Title: Technologies for Transparency and Accountability: Implications for ICT Policy and Recommendations
Authors: Renee Kuriyan, Savita Bailur, Björn-Sören Gigler and Kyung Ryul Park
Pages: 64 pp.
Source: Open Development Technology Alliance
Publisher: The World Bank
Date (published): 13/12/2011
Date (accessed): 15/12/2011
Type of information: draft
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
"In wake of the events of Arab Spring and increasingly over the last decade, there has been attention and expectations on the role that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based technology platforms such as websites and wikis, social media, interactive geo‐mapping, and SMS and voice based reporting can play in increasing accountability, participation and transparency in public administration (R. Avila et al., 2010; Davis, 2004; Pina, Torres, & Royo, 2009). Public bureaucracies are under pressure to adapt and more openly improve the ways they interact with citizens through the adoption of web‐based technologies (Ibid.). Factors such as the gap between public expectation and perceived governmental performance, the role of mass media, political scandals, lack of transparency, and corruption contributed to a decline of public trust in government in the last two decades (Nye, 1997; Sirker & Cosi, 2007).

The field of technology for transparency, accountability and participation is an increasingly dynamic space for innovation. Whether it is using the power of crowds to monitor elections, or educating citizens about how the government spends money on public service, or monitoring local and national government budgets, ICTs are tools that have been used to shift how accountability and transparency are incorporated into public service delivery.

ICTs, particularly online and mobile technology tools, are changing the transparency and accountability field. Many of the initiatives including complaints mechanisms, public information/transparency campaigns, and public expenditure monitoring, are based on ICT platforms (R Avila, Feigenblatt, & Heacock, 2009). A number of websites function as portals where citizens can list their complaints related to their government’s performance and administration. As a result, citizens may have better access to information through technologies and can find new ways to participate (R Avila, et al., 2009). Citizen journalism and the concept of digital democracy are rapidly emerging and citizens are demanding their rights in public online forums. There are also initiatives that aim for transparency by publishing more information about the private sector that are in the public’s interest.

This report focuses on analyzing the conditions under which new technologies can enhance delivery of public services to the poor through improved accountability and transparency. It examines the linkages between the use of innovations in technology, increased accountability and the effects on the delivery of public services to poor communities. Specifically, the paper investigates the role that the combination of social media, geo‐mapping and various technology platforms can play in this process."

Title: Open Government: Which Way Africa?
Pages: 4 pp.
Source: CIPESA ICT Policy Briefing Series
Publisher: Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA)
Date (published): 26/09/2011
Date (accessed): 13/12/2011
Type of information: briefing paper
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
"The Kenya government scored what many billed a first in Sub- Saharan Africa, when it launched an open data website in July 2011. To put it plainly, the government opened itself to greater scrutiny from citizens and oversight institutions by providing them better access to information in its hands, including on expenditure and procurement. Increasingly, other African governments will be put to task to follow suit, as progressive governments the world over move to embrace the concept of open government, of which open data is a crucial element.
South Africa seems to be leading the pack in Africa in embracing open government, a benchmark on which governments should increasingly be evaluated in terms of their commitment to be accountable to their citizens. In fact, South Africa is the only African country that is part of what is set to become a powerful and popular global movement to place openness at the centre of governance and development.

Who is in The Open Gov Partnership?
The Open Government Partnership (www.opengovpartnership. org), or OGP, is a new multilateral initiative that aims “to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance”. The African countries currently eligible to join the OGP are Kenya, Liberia, Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda – and of them, by September 20, 2011, only Tanzania and Uganda had not indicated their plans to join the OGP. These countries derive their eligibility from their “demonstrated commitment to open government” in the key areas of budget transparency, access to information, asset disclosure by politicians and officials, and citizen engagement.

Overseen by a steering committee of eight governments and nine civil society organisations, the Partnership launches in September 2011, when the eight governments on the steering committee will embrace an ‘Open Government Declaration’ and announce their country action plans. More countries will subsequently be invited to join the partnership."

Title: Harnessing technology for transformation
Author: Matt Bannick
Source: What Matters
Publisher: McKinsey & Company
Date (published): 02/12/2011
Date (accessed): 07/12/2011
Type of information: article
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"The social sector should put more effort behind digital technology. The anonymity of mobile communication allows end users to report data—on health status or corruption, for example—without loss of privacy or fear of reprisal. By aggregating those reports, the potential impact is far greater than any individual could hope to achieve. And with networked technology, a simple solution can scale quickly.

With a 9 percent annual growth rate, India is one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. But corruption remains a serious problem; in 2010, Transparency International ranked the country 87th out of 178 countries in its annual corruption perception index. Indian citizens are regularly forced to pay bribes for everything from birth certificates to driver’s licenses—with little recourse for changing the situation. Individuals who blow the whistle on rent-seeking officials face the threat of retribution, a risk to both themselves and their families.

Technology has the potential to rapidly change this state of affairs. In August 2010, Indian civic leaders launched a website called IPaidaBribe.com allowing citizens to document incidents in which they were forced to fork over money illegally to government employees. The website has gained traction with impressive speed. In little over a year, citizens from 400 cities have reported incidents of bribery more than 16,000 times, and the site has had over 600,000 visitors. Requests to replicate the site have come in from more than 18 countries, including Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, the Gambia, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kenya, Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, and Sri Lanka, as well as several countries in the Balkans.

When we hear about the role of technology in spurring social change, our minds may immediately turn to well-worn images—such as activists using Twitter and Facebook to organize uprisings this past spring in the Arab world. Hidden from the headlines, however, is an equally inspiring story. Technology is not just being used to organize protests; it is empowering citizens to intervene on a wide variety of difficult, risk-laden social issues. It is also providing a platform to rapidly scale these interventions —so that millions of lives can be touched in a relatively short period of time."

Title: Technology for transparency, accountability and good governance
Author: Dave Algoso
Source: Find What Works blog
Date (published): 30/11/2011
Date (accessed): 03/12/2011
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"I spent yesterday morning at a discussion on the above topic. The issue at hand was the fact that a bunch of groups have been doing government accountability and transparency work for decades, and a bunch of groups are trying to leverage new technology and social media for similar ends — but these two sets aren’t talking to one another as much as they should be.

I noticed two major themes in the discussion...

How to divide up such a big topic?

The conversation ranged from open government data, to the use of mobiles for government service delivery, to citizen reporting on government abuses. In other words: the intersection of technology and better governance is huge. By the end of the event, it was clear that those attending had more to say on these issues.

There were several attempts to divide up the issue into manageable chunks. One rubric involved a distinction between top-down and bottom-up. The first category includes efforts to make data more accessible, use mobiles/other technology to reach citizens, or generally improve the efficiency of government operations through better technology.
...
Another approach for understanding the topic is to think about the impact that new technologies have on current governance processes. Technology might simply make a process more efficient by reducing transaction costs. For example, mobile phones and the internet help make it a lot cheaper to monitor elections, provide government data, or inform citizens about services. But technology might go another step further, beyond mere efficiency, by actually transforming how government works and how citizens interact with one another. This (some would argue) is what Twitter did in Egypt.
...
How do we know what works?

The other big theme yesterday was evaluation. I get the sense that most technology-for-governance interventions don’t receive anything close to rigorous evaluation. This is hardly surprising: governance issues are notoriously difficult to evaluate. As I’ve discussed before, randomized controlled trials aren’t applicable. Even psuedo-experimental methods run into trouble when trying to pick a defensible counter-factual. New technology might make data collection easier, but that won’t allow us to overcome the complexity of understanding governance or how change happens..."

Title: New technology and good governance
Author: Linda Raftree
Source: Wait… What? bridging community development and technology blog
Date (published): 01/12/2011
Date (accessed): 03/12/2011
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"Civil society has been working for years on participation, transparency, accountability and governance issues. Plenty of newer initiatives (small and large) look at new technologies as a core tool in this work. But are these groups talking and learning from each other? What good practices exist for using new technologies to improve transparency, accountability and governance? What are some considerations and frameworks for thinking about the role of new technologies in this area of work? What needs consideration under this broad theme of good governance?

Tuesday’s Technology Salon in New York City focused on those issues, kicked off by our two discussants, Hapee de Groot from Hivos and Katrin Verclas from Mobile Active. Discussion ensued around the nuances of how, with whom, when, why, and in conjunction with what do new technologies play a role in transparency, accountability and good governance.

Some of the key points brought up during the Salon**:

What is “good governance?” The overall term could be divided into a number of core aspects, and so the discussion is a big one and it’s complicated. Aid transparency is only one small part of the overall topic of good governance.
…
More data doesn’t equal more accountability. Data does not equal participation. Can mobile phones and other ICTs or social media reduce corruption? Can they drive new forms of participation? Can they hold power accountable in some ways? Yes, but there is no conclusive evidence that the use of new technology to deliver data down from governments to people or up from people to governments improves governance or accountability.
…
Efficient vs transformational. Transactional efficiency within a system is one thing. Transformation is another. You can enhance an existing process from, say, writing on paper to calling on a landline to texting in information, thereby improving accuracy and speed. But there is something more which is the transformational side. What’s most interesting perhaps are those ways that ICTs can completely alter processes and systems. Again, there are a lot of promising examples but there is not much evidence of their impact at this point.
…
Is open data just a big show? Some alluded to opaque transparency, where a government or another entity throws up a bunch of data and says “we are being open” but there is no realistic way to make sense of the data. Some felt that governments are signing onto open data pacts and partnerships as a fake show of transparency. These governments may say, “The data base is available. Go ahead and look at it.” But it costs a lot of money and high level skills to actually use the data. In addition, there is a need for regulatory frameworks and legislation around openness.
…
Is open data an extractive process? Some at the Salon cautioned that the buzz around Open Data could be a bit false in some ways, and may be hyped up by private companies who want to make money off of nice data visualizations that they can sell to big donors or governments. The question was raised about how much data actually gets back to those people who provide it so that they can use it for their own purposes?
…
Whose data? A related issue that wasn’t fully discussed at the Salon is: who does the information that is being “opened” actually belong to (in the case of household surveys, for example)? The government? The International NGO or multilateral agency who funds a project or research? The community? And what if a community doesn’t want its data to be open to the world – is anyone asking? What kind of consent is being granted? What are the privacy issues? And what if the government doesn’t want anyone to know the number of X people living in X place who fit X description? Whose decision is it to open data? What are the competing politics?
…
Can new ICTs weaken helpful traditional structures or systems? Is new tech removing some middlemen who were an important part of culture or societal structure? Does it weaken some traditional structures that may actually be useful? The example of the US was given where a huge surge of people now engage directly with their congressperson via Twitter rather than via aggregation channels or other representatives. Can this actually paralyze political systems and make them less functional?
…
Does new technology create parallel structures? Are parallel structures good or bad? In an effort to bypass inefficient and/or unaccountable systems, in one case, private business owners started their own crime reporting and 911 system to respond and accompany victims to report to the police and follow up on incidents. Questions were raised whether this privatization of government roles was taking justice into ones’ own hands, forcing the government to be accountable, allowing it to shirk responsibilities, or providing a way for government to see an innovation and eventually take on a new and more effective system that had been tried and tested with private funds. This same issue can be seen with parallel emergency reporting systems and other similar uses of ICTs..."

Title: Towards an Open Dar Es Salaam
Author Editor: Joshua Goldstein
Source: Promoting Information and Communications for Development (IC4D)
Publisher: The World Bank Group
Date (published): 28/11/2011
Date (accessed): 03/12/2011
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"Jeff Jesse, a Tanzanian student leader who has been collaborating with the World Bank team at the Open Development Technology Alliance, suggested an exciting idea over on the Daraja blog:
Why don't we open Dar Es Salaam, we could even call it Open Dar Es Salaam, where the City can come to young people to make maps, and then hackers can make new mobile and Web apps to help with different problems like education or trash collection. We have tons of talent here and people who want to do something good for the community.

Jeff's post reflects the excitement felt by many following a recent community mapping exercise in Tandale, an unplanned community in Dar Es Salaam. In Tandale, community residents joined Ardhi University School of Urban and Regional Planning (SURP) to use low-cost GPS devices and free and open source software stack to mark the location of roads, streets, street lights, trash dumps and upload urban infrastructure information to Open Street Map (OSM), a free and open online mapping platform. The training, provided by youth leaders involved in Kenya’s Map Kibera project, took only a few days in the field and computer lab."

Title: Opening government : A guide to best practice in transparency, accountability and civic engagement across the public sector
Source: Transparency and Accountability Initiative
Date (published): 12/07/2011
Date (accessed): 13/07/2011
Type of information: report
Language: English
On-line access: yes (pdf)
Abstract:
"To help inform governments, civil society and the private sector in developing their Open Government Partnership commitments, the Transparency and Accountability Initiative (T/AI) reached out to leading experts across a wide range of open government fields to gather their input on current best practice and the practical steps that OGP participants and other governments can take to achieve it.

The result is the first document of its kind to compile the state of the art in transparency, accountability and citizen participation across 15 areas of governance, ranging from broad categories such as access to information, service delivery and budgeting to more specific sectors such as forestry, procurement and climate finance.

Each expert’s contribution is organized according to three tiers of potential commitments around open government for any given sector—minimal steps for countries starting from a relatively low baseline, more substantial steps for countries that have already made moderate progress, and most ambitious steps for countries that are advanced performers on open government.

REPORT BREAKDOWN

Introduction p3
Illustrative commitments & best practice p5
Aid p6
Asset disclosure p9
Budgets p11
Campaign finance p16
Climate finance p18
Fisheries p20
Financial sector reform p24
Forestry p27
Electricity p30
Environment p32
Extractive industries p37
Open government data p40
Procurement p43
Right to information p45
Service delivery p49"

Title: Kenya opens its books in revolutionary transparency drive
Author: Claire Provost
Source: Poverty matters blog
Publisher: The Guardian
Date (published): 13/07/2011
Date (accessed): 13/07/2011
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"The Kenya Open Data Initiative (KODI), which went live last Thursday, holds more than 160 datasets organised under six subheadings: education, energy, health, population, poverty and water and sanitation. Users can explore data at the country-level, but also by county or constituency. The platform includes newly created geospatial boundaries for Kenya's 47 counties and geocoded datasets can be visualised quickly using simple built-in tools. Data is pulled in from the national census and governMwment ministries as well as from the World Bank.

"Our information is a national asset, and it's time it was shared: this data is key to improving transparency; unlocking social and economic value; and building Government 2.0 in Kenya," says the KODI website.

The initiative, launched by the Kenyan government, aims to promote data-driven decision making and help improve government transparency and accountability.

Users of the open data portal can create interactive charts and tables, and developers can download the raw data via an API to analyse and build applications for web and mobile. There's also a "suggest a dataset" button that collects requests for new data. Demands have already piled in with requests for data on youth unemployment, libraries, crime and the locations of primary and secondary schools."

Title: Africa’s First National Open Data Initiative: Kenya
Author: Erik Hersman
Source: WhiteAfrican
Date (published): 07/07/2011
Date (accessed): 10/07/2011
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
"Today Kenya becomes the first country in Africa to launch a national open data initiative. There have been many people pushing for this, over many months, and it’s been an exciting process to watch unfold. Foremost amongst the drivers on this has been Dr. Bitange Ndemo, the Permanent Secretary of Information and Communications. This is indeed a very proud moment for Kenya, and a leading position to take on the continent.

The Kenya Open Data Initiative (KODI) goes live this morning in a big event that includes President Kibaki, as well as many politicians, government officials and local technologists. The World Bank, who has been instrumental in organizing and helping publish the data is here as well, along with Google, Ushahidi, the iHub community and a large selection of youth.

The data is available online through the Socrata platform, which allows users to view different data at national, county and constituency levels. They can compare different data sets, create maps and other visualizations.

Data sets are categorized into 6 main categories: Education, Energy, Health, Population, Poverty and Water & Sanitation. It includes data from the national census, the ministry of education, ministry of health, CDF projects and many more."
(via https://twitter.com/#!/ajussis)

Title: Open data in development – the missing debate?
Author: Tariq Khokhar
Source:aidinfo.org
Date (published):03/12/2010
Date (accessed):03/12/2010
Type of information:blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
„After reading an earlier post on the role of open data in development, Tobias Denskus calls for more critical debates around open aid data. His article is really worth reading first; he draws our attention to four issues in the current state of aid transparency:

Everybody in the aid sector seems to be on board with it. This suggests that the ideas of aid data and transparency are too broad, no longer innovative or don’t challenge the fundamentals of development. Where’s the debate around the small print?
Many international development decisions are political: better aid data leading to more convincing arguments is unlikely to change this.
Data and numbers can only have a limited effect on the fundamental issues of how development “thinks, reports or learns” and aid transparency favours the quantitative over the qualitative.
Most aid data is old data and its usefulness beyond research is limited. Complex bureaucracies might struggle to respond to outsiders engaging with their data and even if we have more current data, how much “real-time” influence is actually desirable?”