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Highlights on Social Accountability

June 5- 17, 2013
[Past Event]

Transparency and the Struggle for Accountability in Mexico This event took place on May 9, 2013 and was organized by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Washington DC. In her presentation, the speaker, Ms. Irma Sandoval-Ballesteros (Reagan Fascell Fellow, National Endowment for Democracy) focused on the Mexican case to examine the dynamics of how this new context of structural pluralism of public authority is affecting policy, including how Mexico s new and comprehensive FOIA law is failing to meet its promise. Ms. Sandoval-Ballesteros offered recommendations for developing strategies to expand transparency and anti-corruption policies that can help strengthen democratic institutions in Mexico. Her presentation was followed by comments by Mr. Eric Hershberg (Director, Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, American University ). To read more information about the event and see the event recording, please click here. To download the power point presentation, click here. You can also download the event highlights here.
[Report]

State of Civil Society 2013: Creating an enabling environment CIVICUS has recently released the report "State of Civil Society 2013". This is the second edition of the State of Civil Society report produced by CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation. The 2013 State of Civil Society report draws from nearly 50 contributions made by people active in civil society all over the world from CIVICUS members, partners, supporters and others in the CIVICUS alliance. They contributed 31 new pieces of analysis and thinking on the state of civil society. The report also benefited from 16 responses to a questionnaire from national civil society platforms. You can watch the video recording of the presentation of the report here. To download the summary report, please click here. To download the full report, please click here.
[Blog]

Italian Politics 2.0: The Multifaceted Effect of the Internet on Political Participation The DemocracySpot, a blog by Tiago Peixoto (World Bank Institute), features a post about the effects of internet on political participation in Italy. The research highlighted mentioned in the blog post shows that broadband Internet had a negative effect on turnout in parliamentary elections between 1996 and 2008, but it was positively associated with other forms of political participation, both online and of ine. To read the blog post, please click here. To download the research mentioned in the post, please click here.
[Blog]

Lack of meaningful metrics and evaluation limits the effectiveness of civic engagement The blog of the Governance Lab at New York University (GovLab) features a post by Stefaan Verhulst. The author talks about how the lack of a clear evaluation and metrics of e-government initiatives is limiting the potential of these tools for civic engagement. Starting from the observations of another author (Pedro Prieto-Martin, "The e(R)evolution will not be funded"), the author discusses some of the aspects of measuring ICT and civic engagement. To read this blog post, please click here.

[Blog]

Case Studies from South Asia Highlight Significance of Social Accountability Mechanisms This article was posted in the World Bank Institute's blog. The article focuses on ADHAR, a civil society organization (CSO) based in Orissa, India, which designed an approach to leverage Community Score Cards, Citizen Report Cards, and Right to Information (RTI) requests to monitor the progress of two national programs on rural employment and public distribution. Their monitoring efforts resulted in heightened awareness, greater responsiveness of the service provider, and increased reforms in service delivery. To read more, please click here.
[Blog]

DFID Research: Taxing Africa for better governance Mick Moore, of the International Centre for Tax and Development, highlights the importance of taxation in Africa and its impact on the relationship between citizens and their governments. This blog post includes a 15-minute video of Mick Moore during a TEDx Event at Sussex University. To read this blog and watch the video, please click here.
[Blog]

Are Transparency, Accountability and Privacy Mutually Exclusive? This blog post is a contribution of Nathaniel Heller to the Global Integrity blog. In the blog post, the author starts by asking how to balance three competing and potentially mutually exclusive needs of transparency, accountability, and privacy? Even though there seems to be no clear answer, the article concludes that probably you can have transparency, accountability, and privacy but never all three at the same time. To read the complete blog post, please click here.
[Blog]

OGP: Africa's First Regional Meeting kicks-off in Mombasa This article is posted in the Africa Freedom of Information Centre, and it provides information about the first regional meeting of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in Africa. This regional meeting took place in Mombasa, with representatives from 16 countries. The meeting has attracted a wide variety of Participants and Speakers, including OGP participating governments, Civil society activists, Academia, Multilateral institutions and other interested actors and the Media. To read more details about this recent meeting, please click here.
[Document]

Corruption and the Private Sector: a review of the issues Corruption has been identified as one of the most important constraints to private sector development. This DFID report explores the effects of public sector corruption on private firms and seeks to answer important questions, such as "How does corruption impede the growth of the private sector?" or "What forms of corruption are most harmful to business and how are different types of businesses affected differently?". This report was written by G.R. Forgues-Puccio. You can download the full report here.
[Article]

The Economist: "Zapping mosquitoes, and corruption" This article was recently published in The Economist, and it focuses on technology and government. Specifically, the article tells us how the clever use of mobile phones is helping to improve government services in Pakistan. The project that the article focuses on involved equipping 1,500 city workers with $100 smartphones and asking them to take before and after photographs of their anti-dengue tasks and to upload images, tagged by location, so that they could be plotted on an online map, made available to the public. The resulting data were then analyzed to create a visualization showing where and when dengue was infecting people. To learn how a similar approach was used to reduce corruption, please click here.
[Blog]

A good start, but G8 must try harder on accountability Daniel Yeo, senior policy analyst for WaterAid, contributes with this blog post on DevEx. The author explains how in the case of water and sanitation, the G-8 highlights the importance of the "Sanitation and Water for All" partnership as a way of improving aid to water and sanitation. But, as the author explains, in spite of this effort, the G8 fails to show how and where this money is being spent. He arguments that it is important it is to know where

the money is spent in this sector if we really want to see an impact on development. To read this blog post, please click here.
[Blog]

Good governance: A post-2015 'milestone' Craig Fagan (Senior Policy Coordinator at Transparency International, Germany) contributes this blog post to on DevEx. Anti-corruption and governance are undeniably key factors for achieving and sustaining development, globally as well as nationally. Both are preconditions for sustainable and equitable development, but, until now, they have not been fully integrated into development agendas and efforts, most notably the Millennium Development Goals that were agreed in 2000 and which are to be achieved by 2015. However, the Post-2015 agenda might change this. To read the complete blog post, please click here.
[Blog]

Transparency is Key for Sustainable Growth, Global Panel Says The Center for Effective Government blog has this interesting article, which links sustainable development and transparency. The article is based on a recently released report from the UN ("A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development"), released by the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. The panel makes clear that transparency is instrumental to achieving the aims of development, such as creating jobs and improving education; and calls for the targets themselves to be monitored in greater detail and for open access to those data. To read the complete blog post, 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), Zubair Khurshid Bhatti (SASGP), Shilpa Banerji (PRMPS), and Tiago Peixoto (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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