WeOpenGov: Civil Society-Public Agencies Network for Open Government
The ‘WeOpenGov’ project addresses the need to create a permanent multistakeholder civil society-government forum for open government. Fragmentary civil society participation in the design, implementation and monitoring of public policy for open government is the main challenge. Another challenge is the mutual trust deficit among civil society and policy makers. Civil society organizations question the willingness of government agencies to cooperate, while the latter doubt about the CSOs capacity to effectively contribute to their activities.
Members of the Informal Network include Transparency International Greece, GFOSS, Vouliwatch, Open Knowledge Foundation Greece, HIGGS, Impact Hub Athens, Sci-Fi, Solidarity Now and KefiM. The purpose of the ‘WeOpenGov’ is to set up a permanent, fully functional network of at least 25 CSOs, 15 government agencies, 5 academic institutions, and 5 private companies. Members of the network will regularly convene and cooperate with one another to develop common activities in the context of Greece’s national Open Government Action Plans and beyond. Planned activities for implementation include the administrative coordination of the network members, exchange of good practice between network members as well as with other networks, training in open government skills and development of common activities. 100 persons from civil society, public sector, academic institutions, and companies are the beneficiaries of the project.
Transparency International Greece coordinates the civil society members of the network and all of the project activities. GRNET coordinates the public sector agencies participating in the network and the team of the National Kapodistrian University of Athens is in charge for training 100 members of the WeOpenGov Network and the WeOpenGov award.
