This week we’ll be in Tbilisi, Georgia for the 5th Open Government Partnership (OGP) Summit. Taking place July 17-19, the summit brings OGP participating countries and others in the open government community together to share knowledge, discuss challenges, and define a path to advance the open government agenda.

The Web Foundation will join heads of states, policy-makers, academics, researchers and other civil society groups from across the world to tackle the issues on the table at this year’s OGP. The focus areas this year are civic engagement, fighting corruption, and public service delivery.

Where we’ll be

Nnenna Nwakanma (@nnenna), Juan Ortiz Freuler (@juanof9) and Michael Cañares (@mikorulez) will be attending for the Web Foundation. Here’s where they’ll be speaking:

Tuesday 17

14:00 | Adapting to New Realities: Civil Society in the Age of Changing Geopolitics, Shrinking Space, Fake News, Propaganda and Surveillance (OGP Civil Society Day)
Nnenna will share her view of how civil society organisations in Africa are pushing for reforms in the face of threats to open government, including internet shutdowns and proposed laws targeting NGOs.

14:00 | From Failure to Feasibility: Hard-Won Wisdom from Tech for Social Impact Changemakers (OGP Civil Society Day).
Michael will join a group of speakers to share experiences of leveraging technology for good governance. The session will focus on initiatives that failed to deliver — and what we can learn from them.  

Thursday 19

10:00 – 11:00 | Transparency for What? Going Beyond the Openness Rhetoric
Michael will lead this discussion about how transparency initiatives like FOI and open data can lead to economic, political and social changes that can improve people’s lives.

12:00 – 13:30 | Driving Action towards Gender Responsive Open Government
Nnenna will join this interactive learning session to discuss strategies to advance a gender-responsive open government agenda. She will be sharing copies of a new report, ‘Is open data working for women in Africa?’.

13:00 – 14:00 | Spotlight on Reformers and Tools: Fighting Corruption and Demystifying Artificial Intelligence
Juan will share his research looking at how governments are using AI and what public officials can do to increase the effectiveness and legitimacy of AI implementations by the public sector.

See the full agenda for all the OGP sessions and speakers.

For live updates from OGP, follow @nnenna, @juanof9, @mikorulez and @webfoundation on Twitter.

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