Open governance in Hungary – Civil day at the Budapest Institute

25/11/2015

Civil society organisations discussed the state of play and the future of open government in Hungary at the event hosted by the Budapest Institute and the Opengovernment.hu.

The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is an international initiative that aims to secure commitments from governments to their citizenry to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

The Hungarian National Protection Service launched an online public consultation process of the second Hungarian Action Plan in May 2015 - with significant input from NGOs on a variety of issues. The government approved the second action plan in July 2015.

These developments gave us the idea of promoting multilateral exchange on the state-of-play of open government in Hungary. While the first Hungarian Action Plan with some completed commitments has arrived to its final phase, we would like to contribute to the continuity of civil society organisations’ efforts following up and having an insight on the old and new national commitments.

As advocates and national experts committed to the issue of open government, we see now a new window of opportunity to spread the idea and mission of the Open Government Partnership, to broaden the set of civil actors involved in this field and to promote multilateral discussion and exchange on the challenges all of us face in the field.

We expect that this Civil Day will be the first of a series of meet-up and discussion-series bringing diverse ideas and views together, leading to the development of a shared vision of open governance in Hungary.