Today, CoST held an internal webinar for Open Government Partnership (OGP) Local members with a particular focus on CoST members in Africa and Latin America, alongside the CoST International Secretariat, sharing with OGP’s Francophone members on how they can use CoST’s free tools and standards to drive infrastructure transparency, accountability and participation. Over 80 attendees from across government, civil society and media around the world joined to hear about how resources like CoST’s sustainability and climate finance modules are supporting the work of many joint OGP and CoST members. Civil society collaboration took centre stage with all CoST members emphasizing the importance of civil society in delivering better public services.

Key points from this event included: 

• exploring data publication platforms from CoST members, and helping OGP members to learn how they can publish data;
• focusing on how members have used joint CoST and OGP principles and a commitment to civil society collaboration to excel in areas such as Jalisco working with academia and youth for social auditing; Malawi working with CSOs to track budget performance across transport, sport, education and more; Kaduna using the multi-stakeholder approach to rebuild trust with the private sector; STMA in Ghana training citizens;
• how CoST members have saved millions of dollars using the CoST’s tools and standards, including the Open Contracting for Infrastructure Data Standard, Infrastructure Transparency Index and more;

This event builds on CoST and OGP’s long history of mutual support to members, including CoST’s recent Open Gov Week event. This partnership was spotlighted at the start of the meeting including shared principles between the two organisations, and CoST commitments appearing in OGP action plans across multiple countries. 

Speakers from this session were:

• CoST’s Head of Members, Evelyn Hernandez
• CoST Africa Regional Manager and Learning Lead, Olive Kabatwairwe
• OGP’s Senior Regional Coordinator of Africa and the Middle East, Tarik Nesh-Nash
• OGP’s Programme Associate, Mercedes Nasiff
• CoST’s Open Data Specialist, Michael Cengkuru
• CoST STMA Manager and OGP Point of Contact, Isaac Aidoo, 
• CoST Malawi Manager, Lyford Gideon
• CoST Jalisco Manager, Claudia Arteaga
• CoST Kaduna, Tara Jeremiah Wyah 

The session also included a Q&A before wrapping up to look ahead at how OGP members can use, and benefit from CoST’s tools, standards and approach. Our tools, standards and resources, such as our guidance notes, can be used outside of the CoST membership. If you would like to find out more, email info@infrastructuretransparency.org or follow us on social media on LinkedIn, Instagram, X/Twitter and Facebook.