Quote of the Week: Adolfo Perez Esquivel
“The social order we seek is not a utopia. It is a world where political life is understood in terms of active participation by the governors and the governed in the realization of the common...
View ArticleCitizens Love Transparency
Governments? Not so much…When Francis Maude spoke at the World Bank recently on the topic of open data and open government, he said, “The truth is governments have generally collected and hoarded...
View ArticleCitizens and the State: Working Across the Demand and Supply Dichotomy
Citizens are assigned various roles in the development process (service users, project beneficiaries, and consulted stakeholders). But how can citizens move from being just users and choosers of social...
View ArticleCitizens In Want of Stamina
This is the age of hopeful citizens where in almost every part of the globe citizens are mobilizing, marching and, often successfully, pushing for change. But this is also the age of increasingly...
View Article"Check My School" and the Power of Openness in Development
There has been a lot of buzz lately around open development, and new initiatives seem to be popping up everywhere. My colleague Maya talks about what open development means exactly in her blog and...
View ArticleWhen Budget Disclosure is Not Enough
Deliberations around public budgets can sometimes bring out the worst in parliamentarians but impassioned responses rarely come from citizens themselves. Perhaps it is because budgets come in the form...
View ArticleHow Can Aid Agencies Promote Local Governance and Accountability? Lessons...
Oxfam is publishing a fascinating new series of case studies today, describing its programme work on local governance and community action. There are case studies from Nepal (women's rights, see...
View ArticleAccountability is Based on Relationships, but Data Helps Too
"Imagine this: A health care worker or parent in a village, with a laptop or mobile device, can access development knowledge in real time through geocoding and geomapping. She can see which schools...
View ArticleWeekly Wire: the Global Forum
These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.The AtlanticHow Social Media Could Revolutionize Third-World Cities“When a housewife in a...
View Article#10 from 2012: Technology Drives Citizen Participation and Feedback in Rio...
Our Top Ten Blog Posts by Readership in 2012Originally published on May 29, 2012A common theme in the field of open government refers to the use of technologies as a means to foster citizen engagement....
View ArticleConnecting Social Media to the Policy Cycle
Here are some fact and figures:- 62% (that’s six in ten) of online citizens now use social media.- Facebook has 1 billion registered users and is still growing, mostly in developing countries.- China...
View ArticlePolicy Makers and Network Science: Time to Bridge the Divide
Last week I attended Masters of Networks, an event that analyzed how a greater understanding of networks can be used to make better policies, especially in the digital era. Many questions built in...
View ArticleIs It Time for a New Paradigm for "Citizen Engagement"? The Role of Context...
The meteoric rise of "citizen engagement"Almost all development agencies promote some form of citizen engagement and accountability, often framed as 'voice', 'demand-side governance', 'demand for good...
View ArticleOpen Data, Open Policy: Stepping Out of the Echo Chamber
Recently, I participated in several events that look at the space between empowered government (gov2.0) and empowered citizens (citizen2.0 both individuals and civic groups and NGOs).One discussion was...
View ArticleWill Midterm Evaluations Become the Dinosaurs of Development?
I argued a few months back that information we get from story-telling is fundamentally different to what we get from polls and surveys. If we can’t predict what’s coming next, then we have to...
View ArticleMedia & Information Literacy is Gaining Momentum
In recent years, Media & Information Literacy (MIL) has been increasingly recognized as a critical element in good governance and accountability. This is partly due to the rapid growth in...
View ArticleWhen do Transparency and Accountability Initiatives have impact?
So having berated ODI about opening up access to its recent issue of the Development Policy Review on Transparency and Accountability Initiatives (TAIs), I really ought to review the overview piece by...
View ArticleRethinking Social Accountability in Africa
Mwanachi, a Swahili word that means ordinary citizen, is the name of a governance and transparency program that was funded by the UK’s Department for International Development for five years in six...
View ArticleTransparency & Social Accountability: Where’s the Magic?
Are citizens receiving the greatest development impact for their development dollar? This is the basic principle at the heart of International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), a voluntary,...
View ArticleInnovations for Resolving Disputes in Development
As rapid innovation and adoption of new communications technology sweeps across the globe, one thing is certain: the trend for increasing demand from citizens to have a greater say in public projects....
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....