ScotlandOGNplanning

= Establishing and managing the Scotland Open Government Network (Civil Society) =

Introduction
This is a space to openly establish and manage the Scotland Open Government Civil Society Network. It has been set up to build openness around the process of formalising a space for individual people and representatives of voluntary and community organisations committed to making government work better for people through transparency, participation and accountability.

Why there needs to be a Scotland Civil Society Network
A Scotland Civil Society Network provides the space for dialogue and co-creation within civil society in the area of open government. As stated in the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Participation & Co-Creation Standards, ‘civic participation is a core component of open government, and an essential element of the OGP cycle.’ Active engagement from people, communities and representatives of voluntary and community organisations in developing, securing and implementing lasting open government reforms is as basic expectation of the OGP process.

Current status
This page and the initial content has been set up by Paul Bradley (staff at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations) on 7th April 2017 as a starting framework to prompt contributions to develop a Civil Society Network that can mobilise people around the issue of open government. This is an open wiki that anyone can edit and add or remove content.

Next steps
To ensure that the process to establish and manage the Scotland Civil Society Network, a possible way forward would be to draw on the guidance and ideas for how to develop a multi-stakeholder forum from the OGP Support Unit. The Multistakeholder Forum Handbook is a publication based on research commissioned by the OGP Support Unit, the purpose of which was to capture different models of dialogue and collaboration and create practical, action oriented guidance and ideas for the OGP community. The following are proposed phases and next steps to establish and manage the Scotland Open Government Civil Society Network, based on the Multistakeholder Forum Handbook.
 * Phase One: Creation of the network
 * Phase Two: Managing the network
 * Phase Three: Network and plan implementation