The New Zealand Government will be presenting its Open Government Partnership (OGP) Action Plan in July, Internal Affairs Minister, Peter Dunne has announced. The action plan will be built around improving public services, increasing public integrity, more effectively management public resources and creating safer communities. OGP is an international partnership of 64 countries committed to making their governments more open accountable and responsive to citizens.

The Government is committed to building greater transparency in public services, the Minister highlighted. Citizens can monitor the progress of public service reform programmes, such as the Better Public Services (BPS) programme for which progress reports are made available by the State Services Commission.

“New Zealanders can judge for themselves how the Government is performing across the ten results areas [of the BPS programme]. Regularly communicating progress helps to engage citizens and businesses in the Government’s programme and provides a platform for greater citizen participation,” Dunne said.

The New Zealand Public Service is also engaging more with citizens in service design, using data more effectively to target interventions, joining forces to achieve results and shifting funding across traditional boundaries to change the way services are delivered.

New Zealand is ranked first in the International Budget Partnership’s biannual Open Budget Survey and fourth out of 77 countries in the Global Open Data Barometer.

“By joining the OGP, we know we must sustain and build on our success. We cannot simply sit back and rest on our laurels. We want to ensure that in a rapidly changing global environment we are well equipped to meet future challenges,” he concluded.