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Highlights on Social Accountability

May 28- June 4, 2013

[Upcoming Webinar]

Open Budgets: The Political Economy of Transparency, Participation, and Accountability June 5 2013 12:30 - 2:00 pm (UK Time), 7:30-10:00 am Washington DC time, Venue: streamed live online This event is organized by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), and it will discuss the findings from a 3-year research project supported by the International Budget Partnership on the causes and consequences of budget transparency, summarized in a recently published book, Open Budgets: The Political Economy of Transparency, Participation and Accountability. The speaker will be Paolo de Renzio (Senior Research Fellow, International Budget Partnership, and Research Associate, ODI), and the Discussants will be Joachim Wehner (Senior Lecturer, London School of Economics) and Rebecca Simson (Research Officer, ODI). The event will be chaired by Edward Hedger, Head of Centre for Aid and Public Expenditure, ODI. For more information or to register for the event, please click here.
[Upcoming Event]

Book Presentation: "Citizens Against Corruption: Report from the Front Line" Tuesday, June 11, 2013, 12:00-1:30PM, Auditorium J1-050, 701 18th St NW, Washington, DC The World Bank Infoshop will welcome Mr. Pierre Landel-Mills, the author of "Citizens Against Corruption - Report From the Front Line". The book tells the story of how groups of courageous and dedicated citizens across the globe are taking direct action to root out corruption. Based on the extensive practical experience through the work of over more than a decade supported by the Partnership for Transparency Fund (PTF), this book shows how ordinary people are no longer prepared to accept the predatory activities of dishonest officials and are successfully challenging their scams. To RSVP, please contact infoshopevents@worldbank.org.
[Upcoming Event]

An Informal Conversation on the Role of Citizens in the Fight Against Corruption Wednesday, June 12, 2013, 12:30 - 2:00 PM, Room: MC 6-100, Washington DC Following the presentation of the book "Citizens Against Corruption: Report from the Front Line" at the InfoShop, the author Pierre Landell-Mills will have an informal conversation around his experience and the cases presented in the book. This event offers an opportunity for Bank staff to exchange views with the author on what are the preconditions for successful demand led governance reforms and to discuss what works and what doesnt in supporting citizen activism to achieve lasting change. Task-Team leaders working on social accountability, governance and anti-corruption issues are particularly encouraged to attend this event. To RSVP, please contact gochieng@worldbank.org

[Newsletter]

Civil Society Newsletter The Open Government Partnership (OGP) Blog has just released the Civil Society Newsletter (CSC) No 8. In this issue, the newsletter highlights issues related to open government and open data. Some of the information you will find in the newsletter is the Croatian Freedom of Information (FOI) Law, the Resource Governance Index, new members joining and leaving OGP, upcoming events and webinars from OGP and other relevant information. To read and download the newsletter, please click here.
[Article]

Indigenous peoples in Latin America improve political participation, but women lag behind, says UNDP The UNDP released a press release regarding political participation in Latin America, following on the release of the report "Intercultural Citizenship - Contributions from the political participation of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America". In Latin America and the Caribbean there are approximately 50 million indigenous peoples, about 10% of the total population. To read the press release, please click here.
[Newsletter]

Global Youth Anti-Corruption (GYAC) Network Newsletter GYAC network has recently released the latest newsletter, which includes news and updates of events and activities related to youth and anti-corruption, as well as news regarding the GYAC Network itself. To read the newsletter, please click here.
[Blog]

Transparency International concerned about Egyptian court ruling against civil society Transparency International has issued a press release regarding the recent ruling in Egypt. The ruling to sentence 43 civil society workers to prison and close four non-governmental organizations is based on allegations they used foreign funds without a license, according to press reports. The organizations had conducted mainly democratization programs. To read the full press release, please click here.
[Blog]

Improving Freedom Of Information In Uganda The Access Initiative blog has a post by Catherine Easton (WRI), Natalya Lozovaya (WRI), Peter Veit (WRI) and Harriet Bibangambah (Greenwatch) that focuses on the Freedom of Information (FOI) law of Uganda (one of only ten countries in Africa with such laws), and how this could be a model in the search for transparency.But the author also talks about the gap between the freedom of information laws and the experience of citizens requesting information subject to these laws. To read more about this, please click here.
[Blog]

Announcing the Financial Transparency Coalition Did you know that the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development has recently changed its name to the Financial Transparency Coalition? To explain what is behind this change of name, you can read the blog post by Porter McConnell (Manager of the Financial Transparency Coalition), published in the Transparency International blog. To read more, please click here.
[Blog]

Transparency advocates from all around the world This blog post by Julia Keseru presents information about a recent initiative from Transparency International. She talks about a recently created repository of civil society organizations working around transparency and open data issues from all around the world. The author also calls for contributions to edit and add information to this database, which currently has over 500 organizations listed in alphabetical order. To read the blog post, please click here. To see the database of civil society organizations, please click here.

[Blog]

A Little More Transparency at EITI Can Go a Long Way Theodore Moran, non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD), contributes this post to the CGD blog. In this article, the author talks about some aspects of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI), and how fixing certain gaps and loopholes would improve this initiative. To read more about this, please click here.
[Blog]

Open Budgets: The Political Economy of Transparency, Participation, and Accountability This new publication examines factors and consequences of open budgets, based on a set of case studies, and includes an interesting typology of country types: middle- and high income innovators (South Korea, Brazil); hybrid reformers (South Africa, Mexico, Guatemala, Kenya); aid-dependent improvers (Uganda, Tanzania); stalled authoritarians (Vietnam, China). To read a blog post by Paolo de Renzio, one of its editors, with a brief summary of the findings, please click here.
[Article]

High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda On May 30, the UN issued the report from the "High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2013 Development Agenda" which aims to provide recommendations on advancing the development framework beyond the 2015 target date for the MDGs. This report highlights, among other things, the importance of Social Accountability in the post-2015 agenda. To read an executive summary of the panel's recommendations, please click here. The Guardian also published an interesting article related to the Post2015 agenda - to read it, please click here.
How-To Notes Series on Social Accountability
Feedback Matters: Designing Effective Grievance Redress Mechanisms (Part 1: Theory) ---Feedback Matters: Designing Effective Grievance Redress Mechanisms (Part 2: Practice) ---Citizen Charters: Enhancing Service Delivery through Accountability ---Citizen Service Centers: Enhancing Access, Improving Service Delivery, and Reducing Corruption ---How, When, and Why to Use Demand-Side Governance Approaches ---Rapid Feedback: The Role of Community Scorecards in Improving Service Delivery ---Citizen Report Cards - Monitoring Citizen Perspectives to Improve Service Delivery ---Using Demand Side Governance Approaches to Identify and Manage Risks in Projects ---Participatory and Third Party Monitoring in World Bank Financed Projects: What Can Non-state Actors (NSAs) Do? ---Mapping Context for Social Accountability

The SA&DFGG team would like to thank Marcos Mendiburu (WBISG), Nicolas Perrin (ECSSO), Varalakshmi Vemuru (AFTCS) and Nicola Smithers (WBIOG) for their contribution to this Weekly Highlights. Please send us any information you would like us to share through the weekly highlights of the Social Accountability Community of Practice! All inputs are appreciated and recognition will be given in this section.
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