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Opportunity to comment on Sri Lanka’s OGP Commitments

As citizens of Sri Lanka you are the final beneficiaries of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) National Action Plan (NAP) outcomes. Hence we welcome your comments and suggestions to strengthen Sri Lanka’s Draft OGP Commitments listed below, before it is presented to the cabinet for approval.

OGP is an international platform for domestic reformers committed to making their governments more transparent, accountable and responsive to citizens. Sri Lanka on invitation signed the declaration in October 2015 and is the only south Asian country that was invited to do so.

Information was collected during the public consultations held during the months of April, May and June 2016 in all 9 provinces under the auspices of the respective government agents as a joint initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the OGP Civil Society Coordinating Team (hosted by Transparency International Sri Lanka).  The initial information was narrowed down by the Civil Society Steering Committee. Upon joint discussions among the line ministries and the civil society members working in respect of the subjects, the following commitments were prioritized to be included in the draft of Sri Lanka’s 1st OGP NAP.

[READ in SINHALA]  [READ in TAMIL]

Education

  1. Strengthening civic education and vocational training with a rights-based approach to empower students, teachers and schools. 

Information Technology

  1. Enhance the services of the Government Information Center (GIC- 1919) for Inclusive, Transparent, Accountable and Efficient Governance, using ICT as an enabler.
  2. Promote the Open Data concept and deliver the benefits to citizens through ICT. 

Women

  1. Create a transparent and accountable mechanism to implement concluding observations of the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
  2. Ensuring effective implementation of women’s participation in politics. 

Health

  1. Ensure effective implementation of the policy to provide safe and affordable medicines to all.
  2. Creating a comprehensive national health performance database with specific focus on efficiency, effectiveness and equity.
  3. Ensure transparent, accountable and participatory mechanisms are in place to prevent chronic kidney disease of unknown origin in Sri Lanka. 

Procurement & Local Government

  1. Establishing transparent, accountable and participatory procurement systems for local authorities. 

Environment.

  1. Ensuring Transparency in Environmental Decisions by Restoring the Public’s Right to Comment on Initial Environment Examinations.
  2. Ensure transparent, accountable and participatory mechanisms are in place to Implement the National Adaptation Plan for Sri Lanka in compliance with the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC). 

Right To Information (RTI)

  1. Ensure the effective implementation of the RTI Act. 

Corruption

  1. Strengthen the anti-corruption framework to incorporate United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) obligations, enhance inter agency collaboration and improve prevention mechanisms.

 

Kindly send us your feedback on the above commitments before the 28th July (Thursday) to:

Ministry of Foreign Affairs – E: ogp@mfa.gov.lk      Tel: 011 2325371      Fax: 011 2446091 (Attn OGP)                

OGP Civil Society Coordinating Team –    E: ogp@tisrilanka.org     Tel: 011 4369781 (Ext 203)     Fax: 011 2501707 (Attn OGP)

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  1. Corruption : to address issues such as bribe in a local context. To make open complaints and ensure personal security.

  2. Women: to ensure women are not oppressed in a working condition. Especially the working conditions in many factories are questionable.

  3. How are you going to ‘Ensuring effective implementation of women’s participation in politics’? Even if there’s already a 25% quota for female participants, isn’t the system still messed up due the party secretariats giving the ticket to their favourites?

    Without a mandatory set of criteria’s, how do you assure that the right person will get the ticket? What’s the mechanism you are going to implement to ensure the transparency of this process? Will you be addressing these issues in the national action plan?

  4. We support your Cause for a better Sri Lanka.

  5. Highest Priory to Education, Education, Education. If we need to invest on future Education is the highest Priority.

  6. Information Technology:
    I think that it is high time Sri Lanka to have a cloud based, secure “open source” platform to centralize both government and public information.
    Also, we should encourage and promote open source technology infrastructure more and assist the youth to utilize it in the proper way to innovate and develop existing platforms.
    This will benefit both the government and the public in terms of efficiency, productivity and cost. All government establishments relating to high level accumulation of data should be transitioned and transferred to this platform with zero data redundancy and distortion. We should focus on “total digitization” of data/information and zero tolerance for manual, cluttering processes and methods.
    In addition, I think that the basic fundamental knowledge on technology and its application in general + innovation should be taught from preschool stages to the kids hence the whole education curriculum and content should be reformed to support it and make this apart of the overall vision and mission of the nation. “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” – Alvin Toffler.

  7. Women ;
    1. why aren’t women given joint ownership of state land? my cousin sister who is not married and is the only child of the family got the land written in her name but when i went to the grama sevaka he refused to write the land BOTH under my husband and my name. He only wanted it to write it in my husbands name. Im not a lawyer but i dont think theres a law prohibiting this?? The process is very unclear you need to make it transparent.

    2. Working conditions/ sexual harassment – what measures are being taken to safeguard the female work force?

    Corruption
    1. What kind of transparency is guaranteed when it comes to bribery? Can the general public make open complaints without the fear of their lives or consequence for their future?

    Environment
    1. the current situation that taking place regarding the environment is a pretty sad state. Although the public makes a huge human cry about this situation, is the government hearing any of it? Is our voice heard? What measures and mechanism would take place to ensure a transparent process where the general public would be able to comment and take action

  8. As a legal professional i am of the view that it would be beneficial for civil society to partner with the respective Ministries to identify specific needs and how to make collaborative budgetary allocations which would reduce corruption too.

  9. Education – Can look at using latest technology and media applications to ensure opportunities are made available to underprivileged masses in rural communities

    Information Technology – Suggest you look at mechanisms to enable access to ICT for rural communities as well, possibly using organizations such as the Nenasala Network

    Women – a) Political parties should be encouraged to have a percentage allocated for female candidates to facilitate a diversity in representation in local government and legislative bodies,
    b) There should be better access for legal and counseling support for rural women to help them address their problems

    Health – the lifestyle habits of Sri Lankans are increasingly becoming unhealthy and hence government authorities should take preventive action to educate its citizens by way of creating awareness thru’ the network of hospitals/dispensaries as well as media and ICT

    Environment – Legislation as well as enforcement need to be strengthened, whatever OGP can initiate in this regard would be beneficial to the country

    Procurement & Local Government – while adequate legislative controls are in place, there is no proper process of ensuring transparency and accountability and this is an aspect that you can try to address thru’ the OGP initiatives

    RTI Act – it should be more braodbased to cover institutions such as the Central Bank of Sri Lanka which as of now is excluded

    Corruption – the Declaration of Assets & Liabilities Law should be strictly enforced and the Auditor General’s Department should be given sweeping powers to ensure proper enforcement

  10. Education administration is corrupt in Sri Lanka. It’s been used as a tool for Polítical purposes by changing politicians. We need to make the educational administrtaive matters highly efficient and open for citizens. There are many causes and there ar many micro corrupt practices that permeates within education department and MOE. Transfers, implementation of circulars, scholarship distribution among talent bs connected people are to name a few. There are so many dedicated teachers in our country and abundant of talent but the administrators are not monitored in any meaningful way. Integrity of education Departament has to be reviewed more diligently. It’s a large project; prof amartya Sen’s right based system will address only a small part of it, but we have systemic issue within education Departament that needs to be resolved!!!

  11. Education: Standardize the interview process of enrolling students to masters programs by increasing private sector participation in the interview process to ensure employ-ability

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