The OGP Summit in Vitoria-Gasteiz brought more than 2,000 participants from all over the world to Spain with a common cause: to transform governments to serve their citizens better.
The Spanish government descended upon the Summit: the Prime Minister opened the conference, the King closed it, and several Ministers, Secretaries of State (Deputy Ministers) and DGs participated in sessions. As a Spaniard, it was impressive to see such mobilisation and see how the Summit was very high on the government’s agenda.
Although it’s challenging to navigate the agenda of such big events, I attended a few sessions and even spoke at one. In general, from my experience at OGP Summits, people were in high spirits, and the collaborative atmosphere was tangible. Government representatives attending these events are what we used to call «champions», those who want to foster positive change from the inside to serve people better (and who, unfortunately, often have limited power to do so). I could see interesting projects that I couldn’t have imagined only a few years ago (check the OGP Awards for examples).
But not all was rosy. I had to hear once more why opening data is essential for transparency, why we need to tackle corruption, and why social justice matters. And this was the sad part: hearing that the community still has to repeat the same messages over and over again.
Nobody said that changing the government was going to be easy when OGP started in 2011. We all knew it was going to be a long run. As someone who observes the deterioration of democracy from a distance in many countries, the diminishment of civil rights, and the rise of authoritarianism, it is frustrating to hear about these issues firsthand again. Hearing from civil society that the window to make change happen is narrow but still open only confirmed how much more frustrating it is for those still on the frontlines.
As it was insightfully emphasised, a democracy that delivers is not just a matter of finding and implementing the right ‘solution’ (policy, technology, capacity, resource, etc.) to a social problem. It is a systemic shift.
Of course, no conference like this would miss two more components. One was the latest shiny thing everyone must talk about (including me). This time it was Artificial Intelligence (AI), of course. So you know, I don’t consider myself an AI doomer nor a boomer, but a gloomer, «cautiously optimistic, driving forward while tapping the brakes.«
I’m sceptical of big announcements claiming that AI will solve this or that huge problem we have been facing for years, either tomorrow… or the day after! I’m a believer that we will see incrementally better use in specific contexts that will expand more or less quickly (I’m far off from the idea that AGI, superintelligence or whatever this undefined thing is called these days, is coming anytime soon). In my speech, I focused on specific applications in my current work, ranging from improving precision agriculture for better farming to aiding semantic modelling to facilitate interoperability. And I was vocal about the need for strong governance frameworks with human supervision. As the iconic ad said, «Power is nothing without control.»
The other component was political promise vs reality. As an example, the Spanish Prime Minister made two big announcements: a new, improved transparency portal and the reform of the Public Sector Procurement Platform. He illustrated the latter by saying that AI will be used to find corruption patterns (of course, the mandatory AI-related announcement had to be found in his and several other politicians’ discourses). At a later panel, the Secretary of State for Digital Transformation and AI gave more specific details, stating that the government will provide algorithmic transparency.
This sounds impressive and something to celebrate; however, less than a month ago, the Spanish civil society organisation Civio won a case in the Supreme Court against the government, specifically regarding the lack of algorithmic transparency, after seven years of litigation (seven!). Yet another cautionary tale that political promises do not consistently deliver, and the critical role civil society organisations play.
The Prime Minister also announced Spain’s latest OGP action plan, and Civio offers fascinating insights (ES) on how it could have been improved if you’re interested in digging deeper. On the upside, some of those «champions» finally got the Spanish government to adopt the Open Data Charter.
There will always be tension between government and civil society; it’s part of a healthy system of checks and balances, but it’s disappointing to see how some old issues are still alive and present. Although generalising is very difficult and often wrong, and people reading this in some countries will surely cringe for good reasons, there has been progress since we were convened to get OGP started in NYC in 2011. The number of OGP members, the work involved in action plans, and, more importantly, the specific examples of how government and civil society collaborate to improve democracy and support a better society demonstrate that the initiative remains useful. The world is still better with initiatives like the OGP than without them.
I appreciated being able to attend an OGP Summit after several years. It was a lovely experience. The hosts did an impressive job, and I especially enjoyed seeing so many familiar faces and sitting down for (sometimes longer, sometimes shorter) chats with them again. Thank you for spending time with me. As the saying goes: «keep up the good work!». I hope we see each other again sometime, somewhere.
el ñasco a la barrapan 