Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have decided to cooperate on their open government strategies and implementations. To begin with, they will share their national OGP work and jointly promote open data.
This initiative started last year when OGP executive officers from the four countries met in Berlin. While there, they exchanged and discussed their experiences with the national OGP Action Plans and the cooperation between public administration and civil society.
OGP Council
Although their respective Action Plans focus on different topics and issues, the four countries did find common ground for cooperation, albeit rather informal. This coming July, they will simultaneously organise hackathons in their respective territories.
According to Tom Arne Nygaard from the Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation, the experience among the Nordic countries is rather similar: OGP has contributed to an increased understanding of the importance of openness. Nevertheless the public administrations in all of the countries still find it a challenge to have civil society sufficiently involved in questions concerning open government. Norway is about to launch an OGP Council, which will form a link between public administration and civil society and play an important role when developing and implementing OGP Action Plans.