Bridging the Gap between Techies and Civil Society: A Matchmaking Event to Support Open Government Initiatives

Making All Voices Count in collaboration with The Southeast Asia Technology and Transparency Initiative (SEATTI) and Engage Media, is co-organising a collaborative learning event that aims to bridge the gap between technology-oriented communities and civil society organisations working in the area of transparency and accountability.

The learning event will facilitate the creation of multi-disciplinary teams working on open government and corresponding citizen engagement issues. The two issues were chosen as central themes given their strong relevance in the Philippines, which is one of the founding members of Open Government Partnership (OGP).

The learning event primarily aims to stimulate the development of a vibrant ecosystem for open government initiatives among technical communities, civil society, government, and the private sector. A bottom-up approach during the event will develop the model of the workshops based on participants’ expectations, ideas and experience.

Scheduled to take place in Manila, the Philippines on January 21 – 23, 2014 the learning event will deliver the following objectives:

• identifying civil society organisations, businesses and government agencies that work intensively on open government issues in the Philippines
• introducing (new) technologies and related strategies to organisations working on open government issues
• providing participants with the knowledge, skills and resources that can empower them to be more effective in programs that strategically involve (new) technological components
• exploring the viability of mentoring relationships and other potential collaboration among participants in the field of open government

This event is supported by Hivos and Omidyar Network.