US withdraws from the Open Government Partnership — which it helped create

The U.S. government has withdrawn from a multilateral global initiative focused on government transparency and accountability that it helped found over a decade ago, known as the Open Government Partnership. 

Civil society and open government advocates say this action is the latest in a pattern of the Trump administration backsliding on transparency, civil society and open government efforts, pointing to the disappearance of government data from public sites and attacks on the independent press as other examples.

“Anyone who has followed developments over the last year will not be surprised by this decision of the U.S. government,” Aidan Eyakuze, the CEO of OGP, said in a statement.

General Services Administration head Ed Forst wrote in a letter dated Jan. 15 withdrawing U.S. membership that “the United States is committed to transparency and accountability, but cannot support an organization that wastes money, promotes harmful ideological agendas, and degrades American sovereignty and democratic integrity.”

GSA had been leading U.S. implementation to commitments made as part of the OGP, although it dissolved a committee charged with doing so last year.

The departure from the open government effort follows the U.S. withdrawing from 66 other international organizations created to address issues ranging from the climate crisis to economics. 

“The United States strictly opposes participation in any body that seeks to erode U.S. national sovereignty,” Forst wrote in the letter withdrawing the U.S. from the OGP. 

OGP doesn’t create legal obligations or limit national sovereignty, an OGP press release about the withdrawal of the U.S. states. Over 70 countries, 150 local governments and thousands of civil society organizations remain part of the partnership.

Forst accused the OGP of embracing “divisive ideological agendas” such as “feminism” and “LGBTQ+ advocacy,” and of being ineffective in its mission. He also pinned the withdrawal on a Trump administration commitment to end waste, fraud and abuse, pointing to the $5.6 million the U.S. government has spent on the OGP. 

The U.S. departure from the initiative “serves as yet another example of how the corrupt Trump administration is surrendering adherence to democratic norms like ensuring our government does not operate behind closed doors,” Susan Harley, managing director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch, said in a statement.

An assessment of U.S. completion of its “Open Government National Action Plan” released last year found that the second Trump administration had reversed or weakened some of the progress that had been made.

These action plans, created as a collaboration between civil society and government, are a core part of OGP meant to foster accountability. The latest U.S. plan had been critiqued for its limited civil society involvement and for being vague and largely made up of ongoing administration and government priorities.

Daniel Schuman — former chair of the Open Government Federal Advisory Committee at GSA and executive director of the nonprofit American Governance Institute — said in a statement that “the Trump administration is not only the least transparent government in American history; its policies are antithetical to democracy, of which transparency is an essential element.”

President Barack Obama helped launch OGP in 2011 at a U.N. General Assembly meeting with seven other heads of state.

The effort was part of the Obama administration’s “Open Government” initiative, which aimed to make the government more transparent to the public, and therefore more accountable. The effort also sought to encourage more public participation with the government.

“In the 21st century, the United States is convinced that one of the most significant divisions among nations will not be north/south, east/west, religious, or any other category so much as whether they are open or closed societies,” then-Secretary Hillary Clinton said at the opening session of the partnership in 2012. “We believe that countries with open governments, open economies, and open societies will increasingly flourish.”