Is Your Government Open or Closed?

The Digital Policy Council tracks the making of a new geopolitical identity.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1, 2011  /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Digital Policy Council (DPC), an international, non-partisan "think tank" on 21st Century Governance, discusses in its latest report how global politics is being reconfigured along a new international order based on the openness of governments and the levels they undertake to engage their citizens.

Historically political leaders have tended to prefer dividing the world in two; asserting an "us" vs. "them" perspective for nations to forge coalitions whether communist vs. capitalist, developed vs. developing, or democratic vs. autocratic. The two-part picture was marked once more when the Open Government Partnership (OGP) launched with a gathering of heads of state and senior officials in New York on September 20th, 2011. The aim of this new multilateral initiative is "to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance."

The Digital Policy Council's analyses reveal currently 21% of the World's nations are deemed to have open and transparent governments, 15% meet the eligibility criteria for earning an open designation and a majority of two-thirds (64%) remains classified as being closed. This now raises the visibility and differentiation of governments who are not mere democracies but are explicitly challenged to be both democratic and open.  

View the interactive world map of open vs. closed nations at http://www.digitaldaya.com/opengov_map.

The Politics of Identity

The democratic peace theory advocates that democracies rarely, or even never, go to war with one another.  However, efforts to promote democracy to date has shown mixed results and proven to be a necessary, but not sufficient element of governance to prevent failed states and secure lasting development for nations.  Can a commitment to transparency and citizen engagement fill the gap? Yes, according to the OGP's 16-point rating system to strengthen the openness of each nation.  

"Now openness is the new standard for nation states to be credible actors in world affairs," said Omar Hijazi, Managing Partner at Digital Daya. "The question for governments is not so much as to whether or not they are democratic, but rather if they hold the trust and support of civil society."

While the democratic peace theory was a policy for inhibition of warring nations, for 21st Century politics it is being replaced by the doctrine of openness as a containment of civil unrest.  

A Growing Global Movement?

In tracking over 400,000 conversations on the social web since December of 2009, the DPC identified a steady increase in conversations on the Net quadrupling from 250 per day to the current levels of 1,000 per day.  Conspicuously in recent months as governments wrestle with curbing the flow of information on the Internet, negative sentiment has outnumbered positive by a factor of 3 to 1 due to rising concerns over the future of open government as originally envisioned. Nevertheless, should the founding countries reach their goals for openness, we may soon behold a political vista in which nations of the world are recognized as either open or closed.

For more information download the report at http://www.digitaldaya.com/opengov_report.

About The Digital Policy Council™

The Digital Policy Council (DPC) is an international, non-partisan 'think tank' that promotes good governance and policy-making.  The research and policy arm of the management consultancy firm Digital Daya, DPC's mission is the advancement of open discourse on issues of inclusive governance through the use of the Internet and Web 2.0.

SOURCE The Digital Policy Council