The second European Outreach and Support Meeting of the Open Government Initiative (OGP) was held on October 4-5, in Dubrovnik. The meeting was organized by the Government of the Republic of Croatia and Croatian NGOs, in cooperation with the Government of the United Kingdom, which is one of the co-chairs of the Initiative, and with support of the EU project for technical assistance to civil society organizations (TACSO).
The plenary session focusing on OGP as a joint endeavour of citizens, civil society and governments addressed the following issues: results of assessment of national action plans; models of cooperation between CSOs and governments in implementing action plans; and best practices and lessons learned during the first six months of national action plans implementation.
At the plenary ECNL's Executive Director, Ms Katerina Hadzi-Miceva Evans pointed out that ECNL has worked for a long time in the field of strengthening of a supportive legal environment for civil society in Europe, by developing expertise and building capacity in legal issues affecting not-for-profit organisations and public participation. Ms Hadzi-Miceva Evans emphasized that in addition to promoting innovative solutions and use of technology for implementing open government policy, there needs to be a clear commitment by all OGP participating countries concerning enabling legal and fiscal environment for work of CSOs.
There cannot be real progress in open government policy without progress in creating enabling environment for civil society development.
ECNL's Supervisory Board member, Mr Igor Vidacak (Director of the Government’s Office for Cooperation with NGOs) said at the plenary that the UK experience in this area is particularly interesting to Croatia, especially regarding models of cooperation with civil society organizations, since UK is one of the most advanced countries when it comes to the openness of the Government towards citizens.
For more details on the meeting, please visit: http://blog.opengovpartnership.org/2012/10/update-from-the-second-ogp-european-outreach-and-support-meeting-in-dubrovnik/