News

Enhancing citizen engagement in mountain areas

10.04.2019

Mountain Partnership member, the Civil Society Initiative of the University of Central Asia’s (UCA) Graduate School of Development organized a workshop on “Citizen Engagement with Open Government Data” from 27-30 March in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The workshop was organized for Kyrgyz NGOs working mostly in rural areas, i.e. mountain areas, as mountains cover 95% of the Kyrgyzstan’s territory.

The event aimed at raising awareness of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), and strengthening the capacity of participants’ to monitor the implementation of the "Achyk Okmot" National Action Plan for 2018-2020 and build an open government in Kyrgyzstan. Forty participants from civil society organizations across Kyrgyzstan attended the four-day training. It was sponsored by the Collaborative Governance Program, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by the East-West Management Institute.

“Since civic engagement is the keystone of OGP, we strive to support civil society actors to help them make better use of the OGP process, to monitor the implementation of the government’s commitments, and to promote their own advocacy agenda,” said Dinara Musabekova, Director of Civil Society Initiative.

“We believe that our training programme has equipped them with relevant knowledge about OGP structures and engagement tools, as well as with necessary skills to collect, analyse, and visualise open data.”

The workshop also included a “Datathon” – a competition, where teams of trainees are challenged by their mentors to develop specific projects on data and media products, using the knowledge and skills gained during the training.

Kyrgyzstan became the first country in Central Asia to join the Open Government Partnership in 2017, an international platform of 74 countries and 15 subnational governments, that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

The Civil Society Initiative, part of UCA’s Graduate School of Development, is an active member of the OGP National Forum, which consists of 38 government and civil society representatives. The members jointly developed the National Action Plan with 18 ambitious commitments to strengthen the government’s reform accountability, and combat corruption.

News and Photo by UCA/Alma Uzbekova

See the photos from the workshop