This week, the 2016 Open Government Partnership summit is being held in Paris, France.

The OGP was launched in 2011 to provide an international platform for domestic reformers committed to making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. Its goals are, therefore, pretty much in line with the objectives of civic tech — the field we at mySociety been ploughing in for over a decade. So we’ve been supporters of the OGP since it started, as have many of our partners and collaborators.

Today, there are 70 participating countries. Inevitably, some member countries have governments whose enthusiasm for the OGP goals is, perhaps, greater than their willingness to actually implement the changes that attaining such goals require. But even where that is the case, the OGP is a catalyst for getting accountability and transparency onto their agenda, and we’re all for that.

All of mySociety’s projects fall somewhere within the remit of the OGP. For example, our Freedom of Information platform Alaveteli encourages citizens to make requests, and our work with parliamentary monitoring organisations is all about opening up the activity of parliaments in a way that OGP very much promotes.

This year, mySociety will be represented at OGP by Bec (from our research team), Jen (who manages our international partners) and Dave (who works on the EveryPolitician project). If you’re in Paris for the OGP, please do seek us out. We’re around for the main events, but also:

• We’re hoping EveryPolitician data can help some of the projects in the OGP toolbox hackathon
• Bec will be on the Hands-on Accessing and Re-using Parliamentary Data panel at 4:15pm Thursday (lecture theatre, Conseil Economique)
• then at 5pm in the “pitch corner” Bec is reminding people about about TICTeC (that’s our research conference in Florence next year)
• Jen and Dave are running a session on EveryPolitician on Friday at 12:30 (Room 5, Iéna)

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