For Tunisia, OpenGov is more of an objective than a concrete reality, since access to information, even for professionals in the sector, remains hampered by innumerable red tape.
“Tunisia today faces serious threats of freezing its membership in the OpenGov partnership,” said Charfeddine Yaacoubi, a member of the Tunisian Open Government Partnership Forum. This could have serious economic and political repercussions, he warned.
Such threats follow Tunisia’s failure to honor its commitments under this Partnership, Yaacoubi said Tuesday, February 14, 2023, during a press briefing in Tunis.
This program, he said, has so far only succeeded in simplifying a number of concepts, such as transparency and accountability. The question is purely structural and goes beyond the Tunisian-Tunisian framework.
Freezing Tunisia’s membership would lead to a drop in financial and fiscal transparency rankings, he said. The government is called upon to take urgent and effective measures to remedy the shortcomings and monitor the implementation of the commitments.
The Open Government Partnership (OGP) includes 76 countries and 106 local governments. Tunisia has made a lot of progress under this initiative, including access to information law, the access to information commission, the anti-corruption authority (now frozen), and the creation of open data platforms, but it is still very far from OpenGov, which remains more of an objective than a reality, since access to information, even for professionals in the sector, remains hampered by red tape.
