The global movement to promote open government commitments has grown exponentially and received positive responses from leaders and citizens across the globe. The movement was internationally recognised in 2011 when leaders from eight different countries co-established the Open Government Partnership (OGP). As a global initiative, the OGP aims to secure concrete commitments from its member countries to promote transparency, encourage public involvement, tackle corruption, and develop new technology in strengthening democratic and participative policy-making process. Currently, the OGP has been collaborating with 75 participating countries that willing to take part in reforming governments, encouraging various initiatives, and placing people at the heart of governance. As a result, more than 2500 commitments across the world have been declared by different governments from both national and sub-national level.

As a forum for open government experts and initiators, the OGP attempts to consistently provide guidance for its member countries to unlock their potentials through openness and collaboration from multi-stakeholders. This forum has become not only a learning and consulting network but also a platform to collaborate best practices in achieving more inclusive development. However, the open government’s success is not merely measured by transparent acts performed by the authority. Instead, the open government initiatives should determine how openness in development process could bring greater benefits, especially for the ordinary citizens. The questions that emerge then are: how are open government principles merged into a national action plan? What are steps for implementing the open government initiatives at national and subnational level? What are the obstacles and challenges in implementing open government?
Based in Indonesia, one of the co-founder countries of the OGP, Universitas Airlangga proudly presents the Indonesian Association for Public Administration (IAPA) International Conference 2017. This year, the conference will specifically address the open government issues, within the theme of “Towards Open Government: Finding the Whole Government Approach.” Planned to be held on 8-9 September 2017, the IAPA International Conference will divide the main theme into four different discussions: 1) From Reactive to Proactive: Public Administration Response to Freedom of Information Act, 2) Shifting from E-Government to E-Governance, 3) Open Government in Achieving Sustainable Development Goals, 4) Inclusiveness Aspect in Open Government.

1) From Reactive to Proactive: Public Administration Response to Freedom of Information Act
This panel will discuss the open government initiative in proposing ‘open by default’ mechanism following the freedom of information (FoI) act. Beth Noveck, the director of the White House Open Government Initiative (2009-2011), states that open government reform would take place in two phases. The first one is how the government provides a systematic information system from the crowd to the center, urging the interoperability of data and information access across multinetwork. This phase will stimulate the proactive disclosure procedure of information request instead of reactive. The second phase concentrates on increasing the participation and collaboration from different stakeholders after the access of data and information has been set to open by default. Hence, the freedom of information act is a crucial step from each government before implementing open government initiative. Thus this panel will cover on the obstacles, challenges, and reccomendations regarding the FoI implementation.

2) Shifting from E-Government to E-Governance
This panel will cover on how the development of ICT could become a fundamental part in implementing the open government reforms. Numerous governments today have implemented open data, e-strategic management, smart city, complaint-handling system, or other initiatives related to the ICT. With the tremendous development of ICT, it turns out that the term of E-Government is shifted into E-Governance when non-government sectors are given a chance to access open government data and contribute significantly in development. This sub-topic aims to highlight strategies in adopting those technology-driven initiatives at any government level, what the recommended steps are in tackling challenges and obstacles such as digital divide, lack of infrastructure, and the fear of creative disruption.

3) Open Government in Achieving Sustainable Development Goals
This panel concentrates on how each country implementing open government reforms in order to achieve the sustainable development goals, the global commitment involving 17 “global goals” with 169 targets, spearheaded by the United Nations. Discussion in this panel will also focus on how the open government acts take part and address the global problems such as environment protection, poverty eradication, quality education, and renewable energy.

4) Inclusiveness Aspect in Open Government
This sub-topic covers on how open government could benefit and create an inclusive environment where development should be driven by and from the community to the community. Not only emphasising on how open government could create a more democratic and participative mechanism in the policy-making process, but this panel will be dedicated also to tackle any kinds of discriminations that prevent social inclusion in development. In addition, this panel also covers issues on democracy participatory process, civic engagement and empowerment, local government, and gender issues in public administration.

We do hope that the IAPA International Conference “Towards Open Government: Finding the Whole Government Approach” will not only benefit to expand the OGP initiative but also broaden knowledge as well as network on open government issues and initiatives. Ultimately, we expect that this conference can be a platform to discuss and share the discourse and best practices among academics, government officials, and practitioners in implementing openness in any governments in the world.