Turkey joins int’l partnership to strengthen governance

ANKARA

Turkey has officially joined the Open Government Partnership to strengthen governance, a circular signed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. DAILY NEWS photo/ Selahattin SONMEZ

Turkey has officially joined the Open Government Partnership (OGP), a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to strengthen governance, a circular signed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and published in the Aug. 23 edition of the Official Gazette announced.

The initiative calls for a multi-faceted approach which includes efforts to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to meet the aims of improving governance. Within the framework of the initiative, countries agree to prepare and implement national action plans to increase transparency and accountability to fight corruption, to promote citizen and civil society participation in public policy making, to create an increased use of technological opportunities for an open and efficient public policy and to enable citizens to become stronger before the state.

Prime Ministry’s Board to audit implementation

The implementation will be audited by the Prime Ministry’s Inspection Board. Hence, all plans, programs, strategies and policies from now onward will be audited by this institution, in order to guarantee effective participation of civil society and representatives of private sector and to provide the necessary platform in coordinating efforts in the national and international representation of the country.

The OGP is a multi-stakeholder collaboration that is overseen by a committee of governments and civil society organizations. It was formally launched on Sept. 20, 2011, when the eight founding governments, namely Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States endorsed an Open Government Declaration, and announced their country action plans. Other than Turkey, 47 additional governments have so far joined the partnership.