Open Government Partnership (OGP) Initiative, which focuses on increasing government transparency, accountability and unites 69 member countries, is selecting CSO representative organizations for the Steering Committee membership.

Steering Committee is an executive, decision-making body of the OGP and its primary responsibility is defending the OGP principles and disseminating them. Committee also monitors functioning of the OGP and determines policy and rules of cooperation.

Steering Committee consists of 22 members - 11 government and 11 CSO representatives. Members of the Committee are chosen for 3 year-term with the perspective of 1 additional year. There are 6 vacancies at the membership position and nominations could be made via email.

In order to become selected for the position the SCO representative must meet the following requirements:

• Ability to engage strategically at the global level, exercising good judgement and engaging effectively with senior government officials and civil society members;

• Read and represent the concerns and interests of the international civil society community;

• Powerfully and clearly articulate core OGP issues.

Nominees will be overviewed based on the above-mentioned criteria during February 19-29 and semi-finalists will be interviewed. New members will start participating in the work of Steering Committee from October 2016.

Director of Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) - Giorgi Kldiashvili is participating in the competition. Since the very first days Georgia became OGP member Giorgi has been actively involved in the process. Through these years, Giorgi has been involved in various international, regional and local conferences and workshops. He is the co-Chair of the Open Government Georgia Forum and Chairperson of the Consultative Group at the Permanent Parliamentary Council on Open and Transparent Governance. Also, IDFI is declared as a supporting organization of the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness.

Recently in October 2015, IDFI nominated Inter-Factional Group of the Parliament of Georgia for the ideal co-creation dynamic between the government and civil society while elaborating the National Action Plan. Noteworthy, the Inter-Factional Group won the nomination and was awarded with the OGP Champion's Award at the annual OGP Global Summit Mexico.

Moreover, the Open Parliament Georgia Action Plan 2015-2016 was elaborated with the coordination of IDFI and financial support of UNDP and EU.