OCF Lab 開放實驗室

Author / Claire Cheng _{(The original article was written in Traditional Chinese)}
Translator (ENG) / Ming-Chen Li
Editor / OCF Lab 

As Taiwan’s democracy moves forward, the citizens’ desire for civic participation can no longer be satisfied by the government’s unilateral policy-making and the consultation of experts and academics. In spite of the government’s efforts, for many citizens, the government still hasn’t fully taken the citizens’ views into consideration when it comes to policy-making, rendering open government more similar to “Open Washing”. For civil servants, not only is their workload increased, but facing the citizens’ anger at times is also frustrating.

How exactly can Taiwan truly implement open governance policy? Fortunately, we are not alone, and there’s the Open Government Partnership (OGP) for our reference. The OGP not only collects the experiences of countries dedicated to achieving open government, but also monitors the implementation of each country’s action plans through a standardized evaluation mechanism. Last year (2020), Taiwan, though not a participating government of OGP, launched two action plans, one for the Executive Yuan and the other for the Legislative Yuan, based on the OGP’s standard, and released the official action plans this year.

This article is the third of the OCF Lab’s series on open government (the previous two articles are Introducing the Establishment and Operating Mechanism of OGP, and the Action Plan Framework Promoted by the National Development Council and Legislative Yuan to Promote Open Parliament Based on the Framework of OGP). The third article consists of three parts; the first part is about what OGP means for Taiwan’s open government policy in the past; the second part elaborates on the pros and cons of open government policy based on the OGP standard, and the last part provides an analysis of OGP’s impact on Taiwan.