Last November, the Open Government Partnership held its Americas Regional Meeting and one vital area of interest was examining the varied roles the private sector can play as a strategic partner. It examined how it could promote open government initiatives and help use design and implement technological solutions to increase transparency and accountability.

Of course, such tools would mainly benefit things like the fight against corruption, better public contracting, spotting conflicts of interest, and promoting beneficial ownership. But they could also impact other issues of sustainable development such as gender or climate change.

This global initiative promotes the adoption by the adhering countries of open government national action plans. These include commitments, goals, and specific actions in order to promote transparency through website portals, tools, and open data that allow better information and monitoring of government actions by citizens.

As a first possible strategy, companies, and other private sector actors such as entrepreneurs, business chambers, and associations, should be taken into account by national governments at the moment of designing their national action plans, with the explicit aim of incorporating their points of view. As a second strategy, the private sector can provide spaces or platforms for the creation of innovative solutions. A third way in which the business sector can encourage open governance is through the disclosure of data and metrics on its own sustainability performance. This allows different stakeholders — such as governments, regulators, consumers, investors, and employees — to access information and know how companies affect them based on environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, metrics.

Read the full article about the role of the private sector in Latin America by Gabriel Cecchini at Devex.