The Open Government Partnership (OGP) Civil Society Conference with the theme “The Future of Civil Society and Local Stakeholder Engagement in the Philippine OGP” was conducted last August 14, 2017 in Manila. In the conference, there were sharing of experiences on localizing open government initiatives such as I-budget Natin of the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability in East Asia and Pacific (ANSA-EAP) and Open Legislation of Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP) as CSOs’ contributions to OGP.

New CSO representatives in the Philippine OGP Steering Committee Members were also elected at the conference. Among CODE-NGO members and affiliates elected in the Non-Government Steering Committee are as follows:

• Olivia Lucas of Unang Hakbang Foundation for NCR
• Aurora Chavez-De Guzman of Coalition for Bicol Development (CBD) for Luzon
• Catherine Ruiz of Kaabag sa Sugbo for Visayas
• Andrea Maria Patricia Sarenas of Mindanao Coalition of Development NGO Networks (MINCODE) for Mindanao

Other members of the OGP Non-Government Steering Committee members are as follows:

• Crystal Eunice dela Cruz of Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines
• Francis Magno of Jesse M. Robredo Institute of Governance
• Benedicta Du-Baladad of Financial Executives of the Philippines (FINEX)
• Annie Geron of PSLink
• Erwin Alampay of the University of the Philippines – National College of Public Administration and Governance (UP-NCPAG).

The Non-Government OGP Steering Committee held its first meeting last Aug 25-26, 2017 for an orientation on new roles and to elect the Co-Chair and Secretariat. MINCODE’s Ms Pat Sarenas was elected as co-chair and CODE-NGO as Secretariat. Immediate action steps were discussed, including a series of OGP awareness raising activities to be led by SC members with their respective sectors and fundraising for related CSO activities.

Mariefe Del Mundo is the Program Officer for Advocacy of CODE-NGO.