BUDGET Secretary Florencio B. Abad said the Philippines has presented new commitments from 2015 to 2017 for achieving transparency and good governance before 160 member-states of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) at the conclusion of a meeting in Mexico City.
He said the OGP National Action Plan is not only 12 commitments from the national government, but also from the civil society and the private sector.
“We drafted our new commitments to the OGP to especially help us work closely with civil-society organizations and the private sector,” Abad said.
He added that these new commitments stress the importance of citizen participation in good governance, as well as ensure sustainable development for succeeding administrations.
At the three-day meeting in Mexico City, Abad said the Philippines was commended for its outstanding efforts to deepen citizen engagement in the budget process.
The budget agency launched the OGP in 2011 to provide an international platform for domestic reformers committed to making their governments more open, accountable and responsive to citizens.
Since then, the OGP has grown from its eight founding countries—including the Philippines—to 66 participating countries. In all of these countries, government and civil society are working together to develop and implement ambitious open government reforms.
Among the OGP commitments lined up by the Department of Budget and Management include proactive release of government data in open formats.The goals also include publication of 6,000 datafiles in the Open Data Portal by 2017.
He said the government also committed to release new Citizen Participatory Audit Reports published and uploaded on the web site of the Commission on Audit by 2017.