No More Smoke-Filled Backrooms: Leveraging Tech for Transparency & Accountability

In many parts of the world, countries are taking first-time steps to make their governments more open and accountable. Yesterday, NDI had the opportunity to host participants under the auspices of the Department of State's International Visitor Leadership Program. These business and political leaders came by to discuss NDI's approaches to ensuring accountability and transparency in government. Many of the leaders had not heard of NDI nor its programs, however, of the 18 countries represented from Albania to Uganda, NDI had offices in 17 of them. This was therefore a great opportunity for private and public leaders to get to know the organization better with a view to establishing future working relationships. My own contributions focused on presenting the technology components of NDI’s accountability and transparency work, identifying ways that NDI leverages new technologies to strengthen the foundations of open government. Anyone who has read every post on this blog will immediately recognize some examples; for those who haven’t consider the examples below.

Accountability NDI’s government accountability support often involves working with civil society organizations (CSOs) to monitor political processes. NDI has helped partners to use technology for electoral oversight. Most recently, ELOG in Kenya used SMS, to collect observation data rapidly, and social media, to communicate results widely. Upcoming elections in Nigeria give the opportunity for a joint network of NGOs - "Project 2011 Swift Count" to have similar success. NDI supports Parliamentary Monitoring Organizations (PMOs), and has catalogued 185 PMOs (Turkey & Lebanon) who monitor 70 national parliaments, as well as sub-national legislatures and international legislative bodies. These efforts are strengthened by the increasing use of e-democracy and e-participation tools. Citizen Reporting techniques use crowd-sourcing tools to engage the public in providing information or opinions on government information and services. Uganda Watch 2011 allows citizens to report issues around voter registration. In addition, many governments are proactively using new tools to enlist communities to track the delivery of services.

Transparency NDI’s technology-strengthened transparency programs focus on getting public information online, thereby improving access to government information. Traditional approaches have included support for parliamentary and government websites across all regions from countries like Namibia to Macedonia. More innovative transparency approaches include NDI’s most recent Open Data initiatives, where the value-add focuses on publishing data in ways that people can use, i.e. data sets that are searchable, sortable and integrate with other analytical tools. NDI’s website, www.afghanistanelectiondata.org, provides information for mapping and analysis of Afghanistan election data from 2004, 2005 and 2009. For inspiration on transparency tech, NDI looks to tools pioneered by groups like the Sunlight Foundation in the U.S. Supported by President Obama’s remarks yesterday to the United Nations General Assembly, calling for governments to “promote transparency; fight corruption; energize civic engagement; and to leverage new technologies”, NDI remains committed to identifying ways that technology can empower citizens and ensure that democratic governments deliver for their citizens. [caption] Image above found at http://www.georgeferencz.com/[/caption]