Azerbaijan joined “Open Government Partnership” international initiative in 2011. The aim is to advance the work on transparency and improve activities on the “Open Government” sphere, to exchange international experience and form the best practices in this area.
Government joined “Open Government Partnership” international initiative in order to promote “Open Government” and transparency, improve the experience of exchange in this field and to contribute to international efforts.

In sum, the principle of OGI is that the state encourages the citizen participation by ensuring transparency. The rapid development of the Internet technology opens up opportunities to citizens for realization their rights to know everything about the activities of the government agencies. In this case, “informed citizens will try to help government authorities and state agencies by being interested in better performance of these institutions” approach has been prevailed. By providing the information openness the state ensures its citizens are also informed, while citizens are able to get a wide range of information, it increases civic participation in society.
Expanded public participation helps improve the work of government agencies, deliver the feedback of the community, provide assistance in timely detection of errors and overcome them effectively. The mechanisms established by the government allow citizens not only detect errors in the activities of the state bodies, but also participate in decision-making process and resolve the problems. Thereby, state ensures public confidence and optimizes solutions of the big scaled tasks by involving citizens in governance.
By sharing a portion of roles and responsibilities with community, it is ensured that collective management (public-state) model is applied to make sure a common interest in the community is provided. In contrast to the Soviet model of “public participation”, this concept is of a different nature. The state and active citizens become active participants in the government. At the same time, state determines volunteer programs, grant-in-aids and its content and context.

After joining the “Open Government Partnership” international initiative “National Action Plan for Promotion of Open Government for the years 2012-2015” was approved on September 5, 2016, by the Order of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan. The main principles and values of the National Action Plan are to increase the transparency of state activities, improve accountability, expand public participation and introduce new technologies.
Open Government National Action Plan consisted of 9 main thematic clusters of commitments, in total, 43 types of main and auxiliary activities. According to the assessment carried out by the Anti-Corruption Commission in the years 2012-2013, state agencies implemented 64% of activities intended in the Action Plan. In general, according to results of assessment the Commission determined that 76% of activities set for 2014 in Action Plan have been fully implemented by the state agencies.
On 27 April, 2016, “National Action Plan for Promotion of Open Government for the years 2016-2018” was approved by the President of the RA. Plan includes 58 events in 11 directions.

In the 5th paragraph of the approval of the National Action Plan by the President of the RA it was recommended that civil society institutions be involved in the implementation and evaluation processes. One of the key principles of OGP is to involve civil society in the implementation of the Action Plan. It is very important to give an opportunity for the formation of civil society platform to promote the Open Government.
According to experts the new plan has a great potential. The implementation of this plan will help to ensure the relevance of the reform program and will provide new opportunities for civil society. In particular, it allows new progress in transparency, access to information, public disclosure of income and assets for public officials and citizen engagement.
The successful implementation of the plan will depend to a large extent on active civil participation. It is essential for civil societies to keep the reform on the agenda, to provide relevant state agencies with independent evaluation and to help OGP create a climate of trust.

Zaur Ibrahimli