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Make Aid Funds Transparent

 

”]make aid transparent banner- one cartoon with money the other two with nothing

Last week, Publish What you Fund launched their Make Aid Transparent campaign, which calls on aid donors to publish information on what they are doing with their development aid.

Over forty civil society groups from twenty countries around the world, pledge to call on governments and other aid donors to publish more information on how, when, where and why their budgets are being spent.

At the center of the campaign, whose members include Oxfam International, Transparency International, ONE, and eighteen groups from developing countries, is a petition aimed at donor governments to make their aid more transparent.

The message after signing the petition clearly illustrates their overall mission:

Your action will remind donors to keep their promises to make aid more transparent. And this in turn will help citizens around the world to benefit from better aid and hold their governments to account.

All of these organizations have been working to improve the transparency on how aid money is distributed and should be mindfully spent, as any scope for corruption and inefficiency should be diminished and eliminated.

One of the best ways to do this rarely costs a thing: transparency.

Last December, the State Department and USAID launched a Foreign Assistance Dashboard that helps U.S. citizens know more about how their taxes are being spent on foreign assistance. It provides a visual presentation of, and access to, key foreign assistance budget and appropriation of data for the Department of State and USAID.

The Make Aid Transparent campaign has a similar aim, but targets the spending of civil society groups to enhance transparency and accessibility for their donors.

Making the information available can also help citizens of developing countries know how much their governments are receiving and can push for it to be spent it in ways that really meet their needs.

The first petition handover is planned to present in Paris, at a meeting of Working Party on Aid Effectiveness (WP-EFF) in early July hosted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The organization has other activities and actions that will take place through the year, with the campaign culminating at the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, Korea from November 29 – December 1.

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Brazil Govcamp Continues Gov 2.0 Global Growth

”]”]Picture of Sao Paulo, an evolving and fast paced cityGovernments from across the world are using e-government to deliver timely, accessible information to citizens while increasing the transparency and efficiency of delivering public services.

 

Sao Paulo, Brazil is now adopting open source e-government software as an early adopter of open government 2.0.

On June 8, 2011 Microsoft will be sponsoring Govcamp Brazil to facilitate the collaborative discussion and create an open learning environment to foster understanding in this emerging field.

E-governance takes the input of many parties, within the governing body, civic society, and needs the participation of private sector to service them. As a result, there has been an the technology of Government 2.0 has been highlighted, rather than the results it enables.

As former U.S. deputy CTO Beth Noveck pointed out, though, there is more to these new tools: “Gov 2.0 is a popular term but puts the emphasis on technology when our goal was to focus on changing how government institutions work for the better.”

Microsoft’s involvement in Brazil’s initiative demonstrates the global company’s exclusive and evolving role in looking outwards, where Government 2.0 and e-government is increasingly more prominent around the world.

Rodrigo Becerra of Microsoft provided this insight on the purpose of the Gov 2.0 camps:

This is a space for creating connections to happen between citizens, organizations, groups and governments that may otherwise not exist. We have done them in Berlin, Mexico City, Colombia, Moscow, Toronto, London, Sydney, Wellington, Boston, India, and we’ll sponsor the Brazil event in the coming month. We specifically have local organization committees running each event, We conduct them in all local language and invite social media, competitors and partners to revel in the discourse to help drive the progress of the Gov 2.0 movement

The open source software represents how the Government of Brazil wants to create a solution where civic society has documentation and support online.

It also generates knowledge networks, shares information, and fosters the growth of domestic technology, as the systems design can be adapted to local Brazilian needs.

 

 

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Serious Gaming—It Plays to Develop

Screenshot of peacemaker the game

Screenshot of the game Peacemaker

You can now play an active role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as either the Israeli Prime Minister, or the Palestinian President, straight from your living room.

Will you put pressure on the United States to publicly condemn your enemy? Will you withdraw your settlements from the Gaza Strip? Your decisions will render a live computer generated response. Similar to the importance of real life, timely decisions in the Middle East, your decision will affect if the entire region will be at peace or explode in violence.

”]photo of Asi Burak co-president of Games for Change and creator of "Peacemaker"This is the aim of the “serious game” called the Peacemaker developed by Asi Burak, and co-founder of GamesforChange.org.

These “Serious Games” are burgeoning agents for social change being used in the development world by advocates, nonprofit groups, and technically keen academics searching for new ways to reach young people.

The main idea is the player becomes immersed in a real-world situation where human rights, economics, public policy, poverty, global conflict, news, and politics are some issues confronted in the games.

The player deliberates and makes conscious choices while they play and those actions either benefits one side or harms another, making a complete resolution difficult.

Objectively, the player can play as many times as they need to resolve the issue to win the game.

As Jarmo Petäjäaho from Finland, states in a review after playing Peacemaker, “Making the policy decisions in the game and pondering the possible ramifications on all parties really makes the issues hit home and stay with you. It is a wonderfully efficient and fun way to study the real world.”

That is the true beauty behind all the efforts: games are innately helpful in simplifying large, complex systems and teaching them to people.

Two weeks ago Tech@State had a two-day Serious Games conference where gameTECH@state Serious Games orange poster creators, technology executives, and social entrepreneurs, exchanged ideas and experiences on the best mechanics of games for social change.

While most of the games focused on issues of international affairs, public policy and diplomacy, one group focused on how to leverage this educational tool for developing nations lacking computers.

Playpower, created by a group of programmers and researchers, is a great, simple educational tool to bring video gaming to developing nations.

By constructing a $10 TV-compatible computers out of discarded keyboards and outfitting them with cartridge-based educational games, the Playpower team aims to make learning games affordable for “the other 90%.”

The Serious Games shown at the conference is rowing as a tool used for social change, but no one knows how sustainable the method may be.

USAID is interesting in exploring the effects of the gaming venture on development.

An Innovations for Youth Capacity & Engagement (IYCE) game is currently in development with the Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA) Bureau in conjunction with Nethope. The game targets resolving youth and social issues in Jordan.

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TechCamps Converge Civil Society With Silicon Valley

Picture of a man with computer open with group of Indonesians listening

Photo Credit: U.S. Department of State

The US State Department hosted the second of its TechCamp workshops in Jakarta last month, in an effort to strengthen civil society organizations in disaster prone areas.

The idea is to take the knowledge of non-governmental (NGO) and civil society organizations (CSO) familiar with the humanitarian problems and unite them with the technology gurus who might have ground breaking ideas to solve them.

When the recent tsunami annihilated Japan, the world was able to band together on the Internet because innovative systems were created to help locate lost victims and donate funds. The State Department wants to leverage these inventive minds to help grassroots organizations around the world fight humanitarian crises.

“We saw the ability of digital natives and the networked world, using lightweight and easily iterated tools, to do something rapidly that a big organization or government would find difficult, if not impossible, to do,” Richard Boly, the State Department’s director of eDiplomacy, stated. “The question is: Can we get that same magic to happen when people aren’t dying?”

Secretary of State Clinton’s vision of Civil Society 2.0 is embodied in the Techcamps, to empower civil society groups with the digital tools and hands-on training needed to better execute their missions in the 21st century.

TechCamps focus on the challenges and needs of civil groups and then provides the technology consultations and digital literacy training to help solve them. The goal is to improve the resilience of NGOs and CSOs by increasing their literacy and connecting them with local, regional and international technology communities.

Last November, the TechCamp program piloted in Santiago, Chile as part of Secretary Hilton’s Civil Society 2.0 goal. In that gathering, NGOs and technologists from around Latin America discussed new tools to promote democracy and economic development.

Woman in discussion with group with TechCamp image in the background

Photo Credit: U.S. Department of State

TechCamp Jakarta, however, focused on disaster response and climate change.

Indonesia has a large social media presence, with the second largest number of Facebook members (after the U.S.), and like Haiti and Japan, is more susceptible to future disasters.

In addition to the change in topic, during the Techcamp in Jakarta, the State Department invited additional stakeholders—including the World Bank, USAID, and large technology corporations—so that emerging ideas would have the capital needed for a sustainable lifespan. Boly explained, “It’s a way to identify the next Ushahidi or FrontlineSMS and help them scale quickly”.

Several corporate partners signed on for the second session including Alcatel-Lucent, Novartis, Intel, Google, Microsoft, and Cisco. Leading technologists, including Josh Nesbit of MedicMobile and Kate Chapman of OpenStreetMap facilitated the discussions with Indonesian civil society leaders.

USAID is open to the new, collaborative approach. “TechCamp is all about digital development,” USAID Chief Innovation Officer Maura O’Neill asserted to Fast Company. “We are mashing up local insights and tech tools to save lives, create stable and open governments, and greater prosperity for all.”

The next TechCamp will take place in Lithuania this month to coincide with the biennial convening of the Community of Democracies.  Following will be Moldova in July with a focus on open government. Another six or seven gatherings are in the works, the State Department says, to possibly take place in India, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America.

 

 

 

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Uganda Blames Food Price Protests on Media

Ugandan man throwing a brick into a fire

Photo credit: Reuters/Edward Echwalu

Protests over rising fuel and food prices continue despite Ugandan government attempts to slow them down by blocking Facebook, Twitter, and censoring media content.

Last week, President Yoweri Museveni cited social media and negative media coverage as primary proponents of fueling social unrest amid state led violence.

Protestors boycotted fuel purchases by “walking to work” for the past two months in an effort to demonstrate against the government spending at a time of heightened government expenditures.

In Uganda, the price of staples such as wheat have increased up to 40%, according to the World Bank.

UCC wrote to all ISPs last month asking them to block access to the two social media websites for 48 hours, but their request was denied.

“If someone is telling people to go and cause mass violence and kill people and uses these media to spread such messages, I can assure you we’ll not hesitate to intervene and shut down these platforms,” Godfrey Mutabazi, executive director of the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) stated last month.

The Uganda’s communications regulator relies on Internet service providers to enforce their demands, as they cannot block access to the sites themselves.

Separately, last week Museveni described both local and international media, like the BBC, as “enemies of the state” at a time when journalists are reporting brutal assaults and harassment by security forces.

Journalists have imposed a news blackout on the Ugandan government in protest against what they described as rising brutality against covering demonstrations over the high prices. The media blackout includes official police and army functions.

Following Museveni’s warning this week, the outgoing Minister for Information, Kabakumba Masiko, told BBC’s Network Africa program that Ugandan laws would be amended to deal with any journalist who behaves as an “enemy of the state”.

She state on the program:

If you look at the way these media houses have been reporting what has been going on in our country, you realise they were inciting people and trying to show that Uganda is now ungovernable, is under fire as if the state is about to collapse.

Early last year the minister took a proposed Press and Journalist Amendment Bill to the Cabinet, where it creates a new publication offense of “economic sabotage”.

Ugandan president Museveni with paper accusing media of sabotage

Museveni accused media of sabotage in 2008 address Photo credit: Monitor

If passed, the law would give absolute dominance to Media Council, the statutory regulator, the authority to revoke the license of any media outlet that publishes “material that amounts to economic sabotage”.

The officials’ efforts are part of a recent trend by autocratic governments to block social media sites and having media blackouts to control social movements.

The US State Department spokesman issued a statement of concern in how blocking communication mediums adversely affects civil society.

“We are also concerned by reports that the Ugandan government has attempted to restrict media coverage of these protests and, on at least one occasion, block certain social networking websites,” the statement said.

The ongoing role of social media and the concurrent suppression of media freedom in anti-government protests make governments’ actions against civil society measurable and accountable.

It is clear that the future of reporting will be increasingly difficult for authoritarian countries to really control what their people see and hear.

 

 

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How Large of a Role Did Social Media Play in the Arab Spring?

Did Facebook really fuel the revolutions: (Photo credit: Harvester Solution)

On May 5th at American University, a group of international scholars and Internet governance policymakers engaged in informed dialogue on current Internet issues at the Giganet conference.

One panel entitled “Revolution 2.0” featured two Middle Eastern Internet experts from Egypt and Tunisia arguing that social media was an aid in helping citizens topple the dictatorships, not it’s catalyst.

Khaled Koubba of the Arab World Internet Institute in Tunisia shared his experience in the revolution where 20,000 cyberactivists and opponents of the regime gathered in front of the Ministry of Interior on January 14, 2011.

“It is true that we used the 2.0 tools but it is not for sure that [it was] the 2.0 revolution or the Facebook revolution,” he stated, “it has been made by people who fight for their dignity, for their life…”

He acknowledged the message reiterated in the press that Twitter and Facebook were used to mobilize people and share information; but pressed that these social media tools also helped citizen’s regain confidence in their liberties, freedoms, and abilities to make change.

“Even after Ben Ali left, we are continuing even today to put pressure on the government [in] many ways using the 2.0 tools to make change to attain what we want to attain,” Khaled asserted.

He cited two controversial videos, currently circulating on Facebook, of Farhat Rajh, Tunisia’s current interior minister, speaking about some very contentious issues of the ex-ruling party and the elections to be held on July 24.

Nivien Saleh, an Egyptian and professor of International Studies in Texas, echoed Khaled’s sentiments that technology does not necessarily liberate.

It is the people who liberate themselves from an authoritarian government onto democracy. Social media is only one of the communication avenues that drive the mass outlook.

She maintained alternate forms of communication, such as strategies for non-violent resistance through targeted outreach, coupled the latent feeling of dissatisfaction, are the real central pillars for a population to mobilize change.

Professor Shaleh also questioned the future role that Internet governance will take in regulating the content of social media

“What standard [do] providers of social media such as Facebook decide [in terms of] what kind of content can make it onto their media platforms and what cannot,” she wondered outloud to the crowd.

She referenced the Khaled Said group on Facebook, where the government asked Facebook to remove disturbing pictures of the deceased Alexandrian martyr posted by activists.

“Facebook forced the activists to take the pictures down, even though [they were there] in the first place to protest and show that stuff like this actually happens,” Shaleh said.

It is blazingly clear from these two Middle Eastern scholars that this was not a Facebook revolution, it was a citizen’s revolution and social media was merely a channel to funnel change.

Please view the video below of the Giganet conference’s panel “Revolution 2.0: the Internet and the Middle East and North Africa” and the panelists viewpoints on the role that social media played in the Middle East’s uprisings:

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Accessing the Public Sphere Through Mobile: Haiti

During the 1970s, missionaries would walk around the towns in Haiti distributing radios to spread the message of the church. Haitians would accept them freely—not for the religious messages, but so they could tune into the Creole news services. Forty years later, a new wireless tool allows them to access news but with one fundamental difference: now they can participate in the conversation through their mobile phone.

Last week during World Press Freedom Day in Washington D.C., the sentiment that mobile phones serve as a catalyst for a two way flow of information between governments and citizens in the developing world was continuously echoed.

For the 77% of the world’s population who own cell phones, it is like a modern printing press in the palm of their hands.

Michèle Montas (Photo Credit: Richard Patterson for NY Times)

Michèle Montas (Photo Credit: Richard Patterson for NY Times)

Michèle Montas, Senior Advisor to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General to Haiti, United Nations Stabilization Mission, Haiti, observed that the widespread availability of cell phones began with a heavy push from the private sector but has resulted with an increased demand from the people. “We could find them (mobiles) in the countryside, in the slums of Port au Prince, in the hands of a street market woman, in the hands of a small shop owner.” she commented.

This extensive accessibility paves the way for citizens to use mobile phones as a tool to contribute information and express their opinions to the public sphere.

Ms. Montas alluded that although cell phones aided in humanitarian assistance after the earthquakes, mobile phones have also altered the way Haitians can now lend their relevant perspectives, notably by calling into radio talk shows they play an active role in public discourse.

“There has been an explosion of meshing of media, of journalists, and of people that just want to speak out,” she stated, “If you gave them a microphone they would just speak out on the microphone, today they would do it on a cell phone.”

Mobile phones are dramatically changing the landscape of how citizens can actively access and contribute information to the public sphere; they boost the morale of citizens in societies where the voiceless can finally be heard by the majority and inform governments of what their citizens need.

Please view the video of Ms. Montas during the past World Press Freedom Day on the Panel “Accessing the Digit Benefit”:

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Time-Lapsed Map of Global Protests and Uprisings

Two weeks ago, John Caelan of Swamppost.com created a one-and-a-half minute, time-lapse video of the major uprising and protests around the world between December 18 to March 7, 2011.

By analyzing a wide field of news sources, he argues that the map is adequately scaled, and reflects the density of reported demonstrations across a wide field of news sources. However, he does acknowledge that the video does not represent all the events of protests or uprising in the world.

The colors for the icons represent:

  • Red: resulting in death
  • Orange: major injuries, damage, arrests
  • Yellow: minor injuries
  • Green: Peaceful

The number of pickets is the size:

  • 1: Under 100
  • 2: 100-1000
  • 3: 1000-10000
  • 4. 10K – 100K
  • 5. Over 100K.

By utilizing open media research of worldwide news sources, Caelan compiled 80 maps for each day with the events added as they are discovered, so the apparent “blossoming” of events is simply a reflection of data that is available early on. His general methodology was to filter through the first thousand results of a news search on any given day, record the event, and archive them on an Excel sheet. The information in Excel was organized by day, and then further categorized by the location of where the events occurred, which he extracted from the articles manually. The flag icons were chosen by the average of reporting, as 100% accuracy in reporting the actual count of people at any gathering is intrinsically difficult, regardless of slant that the involved media parties tend to apply. Each day’s sheet was turned into a .csv file, and imported into the mapper supplied by Zee Maps. Caelan said that each day would be copied into the Excel sheet, with new events added–events older than 5 days are deleted, and those events older than 2 days turn to gray. Each event remains in color for two days, to account for the crossover of time zones. As he built most of these in retrospect, the December and early January time frame has less of the more obscure demonstrations because they were more difficult to research.

In addition, the video below compliments the original Global Protests & Uprisings video, however,  this is the time-lapse series of maps focused in on North Africa and the Middle East for the period of December 18, 2010 to March 7, 2011.

Caelan, however, is aware of the unreliability of these results in showing worldwide trends. Due to the mainstream media now actively providing coverage and following the protests, he says, this map shows how the reporting on uprisings or protests have dramatically increased.  Although he does not that this does not necessarily accurately reflect the quantity of protests themselves. He comments on the website:

Before ‘protest’ came to the forefront of international lexicon, there was much less density of reporting on demonstrations, and this was the primary reason for the perceived ‘viral’ pattern of the global uprisings. Suddenly, it’s pages upon pages of search results; however, as you point out, thousands of actions go unnoticed, even more so eclipsed by the weighty mass of popular revolt than before.

To find out more information about the uprisings shown in the video where you can click on the different icons and read information on the protest that was recorded at that point in his interactive map.

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“This Was Not a Facebook Revolution”

Protestors in Cairo

Not organized using Facebook

“This was not a Facebook revolution,” intoned Amira Maaty flatly, as she sat on a panel last night at Johns Hopkins University entitled “Social Media’s Role in Recent Events in the Middle East.”  Ms. Maaty, a program officer focusing on Egypt and Libya at the National Endowment for Democracy, was specifically referring to the recent revolution in Egypt, and her surprising remarks proved remarkably uncontroversial.

It seems that those who study North Africa haven’t been caught up in the rush to credit social media with catalyzing revolution. Instead, they take a more nuanced view.

The panel, which also included veteran journalist Jeffrey Ghannam and Jessica Dheere of the Social Media Exchange in Beirut, advocated the role of networks more broadly in bringing about the massive social change we have seen unfold over the last month.  Facebook and social media certainly played some role in helping to energize those networks, notably through the “we are Khaled Said” group, but it’s role in actually creating them is debatable.  Further, the daily coordination of demonstrators was more likely to be done via SMS, Google chat, or email.  It is easy to forget that, despite all the hype in the western media, the vast majority of Egyptians do not use Facebook.

Further, the panel explained, the lack of large and strong networks may play a role in explaining why upstart revolutions have been less successful elsewhere, even though indicators such as mobile penetration rates and facebook usage are similar.  In Bahrain, for example, it is likely that the state security apparatus can much more easily monitor the population because it is so small.  In Lebanon, fractures in the societal structure between Christians and Muslims prevent large networks from forming.  It could be that these social structures are more critical in allowing for successful revolution than any media, even if that media can play a complimentary role

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