Analysis and theory of change

Across the UK
Based on consultation with national partners:
 * Much government activity now takes place at the devolved / sub national level.
 * OGP commitments in the UK to date has taken place at the UK nation state level - and have primarily focused on governance issues (i.e. SDG16 outcomes)
 * Civil society is fragmented between, and overlaps across, the devolved nations and UK nation state level - we need better links between e.g. English civil society and Scottish civil society.
 * There is an increasing interest in shifting power more directly to citizens over the way their country is runs, and analysis to back this up.

Who participates?
The Hansard Society undertakes an annual Audit of political engagement of British democracy. It notes age, gender, social class, and ethnicity gaps in who is prepared to engaged or is satisfied with opportunities to engage with the political system.

The Scottish Social Attitudes Survey 2015: Attitudes to Social Networks, Civic Participation and Co-production revealed that 96% of Scots want to see local people involved in the design and delivery of public services. It also found that around a third of Scots have volunteered at a local community group

Drawing on the work of democratic theorists, and a deliberative systems approach to examine the state of UK democracy, Involve have come to the conclusion in their report, Room for a View that, "If the health of UK democracy is to be improved, we need to move away from thinking about the representation of individual voters to thinking about the representation of views, perspectives and narratives."

International examples
Learning from developments abroad

Opportunities

 * Invest in scaling up activity at the devolved nation level to match government activity
 * Invest in sharing learning and what works between devolved UK national partners
 * Invest in sharing learning and what works between UK nations and the pioneers movements in other countries

Theory of change
Open Government is fast becoming the most powerful route for civil society to support citizens that want to hold their governments to account for progress against the agreed Sustainable Development Goals.
 * SDGs are ambitious but cannot be delivered meaningfully without an open approach to government
 * But it is not enough to open up government processes, we also need to invest in capacity building on  the citizen participation side
 * A more meaningful and effective engagement of citizens in their government requires deliberation  and interaction between citizens, not just between citizens and their   governments
 * Open digital platforms offer a powerful channel for mobilising open government approaches to  sustainable development goals

Civil society capacity building
It's not enough for government to become more open and transparent.

Citizens and the civil society groups through which they self-organise or participate need to make best use of this. This needs to be supported, nurtured and actively developed. A powerful approach to do this draws on the Asset Based Community Development theory.

The Coady Institute propose the following activities to build on the asset based approach to strengthening civil society :

• Collecting stories about community successes and identifying the capacities of communities that

• Organizing a core group to carry the process forward

• Mapping completely the capacities and assets of individuals, associations, and local institutions

• Building relationships among local assets for mutually beneficial problem-solving within the

• Mobilizing the community's assets fully for economic development and information sharing

• Convening as broadly representative group as possible for the purposes of building a community

• Leveraging activities, investments and resources from outside the community to support asset based development

What will change for people, communities and organisations?
By building capacity to engage open government approaches towards progressing Sustainable Development Goals, we anticipate the following impact:

Mapping OpenGov to Global Goals
Mapping the Open Government approach to influencing the Sustainable Development Goals