The Open Government Partnership is a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.
One of its programs, the Open Government Partnership (OGP) - Local program, is an initiative that recognizes and supports the role that municipal, city, metropolitan, state, regional, and provincial entities play in advancing open government.
OGP launched a Subnational Pilot in 2016, with 15 pioneering subnational governments submitting and implementing their first Action Plans 2016-2017. On April 2018, South Cotabato was chosen to be among the five (5) new additional members of OGP – Local Program.
As the latest addition to the cohort of commitment-holders at the sub-national level of the OGP-Local Program, the Provincial Government of South Cotabato (PGSC) conducted the South Cotabato - OGP Co-creation Workshop, co-funded by the ECCP - European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines / HIVOS and Mahintana Foundation, Inc., last June 21, 2018, at The Farm @ Carpenter Hill, City of Koronadal, South Cotabato.
This was done in preparation for the Open Government Partnership Global Summit on July 17-19, 2018 in Tblisi, Georgia where South Cotabato's commitments will be launched and presented by OGP Philippines.
Among the possible areas of Open Government committed are Open Contracting, Open Mining Information, Open Legislation, Open Monitoring and Evaluation and Open Information.
To ensure a high level of public participation and influence in the development of commitments, the PGSC actively involved national government agencies and non-government organizations in this co-creation process.
