The Parliament organized the Workshop dedicated to the Sustainable Development Goals attended by the legislative and executive authorities, international organizations and NGOs.

The Chair of the Parliamentary Permanent Open Governance Council, Irina Pruidze spoke about SDGs implementation through open advisory and participatory process and touched upon role of civil society and private sector.

She introduced the activity of the Council and spoke about the action plans for SDGs. Good Governance is impossible without transparent governance, she noted. The OGP is the multi-directional initiative accessed by Georgia in September, 2011, and Since October 1, 2017 Georgia has presided over OGP. In 2015, the Parliament set up the Permanent Council which has adopted and implemented 2 action plans and 3 more are under development. “The Council actively participates with NGOs and international organizations, as well as civil sector. The Council has the Advisory Group”.

According to her, the Parliament has assumed the obligation to increase transparency and accountability, public involvement, to improve state services and anti-corruption systems in the public sector. “The first action plan resulted in the capacity of the website to leave the comments to the Bills. The second action plan ensured the feedback mechanism for the citizens to feel importance of their involvement in the legislative process. The Parliament shares their positions”.

The new website will allow the citizens submitting the petitions and applications to the Parliament. I. Pruidze spoke about importance of the oversight function and capacity building of the Parliament. “Open governance is impossible without the strong institution and this conference is dedicated to this issue”.

She introduced the scheduled activities: “we have assumed the obligation to outline even more ambitious plans”. The Council plans to implement general and gender self-assessment.

“The current website is quite informative but lacks flexibility. We intend to make the site more contemporary and interactive with openness as the key principle”.

She spoke about public awareness campaigns held in March. “We successfully cooperate with the society but it is not enough. We wanted to enlarge the circle of participants of development of the action plan, for which we planned the meetings in the regions, announced the students’ courses for the participants to introduce their ideas”.

The society shall be informed at maximal extent about the instruments ensuring their involvement. “If the society is aware about these instruments, it cannot apply them”.

The workshop is organized by the Parliament and supported by UNDP, Swedish Government and IPU.