The Government of the Republic of North Macedonia at the session held on 26 October 2021 accepted the National Action Plan for Open Government Partnership 2021-2023 (NAP for OGP [20] 2021-2023) so that the realization of the commitments in the action plan can be smoothly started in accordance with the time frame in partnership with the commitment institutions and civil society organizations.
With the support and coordination of the Secretariat for Open Government Partnership and the Ministry of Information Society and Administration, the Foundation Open Society – Macedonia, together with two partner organizations Center for Civil Communications and Association for Emancipation, Solidarity and Equality of Women, continued its support and active involvement in the process enabling the preparation and finalization of the process for co-creation of the fifth NAP for OGP 2021-2023.
In order to provide a systematic way of planning and implementation of the consultation process, which will ensure a timely, uninterrupted, inclusive and transparent process of co-writing the fifth NAP for OGP 2021-2023, in 2020 a series of documents and materials were prepared.[2]
As part of the co-creation process, in October 2020, 3 online information meetings were held for education, in the period November-December 2020, 12 online meetings were held to identify problems, responsible institutions and the need for their possible transformation into commitments, as well as numerous and continuous individual meetings held in the period November 2020-July 2021, with institutions and civil society organizations within each priority area separately: Transparency, accountability, proactivity and inclusiveness; Preventing corruption and promoting good governance; Public Service Delivery and Access to Justice. The working groups within the priority areas facilitated 4 members of the Council for coordination and monitoring of the OGP process and the National Action Plan for OGP 2018-2020 (German Filkov, Misha Popovic, Darko Antic and Ivona Stalevska) and 4 representatives of the Civil Network OGP organizations (Marija Nikoloska Arsovska, Sefer Selimi, Ivana Petkanovska and Vesna Shapkoski), with continuous support from Gordana Gapic Dimitrovska, National OGP Coordinator at the Ministry of Information Society and Administration of RNM.
In order to confirm the importance and benefits of the dialogue in finalizing the commitments and their inclusion in the fifth NAP, in June 2021 two online workshops were held with the support of the OGP Secretariat and consultant Michael Canjares, where the commitments were finalized through an appropriate review in close cooperation with key officials from institutions and representatives of civil society organizations.
In July 2021, the members of the OGP Council, at an online session, reviewed the proposed commitments and concluded that they are harmonized and accepted by the competent institutions, while the criteria for assessing the relevance to the principles of OGP are observed in the early phase of preparation of the National Action Plan for 2021-2023.
In the following period, July-August 2021, the content of the draft NAP was available online for public consultation and submitted to the state administration bodies for opinions and comments.
Following the harmonization of the text, in the first half of September 2021, the National Action Plan for 2021-2023 was submitted to the members of the OGP Council for consideration, while on 6 October 2021, a formal hybrid session of the OGP Council was held in the presence of Joe Powell, Deputy Executive Director of the OGP for consideration of the draft NAP for POB 2021-2023 before being submitted for adoption by the Government of the RNM.
The content of the commitments was acted upon in accordance with the comments and proposals of the Independent Mechanism in order to improve the content of the NAP 2021-2023.
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From 1 December 2019, FOSM, with the support of MISA, implemented the project supported by the Secretariat for OGP to establish a new structure for coordination and monitoring of the OGP process. We have formed a Network of CSOs for OGP which currently has 77 CSOs and is open to membership of other organizations that will express interest in involvement. At the same time, through a consultative process, we developed and established the model for the Council for Coordination and Monitoring of the Open Government Partnership Process and the National Action Plan for Open Government Partnership 2018-2020, which aims to encourage transparency and openness of public administration bodies, ensure cross-sectoral cooperation and encourage the participation of civil society in the implementation of the OGP process in order to create a structured dialogue between civil society and the authorities, civil society organizations, citizens and other stakeholders in the process of designing, implementing, supporting, promoting and monitoring of OGP priorities and initiatives, in anticipation of the preparation of the new national action plan.
[1]Instead of the current term “Open Government Partnership” and “OGP”, from the session of the OGP Council held on 6 October 2021, the names “Partnerships for Open Government” and “POV” are used.
[2]Time frame and manner of implementation of the process of co-creation of NAP for OGP 2021-2023; Procedure for conducting consultations with stakeholders to create new priorities and commitments within the OGP process with a time frame; Public call for applications for participation in the process of co-creation of NAP for OGP 2021-2023; Guidelines for conducting a questionnaire to assess the implementation of NAP measures for OGP 2018-2020 and the need for their inclusion in the new NAP and developed indicators to measure the success of the implementation of the commitments of OGP AP 2021-2023. In this regard, materials arising from the consultation procedure were prepared: Plan for promotion of the public call, Educational material and Criteria for assessing the relevance and relevance to the principles of OGP (source: https://fosm.mk/wp-content /uploads/2021/04/godishen-izveshtaj-2020.pdf ). All listed materials are available at www.ovp.gov.mk .
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19 November 2021