Open Government Plan 2011-205, Uruguay

Abstract

The Open Government National Action Plan (NAP) development and roll-out processes analysed in this paper reveal Uruguay’s effort to enable new ways of agency in the digital era. NAPs are developed as a result of a political context where the government seeks to engage its citizens in order to know their needs and improve their living conditions. Specifically this research examines the creation and implementation of the two-yearly Open Government Partnership National Action Plans (OGPNAP), for the years 2012–2014, 2014-2016, and 2016-2018. Giddens’ structuration framework has been used here to chart: the specific shifts in structures of meaning, norms and power that have occurred in the course of the OGP-NAP consultations and negotiations between government agencies and citizens; the creation of new norms, values and rules in state-citizen engagement; and finally changes in cultures of participation and distribution of power and the disruptive effects these have had for citizenship.