Abstract:
In 2015, the government of Kazakhstan set a bold goal of becoming a transparent and
accountable government. To achieve that goal, Open Government portal was launched
with five components that cover various aspects of government’s work: budgetary,
rulemaking, direct interaction with citizens, assessment of government effectiveness
and public data generation. This Policy Analysis Exercise focuses on the Open Legal Acts
portal which is the e-rulemaking platform. The portal aims to promote transparency of
the government’s rulemaking process, to provide citizens with opportunities to
comment on drafts of legal acts. The authors of this PAE aim to investigate whether
transparency on the portal leads to accountability of the government entities. Multiplemethod
approach (archival analysis and semi-structured interviews) was used to
analyze the data. The findings suggest that although transparency level has increased
slightly over the analyzed period, there have not been dramatic changes in terms of
level of accountability. The following recommendations were provided to manage this
issue: enhancing e-rulemaking process, up-grading the architecture of the portal, and
increasing citizens’ access and participation....