping.
According to the OGP Forum Secretariate, there are no commitments in the Action plan that has not been fulfilled at some extent. The action plan will come to its end by the end of December. Thus, the final version of the mid-term analysis of the action plan will be presented to the Open Government Partnership on September 30th, 2015.
OGP's Action Plan Georgia 2014-2015 answers four challenges of OGP with 16 responsible agencies on 27 commitments of the Action Plan. Challenges are:
1. Improving Public Services
2. Increasing Public Integrity
3. More effectively Managing Public Resources
4. Creating Safer Communities
The meeting of the forum took place with the support of USAID under the project of "Good Governance Initiative (GGI) in Georgia".