Spain co-chaired the 2025 OGP Summit with a focus on people, institutions, and technology. This article offers a systems-level view of open government, highlighting infrastructure challenges, policy signals, CKAN’s enabling role, and the themes shaping the future of transparency and participation.
The 2025 Open Government Partnership (OGP) Global Summit is now underway in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain (7–9 October). With trust in public institutions strained, AI reshaping policy, and data infrastructure under pressure, over 2,000 leaders are gathered to confront a hard question: can we still deliver on the promise of open government?
Across three days, public officials, civil society actors, technologists, and researchers will gather to ask hard questions: What does real transparency look like in 2025? Will open government efforts move beyond declarations into systems that last? Will commitments stay lofty, or will they lead down the long road of governance, operations, and accountability? And how can we reimagine public infrastructure—not just roads and rail, but digital and data infrastructure that supports democracy? The Open Parliament plan, regional OGP Local work, and national portals will all be in view.
| Signal | What it tells us | Source |
|---|---|---|
| OGP co-chair agenda | Trust is the north star; expect emphasis on participation quality, institutional integrity and responsible tech/AI. | OGP co-chair agenda |
| Open Parliament plan | Legislative openness is moving from aspiration to process change (traceability, access, citizen input). | Parliamentary Plan 2025–2027 |
| ODM 2024 “Trendsetter” | Spain’s open data governance and quality mechanisms are comparatively mature across policy, impact, and data quality dimensions. | EU country factsheet (PDF) |
| OECD indicators | Above-average digital govt capabilities; strongest on systematic adoption — foundation for scaling open-by-default services. | OECD 2025 Country Note |
| IRM results 2020–2024 | A large, multi-actor plan (48 final commitments) — but several were dropped; scope is not a substitute for feasible delivery. | OGP IRM results report |
Here are four frontier challenges the Summit surfaces — and which we must insist on from participating governments:
| Theme | Crucial Question | What Excellence Looks Like |
|---|---|---|
| Open Parliament & Legislative Data | Can we follow legislation as data — from bills to amendments, votes, evidence, committee reports? | Every law’s lifecycle captured in structured, linked format; APIs for amendments, roll calls, and explanatory materials; citizen comment channels; audit ability by default. |
| AI Governance & Algorithmic Openness | As governments adopt AI, can we demand transparency, explanation, and redress? | Algorithms used in policy or public services must publish logic outlines, lineage, accuracy metrics, and appeal channels. Open by design. |
| Scalable Data Infrastructure | Can open data truly scale beyond showpiece portals? | Modular ingestion, validation pipelines, versioned APIs, open metadata schemas, and a culture of reuse — not bespoke portals for each agency. |
| Civic Oversight & Enabling Environments | Can civil society and media freely monitor and challenge using data? | Legal protections, funding for civic tech, independent journalism, and public dashboards tracking progress — not just commitments but performance transparency. |
Data is infrastructure. Like roads, if we don’t build and maintain it well, everything else slows down or collapses. Yet for too long, governments launched open data portals with fanfare, but no strategy. They published without purpose. And then they wondered why no one came.
Platforms like CKAN were created not just to publish data, but to power ecosystems. At the OGP Summit, we must re-centre that thinking. What matters isn’t just the dataset—it’s the delivery pipeline: is the data usable? Is it trusted? Is it part of a feedback loop where citizens can respond, improve, and innovate on top?
Open data is the connective tissue of open government: evidence-based policymaking, transparency by default, and citizen-centered services all depend on trustworthy data infrastructure. As a leading open-source data management system, CKAN helps governments:
CKAN was built to make data open, discoverable, and reusable. In a high‑stakes context like the OGP Global Summit, CKAN provides the backbone for data infrastructure that delivers:
See Spain’s national open-source architecture at datos.gob.es: Technology.
The real test of OGP has always been after the summits end. Will commitments made this week be delivered six months from now? A year? Will we have metrics that matter — not just how many datasets were published, but how many people used them to hold power to account?
For that, we need:
The OGP Summit is a spark. But the fire needs fuel: sustained investment, better tooling, and deeper public engagement. Openness isn’t about compliance, it’s about power — and who has the means to shape the future.
Let’s use this moment not just to talk about open government, but to build the infrastructure that makes it real.
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