THE MINISTER FOR Public Expenditure and Reform will today announce measures that will accelerate Ireland’s membership of the Open Government Partnership (OGP).

The OGP is a global multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency.

It asks governments to make more information available about their activities, empower citizens through increased civic participation, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

Ireland is expected to join the partnership in April 2014.

Speaking ahead of an OGP summit in London, Howlin said that Ireland will take steps to ensure membership of the OGP.

“As part of the process and in response to some key recommendation contained in the recent report on Ireland’s OGP priorities proposed by civil society groups I am proposing a suite of measures designed to provide major impetus to Open Data in Ireland.

Open Data – more open access to public sector data – has a significant potential to yield substantial benefits to the citizen and the economy as well as underpinning greater openness, transparency and accountability.

These measures include:

• Signing up to the G8 Open Data Charter – seen as the international standard for Open Data
• establishing an Open Data Board
• setting up an Open Data Implementation Group
• building an online Open Data Platform

Howlin concluded:

“The delivery of these commitments on Open Data at the Summit can drive innovation and economic growth, improve public services and strengthen performance accountability by creating a culture in which public sector data is widely accessible for re-use and the realisation of user benefits.”

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