Pagof : Results 2019

Encouraging the administration and civil society to work towards an open government.

Numerous initiatives and significant reforms have been carried out over the last few years to improve access to information, financial transparency, citizen participation and accountability, and to satisfy citizens’ aspirations.

The Project in Support of Open Governments in French-speaking Africa (#PAGOF), implemented by CFI and Expertise France and funded by the French Development Agency (AFD), supports administrations and civil society (including the media) to improve governance, access to information and citizen participation in the establishment and monitoring of public action in Tunisia, Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire. It builds on the work of the OGP, which today brings together 79 countries and hundreds of civil society organisations.

In 2019, the project’s activities focussed on strengthening knowledge of the principles of open government and the OGP and on improving the technical skills of those who bear responsibility for the commitments made as part of their national action plan. Almost 600 people benefited from PAGOF training and around 15 investigative journalists from Burkina Faso also participated in a cycle of training on data journalism.

Promoting open government at the local level 

In Tunisia, while the principles of participatory democracy or open governance for Tunisian municipalities are written into the 2014 Constitution, their transposition into local public policies remains a complex issue. 55 people from municipalities and the civil society of 12 Tunisian municipalities received training on the tools needed to embed these principles of open government.

In Burkina Faso, in order to ensure that citizens are better informed and connected with the development of budget implementation in their commune, elected representatives, civil society organisations and local media from five cities benefited from a workshop to raise awareness of citizen involvement in commune budget management.

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Promoting access to information and public data

The dissemination and accessibility of data offers the public the opportunity not only to gain information but also to act and defend themselves. In line with this, workshops held on data extraction, processing and publication in Burkina Faso led to the publication of 35 new datasets, published on the “data.gov.bf” portal and to the organisation of an open data hackathon to promote the rights of disabled people.

In Côte d’Ivoire, 15 government employees improved their open data skills in the areas of public finance and budgeting and were introduced to the extraction of data from the Budget Citoyen (a document presenting information about the State budget to citizens).

Towards the creation of a network of open government practitioners in French‑speaking Africa

A second regional seminar was held in Abidjan in November 2019 to conclude the year, bringing together over 120 people from government, civil society organisations and the media from 16 countries in French‑speaking Africa. Over the course of two days, experts and practitioners shared over 20 experiences, projects and tools to facilitate the implementation of open government within administrations and civil society.

Our role is to ensure that we can make relevant commitments that contribute to improving the living conditions for our citizens. The PAGOF project has already given us a lot!

Julien Tingain, Chairman of the NGO Social Justice and coordinator of the Ivorian civil society platform