Ideas for sustaining open government initiatives over time were discussed in this session. The discussions focussed on the following elements: enhancing coordination with stakeholders, managing internal teams, and managing staffing or political transitions.

Highlights from the discussions:

• Need to involve a wide array of participants in initiatives (both nationally and globally), tailoring messages to different stakeholders. This can be useful for creating domestic pressure and international peer pressure to sustain initiatives at a later stage.
• The issues of lack of ambition resulting from the perception ‘we’re already doing well’, and the lack of funding for organisations trying to strengthen openness are intrinsically linked. Creating funding for civil society in advanced democracies can help mitigate against project-based efforts or opportunistic use of platforms/programs.
• Declining indicators on trust can be used to stir ambition and create buy-in for initiatives in contexts where trust is becoming a pressing concern for governments or civil society.
• Government officials and civil society should use policy/political windows to push through as many reforms as possible. Transition advice from the civil service and civil society to incoming elected officials should be as bold as possible.
• Integrating open government into civil service reforms was seen a way of mainstreaming open government principles in the workings of the government in the long run
• Participants also noted the need to collectively think about and continue working on how open government reforms can be entrenched within institutions to make policy reversals harder when political priorities might shift. The need to develop guidance on this based on lessons learnt/reflections from reformers that have undergone transitions successfully or unsuccessfully was identified.