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October 28, 2015

Advancing Open Government in Open Government Partnership States and Beyond

Director, ABA Rule of Law Initiative

This week’s Open Government Partnership (OGP) Summit in Mexico City offers a good opportunity to take stock of the American Bar Association’s contributions to OGP and, more generally, to fostering “open government” throughout the world.

The ABA Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) works throughout the world to advance the OGP principles of transparency, accountability, participation and technological innovation in the justice sector. Just a few examples include:

One striking fact, however, is that while all of these ABA ROLI projects advance open government principles, few of the countries in which we work are OGP participating states. A key role for ABA ROLI then is to mine the models and lessons being shared in Mexico City this week and to share them with our partners in the more than 50 non-OGP states in which we work. Some of these lessons will be applicable, others will not, but we ought to leverage the OGP experience, helping it to reverberate beyond OGP states, and perhaps in the process, bringing new states to the valuable OGP process.

Director, ABA Rule of Law Initiative