Supporting the Launch of Open Gov Hub Albania

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Written By Open Gov Hub .

Open Gov Hub’s Director Nada Zohdy meeting with the President of Albania, Ilir Meta, in May 2022.

Last month, Open Gov Hub Director’s Nada Zohdy traveled on a whirlwind tour across Albania to support the public launch of Open Gov Hub Albania - a new independent local civil society organization that is affiliated with the OGH global network, as one of the newest Global Affiliate Hubs. 

The visit was organized by Edison Frangu, Founder and Executive Director of Open Gov Hub Albania (OGHA). The seeds for this partnership were planted several years earlier, when Edison worked with Nada and her team in Washington for one year in 2017-18 as an Atlas Corps fellow. During this time, OGH ran its first-ever Introduction to Open Government training for a visiting delegation of mayors from across Albania. (OGH continues to offer this training in Washington DC today to visiting delegations, and is also now developing the training into an online course!). Like many other leaders of the Global Affiliate Hubs, Edison was inspired by seeing firsthand the unique model of OGH in DC, and took the idea back home with him to adapt for Albania, joining the GAH network in 2019. (The original launch for OGHA was planned for early 2020, but was postponed due to the pandemic). This trip was the culmination of such efforts. 

Goals

The goals of this trip were to train the new OGHA team, increase the visibility of the new hub via its global connections, help the hub foster new partnerships across many segments of Albanian society, and discuss opportunities for cross-country collaborations (ex: around the Open Government Partnership and Summit for Democracy). This was OGH Director Nada Zohdy’s 4th visit to a Global Affiliate Hub since that program was first piloted in 2018. However it was the trip with the most meetings directly with government officials, and certainly overall the most high-profile trip!

By the Numbers 

  • 2 week trip, across 5 cities in Albania

  • Over 50 meetings - including with the President, heads of Parliament, Ministers, Mayors, MPs, students, international actors (UN and US Embassy) and Albanian civil society organizations 

  • Over a dozen examples of national media coverage

  • 9.9 (out of 10) rating for the Intro to Open Gov Training from participants (directors from the capital city of Tirana)

  • How to Run a Hub training completed for the new OGHA team of 10 leaders 

Context

Albania is a small Mediterranean and Balkan country with large (longtime) ambitions to join the EU, and to become more visible on the international stage more broadly. This context has created high-level political will for various democracy and governance reforms in the country (many of which are being supported by the US Embassy in Albania, which is very influential) - including anti-corruption initiatives, judicial reform, open data, e-government, and more. Therefore, leaders across government and civil society alike were very eager to learn about and support the creation of the new OGHA! 

Some Trip Highlights 

  • 2 Day How to Run a Hub Training with the new OGHA 10-person team (5 board members and 5 volunteers) - this covered topics like Communications, Membership, and Business Models for Social Impact, and resulted in the hub team developing delegation of roles and producing their first 3-year strategy and business plan

  • Brief Introduction to Open Government Training with 20 directors across the city of Tirana - this helped inspire and motivate these public servants by providing useful frameworks and international examples of innovative ways to integrate citizens into the public policy process (83% of participants also completed a follow-up assignment to develop their own 6-month open government action plan)

  • Discussing challenges to Albania’s and America’s democracies and the need for active citizens with thoughtful students at Polis and Luarasi Universities 

  • Meeting with key Ministers such as the Minister of State for Relations with Parliament, in the Prime Minister’s office, who is the Minister responsible for Albania’s Summit for Democracy commitments and the Minister responsible for overseeing open data and e-government efforts across government 

  • Meeting with current and former mayors and deputies from several municipalities like Tirana, Shokder, and Giirokaster (including some of the mayors OGH trained in DC 4 years ago, who are now serving in Parliament and other positions!) 

  • Meeting with leaders of both political parties in Parliament including the Speaker and Deputy Speaker and the key commission responsible for oversight of drafting legislation, to encourage them to increase parliament’s transparency and accountability to citizens and utilize resources and good practices from research from international NGOs like those who are members of OGH in DC 

  • Meeting with the Albanian President Ilir Meta, to discuss lessons learned in Albania’s ongoing journey of democratization and reform, and how the US and international NGOs and initiatives like the Open Government Partnership and Summit for Democracy can support these efforts. Global challenges to democracy were also discussed (including challenges to America’s own democracy) and President Meta aptly described how all citizens must continually be vigilant to preserve and protect democracy: “citizens who fall asleep in their democracy might wake up with something else.”  

Media Coverage

Many high-level politicians (including the President) shared press releases or online posts of their meetings with the Open Gov Hub team. This visit also received other national media coverage, such as: 

Initial Results

The visit had some immediate impacts:

  • The Minister responsible for the Summit for Democracy setting a date in June for a public consultation with civil society to detail specific written commitments for Albania’s participation in this Summit 

  • The head of the Democratic opposition party bloc in parliament announcing in a press conference the need for transparency in upcoming rounds of parliamentary voting for the next president, soon after meeting with the OGH team 

  • The OGHA team received numerous offers for partnerships and other forms of collaboration 

Next Steps 

The OGHA team will now finalize and begin to implement their 3 year strategy, with a particular focus on being a platform for resources and events for civil society organizations, as well as offering training for municipal government leaders across Albania. 

In addition, the OGH team in DC will continue to offer resources, peer learning, and coaching to OGHA and all Global Affiliate Hubs, and will now also begin to evolve the Introduction to Open Government training into both a self-paced online course, and as a trainers manual that the leaders of global hubs can use themselves to offer such trainings to their own local government officials in the future.

After years of effort, we are delighted to celebrate this successful launch of Open Gov Hub Albania, the first affiliated Open Gov Hub in Europe, which we are confident will be a great resource for the country and region to support democratic reforms for years to come!

Open Gov Hub . https://www.opengovhub.org
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