Open Government Partnership (OGP) & People Powered Positive Outcome Story: The Open Gov Challenge how to take public participation online
How can governments engage people in meaningful decision-making online? What are good practices for including all voices in digital participation, especially those most affected by policy decisions? How can we harness the benefits of rapid technological change while guarding against threats like disinformation? What are the best digital participation tools for governments with limited financial resources or technical expertise? These questions sit at the intersection of digital governance and public participation, two focus areas of the Open Gov Challenge. The main goal is to expand people’s power to make government decisions by addressing common challenges that are holding back open and participatory governments around the world.
Considering the above challenge OGP started collaborating with People Powered – a global hub for participatory democracy — the direct participation of people in making the decisions that affect their lives. Since 2021, it has curated and created resources addressing challenges around digital participation to help governments and organizations more effectively engage people online. People Powered, with support from civic tech experts, developed an interactive guide to digital participation platforms, which explains the key features of these civic tech tools, shares lessons learned from users around the world, suggests best practices, and offers practical resources for selection and implementation. The guide offers answers to key challenges faced by governments exploring online participation: ensuring that participation is inclusive and accessible, thinking through the process of selecting a tool, getting help to set it up, guarding against cyberattacks, and more. This digital participation guide was developed collaboratively and iteratively to ensure that contributors represent diverse gender and geographic backgrounds and account for different perspectives on what’s most helpful for people in various contexts.
The aim in developing these resources is to empower governments to engage people online, by synthesizing global knowledge and presenting it in accessible formats. This would in turn contribute to nudge the institutions that use digital tools and the developers that create them to adopt good practices on issues like inclusion, transparency, accessibility, and privacy, which can in turn foster more positive participation experiences with a meaningful impact on decision-making. The above-mentioned resources can be used to support robust digital governance that centers public participation. They’re a great place to start when designing digital engagement for the co-creation of OGP action plans, or as a source of inspiration for reforms on digital participation.