OGP's assessment and challenges ahead of the forthcoming Global Summit in Spain

The international open government community is preparing for the 9th Global Summit of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), which will take place in Vitoria-Gasteiz next October.. For three days, government representatives, civil society leaders and policy makers from around the world will exchange experiences, best practices and progress on open government initiatives. The choice of Vitoria-Gasteiz as host city, a medium-sized city but a symbol of sustainability and good urban management, also reflects the commitment of the outgoing presidency of the Spanish Government in the OGP to the integration of open government at all levels of administration, from the municipal and regional to the state level.

A crucial meeting for the open government ecosystem

The OGP 2025 Global Summit comes at a time of a complex global context. Democracy today faces several relevant threats,from disinformation to increasing authoritarianism. This is why the Vitoria-Gasteiz Summit is emerging as a potential global catalyst to revitalise the momentum of open government as a response to these challenges. It is an opportunity to bring the international community together and demonstrate once again that transparency, participation and collaboration remain effective tools for strengthening democracies.

Since its founding in 2011, the OGP has grown rapidly and established itself as a wide-ranging international alliance. It currently brings together some 75 countries and 150 local jurisdictions (representing more than 2 billion people), along with hundreds of civil society organisations, and accumulated more than 4,500 reform commitments embodied in some 300 national action plans during its first decade.

A global summit bringing together so many actors offers an unparalleled forum for sharing learnings, assessing advances and announcing new commitments.

OGP in context: 14 years of open government

After nearly 15 years of existence, the OGP can boast some significant achievements. Since its creation, many countries have adopted access to information laws, open data portals and transparency policies that did not exist before. Innovative initiatives such as citizen participation platforms and collaborative accountability mechanisms have also been implemented. Moreover, the Alliance incorporates an additional accountability component through the independent review mechanism (IRM) that publicly assesses the implementation of these commitments.

However, it is not all victories, as several civil society actors have also been pointing out some limitations and inconsistencies in the current OGP. Thus, according to OGP's own data and its IRM, there is an implementation gap in the commitments made, with multiple projects never getting off the ground, either due to lack of resources or political will. Another important warning sign comes from the deterioration of the democratic environment in some countries, with some regression on critical issues such as the protection of civic space. This also highlights a broader problem: high-level political commitment to open government is not always sustained, and without active leadership, OGP loses relevance.

The balance of the Spanish Presidency of the OGP

Spain holds the OGP co-presidency from October 2024 until the end of September 2025, shared with civil society and academic representative Cielo Magno (from the Philippines). This leadership position is also a unique opportunity to influence the Alliance's priorities and messages at this key moment. From the outset, the Spanish government identified three strategic areas for its co-presidency:

• Putting the citizen at the centre of decision-making.
• Strengthen democracies to make them more resilient.
• Protecting citizens' rights in the digital transformation.

These axes align with some of the current global concerns cited above: the crisis of confidence in institutions, the threat of authoritarianism and the new risks to rights in the digital environment. Spain also declared its intention to promote innovative ideas, taking advantage of technologies such as open data and artificial intelligence as tools to successfully carry out the double transition, green and digital.

Internally, Spain has launched the process called "Consensus for an Open Administration", which brings together civil servants, experts and citizens in 18 working groups to rethink the functioning of government through innovative methodologies and citizen participation. This effort, which is being developed in the Laboratory for Public Innovation (LIP) of the National Institute of Public Administration (INAP), as well as in the HAZLAB laboratory for innovation in citizen participation, seeks to present concrete proposals to improve trust in institutions through openness and collaboration.

The government is also preparing its V Open Government Action Plan (2025-2029), whose public consultation phase received more than 400 proposals from citizens and organisations, multiplying participation by 2.5 times compared to the previous Plan.

The challenge of open government: reforms, scope and obstacles

In response to the above challenges, the OGP has recently launched the Open government challenge. It is an initiative that seeks to channel reforming energies into ten priority areas, seeking common and significant progress in the following areas over the next five years:

• Access to information (transparency and right to know).
• Anti-corruption (public integrity and anti-corruption).
• Civic space (protection of freedoms of association, expression, assembly).
• Climate and environment (transparent and participatory climate governance).
• Digital governance (ethical and open use of data and technologies).
• Fiscal openness (open budgets, transparent procurement and spending).
• Gender and inclusion (gender equality, inclusion of vulnerable groups).
• Justice (open justice, access to justice and transparent judicial systems).
• Freedom of media (protection of independent journalism and truthful reporting).
• Public participation (effective mechanisms for citizen participation in decisions).

Each thematic area is accompanied by a guide with examples of reforms, inspiring use cases and ideas for specific commitments that countries can adopt. The ambition is for these ten areas to concentrate global efforts, encouraging collaboration and avoiding dispersion. The OGP will regularly highlight the most ambitious reforms in each field in order to serve as an example and inspiration for others. In fact, it will also be in Vitoria-Gasteiz where the most promising and impactful reforms submitted by countries to the challenge will be initially recognised through the Open Gov Challenge Awards, which will reward environment, innovation, sustainability and participation in each of the above-mentioned areas.

Digital rights, open data and ethics

One of the most innovative strategic dimensions of the OGP agenda, and one on which the Spanish presidency has also placed special emphasis, is the intersection between open government and digital transformation. In the midst of 2025, it is clear that government openness is no longer limited to transparency portals, but encompasses issues such as ethics in the use of algorithms, protection of Internet rights, responsible data management and citizen participation supported by new technologies. Digital ethics thus ceases to be a niche issue and becomes part of the mainstream open government agenda.

On the one hand, the expansion of artificial intelligence and automated decision-making in the public sector generates both promise and concern. Promises, because used well these tools can improve the efficiency and personalisation of public services. Concern, because they introduce risks of opacity, discriminatory risks and threats to privacy. This is where open government can add value through proactive measures to ensure digital inclusion and prevent algorithmic discrimination. Some of the suggested model reforms in this area include:

• Registers of algorithms so that citizens know what automated systems their government is using and with what data).
• Human rights impact assessments before deploying AI in the administration.
• Creation of specific complaints mechanisms when an automated decision causes harm.
• Establishment of independent AI oversight bodies.

On the other hand, digital citizens' rights have become increasingly important. Spain, for example, enacted a Charter of Digital Rights that recognises principles such as digital identity, personal data protection, net neutrality and online safety for vulnerable groups. This charter shows the way in which governments can commit to extending classic human rights to the digital realm, and it is to be hoped that other countries will also make commitments along the same lines.

Other critical issues with the increasing digitisation of governments are privacy and data protection. This is where the notion of data governance comes in, which implies clear rules on what data a government opens up, how it anonymises it, how it allows its re-use and how it protects individuals. The opening of data also remains a core component of the agenda, but is now viewed through a more mature lens. After years of open data portals, it is recognised that it is not enough to publish new datasets, but also to ensure their quality, relevance and effective use.

In short, digital rights, data and AI governance, digital ethics and open data constitute a new transversal axis that is gaining increasing prominence in the OGP, partly also thanks to the impulse given by the Spanish presidency. They represent the adaptation of open government to the challenges of the 21st century. Without addressing this digital dimension, the open government ecosystem would risk falling behind technological developments and the other pillars of open government could be undermined by algorithmic "black boxes".

Conclusions: a look towards Vitoria-Gasteiz 2025

The upcoming OGP Global Summit in Vitoria-Gasteiz is therefore seen as a new turning point for the open government movement. Its global relevance lies in the need to reaffirm values and concrete actions of open government in a context where democracy faces serious challenges. We have seen that the OGP comes to this new milestone with several strengths, but also with unfinished business and some uncomfortable questions:

Should tenure criteria be tightened for governments that fail to meet their commitments? How to finance the implementation of commitments in low-capacity countries? Is the real impact on people's daily lives being adequately measured?

The Spanish presidency, for its part, has brought enthusiasm and fresh ideas, with a particular emphasis on citizenship and digitalisation, but also with the ultimate challenge of ensuring that these new principles are translated into concrete actions and results at the global level. The presence of 2,000 international delegates will provide an opportunity to build new coalitions to enable such change. If governments and civil society can agree on ambitious new goals in the digital sphere, OGP will once again have proven its worth as a democratic innovation driver.

The best governments are those that open their doors, their data and their processes to citizens. If this meeting serves to strengthen this conviction and translate it into concrete reforms, it will undoubtedly be the best possible outcome.

Content prepared by Carlos Iglesias, Open data Researcher and consultant, World Wide Web Foundation. The contents and views reflected in this publication are the sole responsibility of the author.