In December 2018, Canada’s 2018-2020 National Action Plan on Open Government went live. This is Canada’s fourth plan on Open Government, and we think it is our most ambitious to date.
It’s important that we report our progress to Canadians. Previously, we created a Quarterly Progress Tracker to tell you what we had done in implementing our commitments. Overall this was a good experience but we want to make it better.
A new approach for tracking commitment progress
We have come up with a new approach for tracking our progress. We’ve made it simpler and more efficient. For example, departmental commitment leads will upload their own progress to the online tracker, avoiding multiple internal rounds of approvals, and ensuring updates are timely and relevant. This new approach promotes working in an “open by default” environment, and allows commitment leads to report more directly to Canadians.
This regular tracking will ensure we meet our commitment deadlines and make adjustments where needed. Our hope is that it will:
- improve tracking efficiency
- reduce the amount of writing and approvals needed
Path forward
The updates to commitments from each department will include:
- commitment status
- progress to date
- supporting evidence
- challenges
The updates for the first quarter, ending in March 2019, have been published as a dataset on open.canada.ca. In the coming months, we will be developing a new user interface. Our goal is to create an easy-to-read, searchable and user-friendly interface. Do you have ideas of how this could work? Give us a shout at open-ouvert@tbs-sct.gc.ca.
We are encouraging Canadians to critically assess and examine our progress, to hold us accountable. Check out what departmental commitment leads have published and let us know what you think. Are you happy with the progress made? Do you have ideas for solutions to the challenges that have been highlighted?
We want to hear from you. You can comment on the tracker, email us, and Tweet using the hashtag #opengovcan. We look forward to hearing your thoughts!
Nadiya Safonova
Nadiya is a member of the Open Government team at TBS, helping to support the implementation of Canada’s National Action Plans on Open Government. This includes coordination and tracking of open government efforts across the government. Prior to joining TBS, Nadiya worked as an analyst in the Data, Results and Delivery Division at Environment and Climate Change Canada where she assisted with tracking progress on Canada’s Mandate Letter Commitments in the environment portfolio.
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