Institutional measures to promote Open Government in Hungary

In 2012, Hungary joined an international initiative called Open Government Partnership (OGP) which is aimed at strengthening the transparency and efficiency of national governments as well as to spread the idea of open governance.

Within the framework of the OGP, Hungary adopted two national action plans, in 2013 and in 2015. The Budapest Institute was commissioned in both cases by the Independent Reporting Mechanism to assess the progress of Hungarian governments’ commitments as an independent evaluator.

In order to evaluate the progress of the national action plan, the Budapest Institute conducted surveys with domestic governmental and civil stakeholders, held interviews and thematic workshops with national stakeholders, and gathered recommendations for the next period. Based on the Government decree 1719/2016 XII.6., Hungary withdrew from the OGP, therefore the Budapest Institute suspended the second assessment project launched in September 2016.

Our assessments drew the following conclusions: in the first run Hungary focused on initiatives primarily included in the government programme combatting corruption. They had a fairly high rate of completion, though most of the recommendations pointed to the need of launching measures going beyond the realm of anti-corruption efforts (e.g., improving access to and the quality of public sector information, promoting transparency of the public sector, building capacities of independent state regulatory and audit authorities).

Also initially, all the national stakeholders welcome the collaborative process and took an active part in the OGP design, but mid-way through the implementation process, larger political issues relevant to OGP led to a breakdown in the multiactor governance framework. National commitment to open government principles would imply in the future more explicit and credible focus on participatory and collaborative policy making and also more consistency between national OGP measures and the general public policy framework.