With the central goal of co-creating the first Action Plan of the Municipality of Athens under the OGP Local framework, the Municipality’s OGP Local Team organized four thematic workshops, which took place on 17 and 18 May 2025 at Serafio, Athens. Each workshop served as an open consultation forum, where citizens, representatives of civil society institutions, elected officials and municipal staff came together around four themes:
- Energy Democracy and Vulnerability (see workshop video)
- Housing and Sustainable Development (see workshop video)
- Universal Accessibility at the Physical and Digital Level (see workshop video)
- Transparency, Accountability, and Participatory Budgeting (see workshop video)
Through a shared methodology of mapping proposals on a prioritization diagram, grouping similar ideas, and selecting top commitments via dot voting, the thematic workshops - co-chaired by Mr. Alexandros Melidis, General Director of the Open Technologies Alliance (GFOSS) - identified a series of particularly promising proposals. Four of these are expected to become key commitments integrated into the Municipality’s Action Plan as part of its participation in the OGP Local initiative:
- Development of a digital “matchmaking” platform for housing, to link citizens’ housing requests with available properties
- Creation of a comprehensive “one-stop shop” hub for addressing energy poverty, in collaboration with energy communities
- Implementation of a unified “digital transparency platform”, where elected officials’ asset declarations, meeting calendars with interest-group representatives, and a mechanism for public-document access requests will be published
- Systematic, targeted training of municipal staff and municipal entities (i.e., companies in which the Municipality is the principal shareholder) on issues of physical and digital accessibility, alongside the establishment of a “Registry of Persons with Disabilities”
The minutes of the thematic workshops will be published soon, while this effort continues with the collection, processing, and evaluation of all submitted ideas, the drafting of a coherent Action Plan, and the ongoing involvement of institutions and citizens not only in designing the corresponding actions but also in implementing them. Indeed, at all four workshops, participants unanimously emphasized the importance of close collaboration and continuous communication between the municipal authority, organizations, and citizens, in order to ensure the fulfillment of commitments and the long-term strengthening of open governance in Athens.
We warmly thank all the organizations and citizens who responded to the Municipality’s call to co-create its OGP Local Action Plan, took part in the thematic workshops, and contributed substantively and constructively to shaping the commitments. The workshops left a very positive impression on participants, who expressed their desire for this channel of communication with the Municipality to remain open and be further strengthened, in order to attract more citizens to this constructive dialogue.
It is also worth noting that the scheduling of these thematic workshops coincides with the launch of this year’s Open Government Week, a global initiative promoted by the Open Government Partnership to raise public awareness of the values of open governance. The Municipality of Athens is participating in Open Gov Week 2025 through these OGP Local workshops—the only event recorded in Greece for this year’s Open Gov Week—highlighting Athens’s leading role in promoting open governance at the local level.
We extend our heartfelt thanks to the following organizations for participating in the thematic workshops:
