The Road to 2015 is Paved with Open Data

This blog, by David Hall-Matthews, managing director at Publish What You Fund is about the data revolution, specifically concerning aid transparency. This is the 17th post in ODI's blog series on ‘What kind of ‘data revolution’ do we need for post-2015?’ This post is also a part of the Wikiprogress series on Data and Statistics and Post-2015. 

Transparency is a key pillar of sustainable development: an essential piece of the puzzle to enable effectiveness, accountability and social change. And in recent years, information on aid spending has slowly become more available and open.
 

The basic principle that aid information should be publicly available is now accepted as an essential component of international development. Nowhere has that been seen more prominently than the discussions around the post-2015 Development Goals.

We have two years to create new goals. Too often, in development, looming deadlines induce resignation and recrimination – but there are still reasons to be optimistic for the future of aid transparency and open data within the post-2015 process.

Credit is due to the High Level Panel for their boldness and dynamism. Their call for a “data revolution” set the tone for debates on a range of issues, and quickly became one of the buzz phrases of 2013.

There is no question that the “data revolution” means open data. Making detailed information available to everyone, even on something as well-established as aid, would be genuinely radical.

But buzz phrases can mean different things to different people. Many commentators have focused on inequalities of access to information. While it is of course essential to highlight obstacles to data use by the poorest, it would be foolish to put the cart before the horse. Before anyone can use data, there must be data out there.

Others have pointed out that the data revolution can’t be imposed from above. I agree – but we shouldn’t let an insistence on bottom-up approaches let those at the top off the hook on their own transparency commitments. Changes at the top can make a difference.

Aid may not be the most important resource flow after 2015, but making it transparent can make a significant difference to the problematic top-down relationships between donor and recipient nations – and it can set an example for other flows, because aid transparency has had a head-start.

The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) is the only existing international open data standard now in use. Knowing how difficult it is to make new agreements – let alone implement common standards – that’s a massive achievement. Any serious attempt to start a data revolution in 2015 would be crazy to overlook a system that works.

IATI works because:
It’s relatively easy to publish to it. Organisations only need to convert information they hold into a common format, then send links to an online registry.
It’s relatively easy to use the data. It’s raw, and will need to be interpreted to make sense to everyone (like all information), but it’s fully accessible and – critically – comparable.
It’s relatively easy to adopt the standard. Many non-traditional providers of development finance, including NGOs, climate finance providers, philanthropic foundations, development finance institutions and private companies have published to IATI.

IATI itself will be too limited to encompass all resource and information flows. But new standards – for example on domestic budget transparency, or extractive industry payments, could adopt the template – and common code – to make it as easy as possible for users to compare, contrast and collate.

There is increasingly more data out there – now we must make it a useful weapon in the fight to end poverty. We are working hard to ensure donors are becoming more open and now we are working hard to ensure information will be put to use.

We know that raw data may not be understood by the average person on the street, but don’t be fooled into thinking that only small packages of neatly visualised information can be understood. That’s an excuse used too easily by those seeking to control what data is released.

IATI was built specifically in response to partner country, civil society and government requests for more detailed, useful information on money coming into their countries. All donors should publish to IATI if they want to truly bolster the bottom-up approach to international development. It doesn’t make sense for donors to be suggesting new goals and ways to hold partner countries to account, without doing their own bit first.

The end of 2015 is not only the deadline to agree new Development Goals. It is also the date by when the Busan Partnership Agreement needs to be implemented.

Our Aid Transparency Index, the industry standard for assessing transparency among the world’s major donors, shows that most donors have quite a way to go to meeting their Busan commitments. The average score for all 67 organisations was disappointingly low, despite the many international commitments and speeches about openness.

For example, France is the third largest donor in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), spending over USD 1 billion in 2011. But we could find no comprehensive listing of the country’s current aid activities for DRC – or for any other recipient country. Similarly, Japan is the second largest donor in DRC, spending over USD 1.2 billion in 2011. But their database does not include basic information on the projects it’s funding, such as start or end dates of projects or their current status.

In other words, over USD 2 billion in aid to DRC – an aid dependent and fragile state –remains unmonitored. And much of the information we could get was out of date, patchy and difficult to compare with that of other funders operating in DRC.

It’s not all bad though. A leading group of organisations is publishing large amounts of useful information on their current aid activities. And some donors have made real progress over the past year. So there is reason to hope for better aid transparency by 2015.

Open data and transparency are becoming fashionable watch words, but we’re checking if donors are really delivering, looking beyond high-level commitments and long-held reputations. Crucially, we are measuring donors’ progress on the road to 2015.

- David Hall-Matthews

This post first appeared January 16, 2014 on ODI's Post2015.org site.

Transparency and governance in the land sector: two sides of the same coin?

This blog, written by ODI's Anna Locke, discusses land governance and transparency definitions, initiatives and key lessons. The post is part of Wikiprogress' spotlight on governance. 

Land transparency has been on the public agenda again since the G8 summit in June this year. Two events in the same week in October showcased the issue: the Open Government Partnership annual summit in London (which publicised the recent Open Government Guide on Land), and the Global Soil Week conference in Berlin, which dedicated a session to partnerships for responsible land governance – an issue that is rarely discussed by soil scientists. 

A couple of things hit me from these recent discussions. First, the public discussion has broadened from land transparency to land governance. The G8 communique published in June does not refer to a land transparency initiative as such but talks about ‘global activities to improve land tenure governance’. 

Transparency served as an immediate umbrella to bring together different initiatives in a very short time in the run-up to the G8 summit 2013 but seems to have been a launch pad rather than the end point. Similarly, the Open Government Guide on Land focuses on land governance while acknowledging the need for transparency, participation and accountability at the heart of open government. 

I welcome this broader agenda as it provides more of a framework to see how transparency can effect meaningful change.

However, at the risk of being pedantic on this issue (I have form on this– see my blog on the World Bank conference) once again, I want to pin down the terms of the debate and look at the underlying assumptions. It is important to make sure that we are all talking about the same thing, particularly as we prepare for an ODI Roundtable on the whole issue of Land Transparency in December.

First, definitions

What is land governance? The Open Government Guide on Land defines it as a series of processes, including recognition, registration and enforcement of land tenure rights, land-use administration, management planning and taxation, information provision and dispute resolution.

It then identifies the elements that characterise good governance: governments should help to ensure that these processes are ‘clear, transparent and fair… [with] human rights of citizens protected’; that they include‘accountable decision-making about how best to use land… improving the openness’[of those processes, I assume]; and that they ensure ‘consultation with those potentially affected by changes… [which] can help communities and households protect their rights’. 

The Guide suggests the Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF) mechanism launched by the World Bank as the main reference point for a baseline evaluation of the state of land governance. The LGAF measures governance in five thematic areas: legal and institutional framework; land use planning, management and taxation; management of public land; public provision of land information; and dispute resolution and conflict management. In turn, the main reference point for the LGAF is the World Bank’s definition of governance as the ‘manner in which public officials and institutions acquire and exercise the authority to shape public policy and provide public goods and services’. 

I would be more specific on two things. Yes, the discussion of land governance highlights the issue of how institutions can carry out the work of land titling, registration and administration. But it also needs to look at how they take and implement decisions on land – who takes part in decisions on land allocation, use and management, and how different interests in competing social and economic functions of land are reconciled. That goes beyond consultation. Indeed, it goes to the heart of the political economy of decision-making and the power relations that are involved. This is recognised implicitly in the Open Government Guide in its recommendation for participatory land and resource use planning. 

And what is the role of the private sector in all of this? Does the shift (back?) from transparency to governance mean a refocusing on governments, instead of the broader private sector actors targeted under pre-G8 discussions? These have been targeted directly through efforts to increase contract disclosure and public provision of information on holdings.

Second, what is the relationship that is assumed between transparency and governance? 

The G-8 Communique talks about the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure as ‘providing global policy guidance for good land governance and transparency’. So are they of equal importance or does one feed into the other?

The Open Government Guide takes the transparency of processes as a central element that feeds into governance (openness and accountability are others). The LGAF recognises the role of transparency in promoting better governance in the land sector, particularly in land-use restrictions, valuations, expropriation, the transfer of public to private land and in levying fees for different services provided by governments. Its emphasis on the provision of information, particularly through registries and cadastres, is the starting point for transparency in any form. 

The work of ODI (ADP,PoGo) and others, such as Global Witness, on transparency reveals a growing recognition of the importance of transparency for good governance. But it also shows that transparency is not enough, on its own to achieve the standard of governance in the land sector that we are striving for. This was also acknowledged in the Berlin discussions in October.

So, what can we take away from this? I see three key lessons.

1. Yes, the shift to a broader perspective on land governance is useful. But we need to acknowledge areas of agreement and difference on what we mean by governance, particularly in the presence of conflicting interests in land processes, and recognise the role of the private sector. 
2. We need to be clear about the role of transparency in promoting good governance – transparency and governance are not two sides of the same coin although progress on one depends on progress in the other. 
3. And finally, let’s carry the debate on the pathways from transparency to accountability to meaningful change into the debate on governance. This means talking about the content, timing and transmission of information; mechanisms and timescales to ensure meaningful participation and consultation; and getting accurate indicators that measure impact, not just processes.

All of these will issues were discussed at the ODI Roundtable on Land Transparency at ODI on 10 December 2013.

- Anna Locke

*The blog first appeared on 20 November 2013 on the ODI blog site. 

This post features the author's personal view and does not represent the view of ODI.    

Social media for anticorruption: lessons from the trenches

By Francesco Checchi from the United Nations Development Programme in Europe and CIS. 

This post first appeared on the UNDP Voices from Eurasia blog.

Real time map of trends on Twitter

As anticipated in a previous post (Social media for anticorruption? Exploring experiences in the former Soviet block), we have been putting quite a lot of thought into the use of social media for anticorruption in our region.

How can we use social media to capitalize on existing efforts by ordinary citizens and NGOs to enhance accountability of public institutions? How can we harness the amount of information concerning corruption scandals and maladministration shared on the Internet by the independent websites, media and bloggers? How can we move beyond the hype of well publicized cases to get into the mechanics of what works and doesn’t work?

We quickly came to the conclusion that the most useful contribution we could make to the debate was to provide some in-depth case studies focusing on the experiences of those who are working “in the trenches” – from the Georgian version of FixMyStreet to Moldova’s crowdsourcing platform Alerte.md, from an in-depth look  at the work of celebrated Russian blogger Alexey Navalny to the use of Ushahidi to monitor elections in Kyrgystan.

We therefore commissioned a report on The role of social media for enhancing public transparency and accountability in Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States: emerging models, opportunities and challenges. 

In addition to case studies, the report contains a review of the growing literature on the topic of social media for transparency and identifies three emerging models of implementation (information sharing, crowdsourcing and crowd-to-community).

Perhaps more importantly, the report focuses the attention on some criteria than can be identified as a predictor of success for social media for anticorruption efforts, based on the experience of the practitioners interviewed. These include, for instance, a well established reputation in the field, the use of cross-media promotion (going beyond online), and, importantly, citizen reporting – including NGO verification and the involvement of public authorities.

The report is meant to be a live document, to be updated as we come across new experiences in the region (See: Social media for anticorruption: from “why” to “how to” and Ushahidi comes to Kyrgyzstan) and, equally importantly, to test our own findings through projects on the ground. So watch this space for updates.

We warmly welcome comments, critics and contributions to make this study as useful as possible to practitioners and organizations working in the area of anticorruption and public transparency.