On July 19, 2013, Transparency International Ukraine and a coalition of eight NGOs met at the British Embassy in Kiev to discuss the results of their independent monitoring of Ukraine's participation in the Open Government Partnership. While the coalition has seen some positive results from the Ukrainian government, such as the approval of the law "On Charity Activities and Charitable Organizations," it still has a long way to go to fulfill the OGP Action Plan that should have been completed after its first year.

The Action Plan, developed by civil society when the government failed to draft it, targets five areas: involving society in state-policy making, providing access to public information, fighting against corruption, improving the quality of administrative services, and implementing e-governance technologies and e-democracy. The plan targets a wide range of government branches from the Parliament of Ukraine to regional government bodies.

Ukraine scored highest on its implementation of e-governance technologies at 66 percent. While e-governance has performed well at the regional level, independent expert Valentyna Darnopykh said that this score overstates Ukraine's progress at fulfilling the events in this area, as many were already in development before the Action Plan was created.

Official anti-corruption efforts also scored high, at 64 percent, due to amendments made to the state's anti-corruption law and the Criminal Procedural Codes. Anti-corruption programs have been adopted at the regional level, but they remain only partially fulfilled due to lack of finances.

Access to public information was Ukraine's weakest performance at only 38 percent. As Natalia Zabolotna from People's Defense explained, results were only obtainable at the regional level, with national disclosure being widely unsatisfactory. Public registries for anti-corruption law infringers and real property titles are neither complete nor fully publicized to private citizens.

The coalition concluded that greater coordination amongst the branches of public administration and expanded effort to involve private citizens are crucial to the success of the plan for Ukraine.

After its self-assessment in September 2013, the Ukrainian government will collaborate with civil society to amend its plan for 2014.

 

Video summarizing the results of the report:

 

 

 

The full report is available for download: