As part of consultations to support the development of the Government of Canada’s Self-Assessment Report on Year 1 implementation of Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government, a draft of the report was shared with members of the President’s Advisory Panel on Open Government for their review.
On October 8, 2013, Treasury Board President Tony Clement invited Advisory Panel members to meet via teleconference to share their views on the government’s progress in meeting the deliverables outlined in the Action Plan, and more specifically provide comments on the draft report.
A summary of key feedback from Advisory Panel members follows here:
- Members were encouraged by the amount of work that had been accomplished on the commitments in the Action Plan within a relatively short period of time, and are looking forward to seeing more information on those initiatives that do not yet have public facing deliverables.
- Members were pleased with the work TBS has initiated with international partners in support of the G8 Open Data Charter, and multi-jurisdictional collaboration with provinces and municipalities on open licensing. They encouraged TBS to continue work with these partners in the future to encourage openness across the country and around the world.
- Based on what has been described in the Action Plan for future year activities, members observed that the pace of change in the next phase of implementation will be increasingly challenging.
- Members felt that the Self-Assessment Report should provide more information on challenges and lessons learned as part of Year 1 of implementation.
- In particular, members emphasized the need to improve the level of public consultation that has been undertaken thus far. They felt that more needs to be done to broaden the scope and approach of consultations to ensure Canada is in keeping with the principles that are guiding OGP countries.
- Members also felt that a better evaluation framework is needed to support a clearer assessment of how Canada is doing in meeting its open government objectives (e.g., more detail on commitments, milestones, metrics, etc.).
- Moving forward, members encouraged the government to be ambitious in its future commitments, stretching beyond the largely technology focus of the commitments in the first Action Plan.
- Furthermore, they recommended that a stronger focus be placed on outcomes as well as outputs to more clearly demonstrate the value of this work.
The draft Self-Assessment Report was updated to reflect these comments from Advisory Panel members to create the final Implementation of Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government (Year-1) Self-Assessment Report.