Open Government Partnership’s Innovation Grants

Deadline: 09-Jul-21

The Open Government Partnership is seeking applications for the Innovation Grants to support the development or replication of online tools and platforms, complementary advocacy, and engagement strategies to enable civil society or citizens to hold their governments accountable.

Open Government Partnership wants to encourage collaboration between civil society and government actors in creating innovations that do one of the following:

• enable citizens to monitor budgets, expenditure and disbursement, including budgetary allocations for Covid-19 recovery and renewal programmes;
• provide user-friendly interfaces for state-owned data, including data visualisation, analysis, or business intelligence tools to strengthen the ability of citizens to detect fraud or corruption (e.g. for using data on contracts, beneficial owners of companies, asset declarations, etc.);
• enable citizen monitoring and feedback on public services and access to redress mechanisms.

Funding Information

• connections with potential mentors to further develop your solution
• connections with peers working on similar solutions to foster learning
• communication support

Eligibility Criteria

• Working in active OGP member countries and local jurisdictions (OGP Local members and Local jurisdictions participating in OGP national processes) in the Eastern Partnership region.
• Representing journalists, civil technologists, civil society, private sector-civil society partnerships, government-civil society partnerships pursuing a project that has potential for being carried forward through the national/local OGP process of a plan by either:
  • Showing a way forward for the proposal to be considered as a potential commitment in forthcoming OGP action plans;
  • Using outputs from an existing OGP action plan commitment (for example by using data released as part of an OGP commitment, or leveraging participation opportunities created by an existing OGP commitments);
  • Enhancing existing or proposed commitment in OGP action plans.
• Able to dedicate significant energy and time to this project to pursue the idea and make consistent progress towards completion. Be committed to participate in activities to enhance the initial proposal, including working with other stakeholders.
• Willing to have their idea replicated by others (willing to make your project: open source and openly-licensed).
• Possessing a working knowledge of English or Russian to benefit from group seminars and exchanges.

They welcome proposals for prototypes, enhancements to existing tools and platforms, or replication of tools and platforms launched elsewhere (complying with any copyright requirements). They encourage submitting applications accompanied by prototypes, a clear development plan, and a clear, awareness-raising and engagement plan.

For more information, visit https://www.opengovpartnership.org/eastern-partnership-civil-society-engagement-and-innovation-grants/#grant1