Around the world, governments are increasingly struggling to address the complex economic and social challenges they face, due in part to structural governance flaws, which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While public trust was already declining before the health crisis, the current context may further erode people’s trust in their governments – at a moment when citizens are calling for transparent and accountable management of the recovery phase. This holds particularly true for the Arab region, where many people have been expressing grievances related to social injustice, political disenfranchisement, economic inequalities and corruption for some time.

In a context of complex policy challenges exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which revealed structural governance flaws, open government (OG) provides a response to citizens who expect to participate in the public sphere and their governments to manage the crisis in a transparent and accountable way.

After presenting the objective of the report, this chapter explores the definitions of open government, providing a brief history of the concept and its links with e-government, open data and the SDGs. It also proposes conceptual frameworks of how open government reforms can be implemented and can lead to broader impact, based on research from the OECD and ESCWA, and stresses the importance to monitor and evaluate such reforms.

This chapter presents an overview of the socio-economic impact of open government reforms, including a number of concrete examples. It looks at economic impact for the private sector, citizens, the public sector and the economy at large. As per the social impact, it investigates more particularly the positive outcomes on health, education and gender equality. It concludes by presenting how open government principles improve public governance.

OECD countries have long been implementing initiatives to foster the OG principles, which in some cases are included in their constitutions. This chapter provides an overview of the legal, policy and institutional frameworks underpinning open government in OECD countries, as well as linkages with digital technologies and data, and looks at stakeholder engagement practices. It then proposes some innovative practices and the way forward, with a specific focus on open government at local level, and highlights some key challenges that countries still face, before providing a number of concrete examples of good practices from OECD members and partners.

This chapter focuses on the efforts that Arab countries have made to promote open government principles and the challenges they still face. With a comparative angle, it analyses the policy and legal frameworks, with a specific focus on access to information, the significant progress made on e‑government and open data, as well as the limited initiatives to promote citizen participation. After providing a number of concrete examples of good practices from ESCWA member states, the chapter concludes by looking at the impact of COVID-19 on open government in the region and proposes some strategic directions for Arab countries.

Building on the findings of the previous chapter, the reports proposes some conclusions on the progress and challenges of the open government agenda in the Arab region, proposing a number of sectors for further opening in the current COVID-19 recovery context. It then makes a number of concrete and actionable recommendations for Arab countries to strengthen their legal, policy and institutional frameworks related to OG as well as to enhance transparency, openness and stakeholder engagement in practice.

There are several ways in which ESCWA and the OECD can support Arab countries in making progress in their open government agendas.

Arbatli, E. and J. Escolano (2015), “Fiscal transparency, fiscal performance and credit ratings”, Fiscal Studies, Vol. 36/2, pp. 237-270.