As competitive pressures increase and as resources around the world become harder to sustain, foresighted businesses have started to adopt new, collaborative and open private sector practices that accomplish two goals at once: improving the bottom line and increasing development impact. We hope to help businesses, government, and civil society fully capture the value of being transparent, accountable, and collaborative, by providing a suite of open-data instruments, tools and services to achieve development and economic impact at scale.
This Open Private Sector Platform (OPS Platform) was formally launched at the 37th G-8 Summit under the United Kingdom Presidency in June, 2013 in London. Its services are a core function of the Open Private Sector Council, a main thematic pillar of the Open Government Partnership. It directly provides guidance to OGP’s member countries on private sector engagement for the global open governance agenda.
The OPS Platform is comprised of a consortium of development-oriented businesses, non-profit organizations, government entities, and multilateral development partners. A Global Secretariat is housed at the World Bank Governance Global Practice, which guides and supports the operation and coordination of the OPS Platform.
Partners
The World Bank
The World Bank Institute (WBI) is a global connector of knowledge, learning and innovation for poverty reduction. WBI connects practitioners and institutions to help them find suitable solutions to their development challenges. With a focus on the “how” of reform, WBI links knowledge from around the world and scales up innovations. Within WBI’s Collaborative Governance Department, the Private Sector Engagement for Good Governance program and the Open Private Sector initiatives seek to engage businesses, government and the civil society in the formulation and implementation of collaborative solutions to difficult governance challenges. These programs are now part of the new World Bank Governance Global Practice.
Open Government Partnership (OGP)
The Open Government Partnership is a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. In the spirit of multi-stakeholder collaboration, OGP is overseen by a Steering Committee including representatives of governments and civil society organizations. The Open Government Partnership formally launched on September 20, 2011, when the 8 founding governments (Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States) endorsed the Open Government Declaration, and announced their country action plans. In just two years, OGP has welcomed the commitment of 56 additional governments to join the Partnership. The OPS Platform provides direct assistance to the OGP’s Private Sector Council.
OpenCorporates
OpenCorporates is the largest worldwide database of information on corporate entities. OpenCorporates wants to make information about companies and the corporate world more accessible, more discoverable, and more usable, and thus give citizens, community groups, journalists, other companies, and society as a whole the ability to understand, monitor and regulate them. OpenCorporates is the main contributing partner of the Open Company Data Index and developer of the Open Supply Chain Platform.
Sedex
Sedex is a not for profit membership organization dedicated to driving improvements in ethical and responsible business practices in global supply chains. As the largest collaborative platform for sharing ethical supply chain data, Sedex is an innovative and effective supply chain management solution, helping reduce risk, protect company reputation and improve supply chain practices. Sedex is a main contributing partner of the Open Supply Chain Platform.
Ecodesk
Ecodesk is a global supply chain sustainability service provider, which enables the benchmarking of suppliers to reduce risk, identify opportunities and drive efficiency changes. Ecodesk is a contributing developer of the Open Supply Chain Platform.
Govini
Govini, the flagship product of Poplicus Incorporated, provides the private sector with information related to government contracting. The firm believes in an open, transparent government and focuses on driving competition among contractors, based on open government policies that will lead to a more efficient contracting process. Govini’s system is a tool for contractors to efficiently access the content they rely on to power their public sector revenue streams. Govini is the main developer of the Open Government Contracts Platform.
The Center for International Private Enterprise
The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) strengthens democracy around the globe through private enterprise and market-oriented reform. CIPE is one of the four core institutes of the National Endowment for Democracy. Since 1983, CIPE has worked with business leaders, policymakers, and journalists to build the civic institutions vital to a democratic society. CIPE’s key program areas include anticorruption, advocacy, business associations, corporate governance, democratic governance, access to information, the informal sector and property rights, and women and youth. CIPE moderates the Public Private Dialogue Hub.