Open Government Partnership Global Summit 2018

In recent years, economic growth has facilitated the rapid expansion of basic public services across countries in the Asia Pacific region. Yet, access and quality vary sharply and there are major distributional disparities both within and across countries.

As governments strive to make efforts to ensure that supply catches up with burgeoning demand, we see some crucial trends in public service delivery, including: (1) the private provision and public-private partnership models; (2) leveraging ICT for improving service provision (e.g. e-delivery of services and one-stop platforms, combining AI, big data analytics with algorithms for targeted provision, data disclosures, e-participation and grievance redressal mechanisms); (3) harnessing the power of social innovation (e.g. co-design and co-production of public services with citizens, the private sector and intermediaries, and encouraging experimental approaches to service design and service provision).

Open government principles are paramount in ensuring that as these trends unfold inclusion and responsiveness to citizen needs and securing tangible improvements in access and quality remain front and center.

OGP countries in the Asia Pacific region have made, and in several cases, delivered significant cross-cutting reforms across service delivery sectors that both provide inspiration to others, and raise questions on what the next generation of ambitious open government reforms in public services could be, as they also strive to meet the SDGs many of which are anchored in improving basic public services. This session will focus on these questions and on how citizens can be further empowered to participate in policy processes and contribute to innovations in improving the reach, access and quality of public services.