This article is based on a presentation made by James Lowry called “Open government and Trustworthy Records:Benchmarking Regulatory Framework and Capacity”, at the 2013 Annual Conference of ICA, Brussels ,Belgium
 
The Open Government Partnership, or OGP, was established in 2011 as an international voluntary effort to foster more transparent, effective and accountable governments.
Steering committees are composed of government and civil society organizations. The Transparency and Accountability Initiative, a UK-based nongovernment organization, published a handbook called “Open Government ” in the same year. This was the first practical document of its kind to compile good practice steps that governments can take to achieve openness.
In 2013, the guide was updated and expanded in an online version to support governments and civil service organizations as they work to develop, update and implement OPG action plans. The guide, which was launched in October 2013, gives users a way to navigate the diversity of open government topics and find country examples, standards and detailed guidance. Moreover, the IRMT has worked with the Transparency and Accountability Initiative to prepare a section on records management to assist governments and organizations build regulatory frameworks and capacity for records management,to help to ensure that all records will be trustworthy. The IRMT has also developed a benchmarking tool to measure organizational performance in aligning the records manage function with openness efforts.Benchmarking is the process of comparing your organizational processes and performance metrics to best practices towards attaining superior performance. Although the term of benchmarking is used for business administration , it can also be applied to records and archives administration. The tool supports archivists and others involved with records and archives to ensure that records and archives are created and remain accessible, usable and authentic for as long as they needed to provide the basis for improving services, controlling corruption and strengthening democracy.
 

Ms.Varanud Vinasandhi
Audio-visual Officer, Professional Level The National Archives of Thailand and ICA volunteer