Democracy & Governance – Page 4

Liberia Elections: ICTs to ensure transparency

As Liberians prepare to elect a new President during the November 8 election run-off, the African Election Project (AEP) is using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to assist in monitoring the electoral process.

According to Africa News, citizens will be able to report election violence to the “Incidence Monitoring Platform”, a newly-established call center, and via SMS. Election observers and field officers are using social media tools to co-ordinate information transmission throughout the country. Moreover, cutting-edge call center software and a news database software are in place to track elections activities in real time.

“The use of ICT during this elections coverage will bring about transparency in the whole electoral process, ensure the timely release of electoral news to citizens residing in Liberia and in the Diaspora, issue alerts to the relevant institutions to prevent potential incidence of violence and to ensure credibility in the final outcome of the elections,” Mr Jerry Sam Director of AEP, said.

Established in 2008 by the Institute for ICT Journalism in strategic partnership with the Open Society Initiative, AEP aims to enable citizen and journalists to provide timely and relevant information and knowledge while undertaking monitoring specific and important aspects of governance. One of its objectives consist of providing relevant ICT tools for stakeholders involved in the electoral process.

Incumbent and recent Nobel Laureate, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, gained the most votes but failed to pass the 50% threshold needed for outright victory in last week’s elections. Despite fraud allegations, opposition leader Winston Tubman, a former UN diplomat, has agreed to contest the run off.

BBC reports that with 96% of the vote counted, Johnson-Sirleaf has 44% against 32% for Mr Tubman, the electoral commission announced. Turnout was 71%.

October 25, 2011/by actualize

Democracy & Governance, Elections, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Tunisia Elections: Politicians engage voters through YouTube

Tunisians are set to vote on Sunday in first landmark elections since the Arab Spring. Google has partnered with Tunisia Live to offer training workshops on Google tools and social media for politicians to engage with voters.

Photo of woman showing inked fingers, indicating she's voted in the Tunisian election

Photo Credit: Tunisia Live

Tunisia Live, a startup news portal, launched Tunisia Talks on YouTube where citizens ask questions to politicians. According to Google’s official Blog, so far more than 400 questions have been submitted and over 40 members of political parties and independent coalitions have taken part in the initiative.

In the upcoming elections, Tunisians will select representatives for the new Constituent Assembly, which will ratify a new constitution and appoint a new transitional government that will schedule elections for a permanent government.

These elections are not only significant to Tunisia’s political future but their success would further advance regional democratization.

Uprisings triggered by the actions of Sidi Bouzid, a unemployed Tunisian who set himself on fire to protest against joblessness, brought an end to 23-year regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January.

October 21, 2011/by actualize

Asia, Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Where we work

Solomon Islands: radio mail drive peace & development

Rural operators on discovery training into connecting with the rest around the globe

Frequency radio and e-mail maybe “simple” technologies but they are driving peacebuilding and development efforts in the Solomon Islands.

The People First Network (PFnet) is a UNDP funded project set up in 2001. PFnet promotes rural development and peacebuilding by enabling affordable and sustainable connectivity and facilitating information exchange between communities across the Solomon Islands.

PFnet has established a growing rural communications system based on wireless e-mail networking in the HF band, which enjoys full community ownership.

The PFnet community e-mail are the only link to the outside world, providing communities with access to information regarding health, public services and education, and enabling essential contact with family and professional peers.

Gender equality & rural development

PFnet plays particular attention to gender equity and democratic governance, helping women, especially disadvantaged rural women, to network, access services relevant to them and connect with women’s group.

A network of rural community e-mail stations is located on remote islands across the country, usually hosted in secure public facilities. The stations are pretty basic and consist of an old laptop, radio and modem, powered by a car battery, which runs off a solar panel as in most areas there is no electricity. The total cost of the equipment runs to around $8,000.

At the heart of the operation is an Internet café in the capital Honiara, which connects to the Internet via satellite. The connection speed is around 2Kbps, meaning a typical text e-mail sent by rural villages takes about 10 seconds to transmit.

“We are using old technology but it is robust,” said Joe Rausi, staff on the PFnet project.

“This laptop is quite old but it does the work. In the end we have to look at what is affordable in villages.”

“The People First Network is not about technology. It is about improving the standard of living of people in rural areas,” added Rausi.

Peace promotion

In a country where the only means of communication with the outside world for most remote areas consist of unreliable short-wave radios, and expensive statellite telephones, the PFnet project helped overcome the legacy of fear and mistrust created by years of fighting between rival ethnic gangs.

“We thought that by connecting people together, they would know more about each other and bring peace to the country,” said Rausi.

Map of the Solomon Islands

The Solomon Islands consist of roughly 850 islands and is one of the least developed nations in the South Pacific region. A quest for land and power fueled ethnic violence between 1998 and 2003 where hundreds were killed and thousands made homeless. Australian-led forces arrived in 2003 to restore order. Since then the country has enjoyed relative stability.

PFnet project illustrates how information and communication technologies (ICTs) can play a role in developing rural areas and driving peacebuilding initiatives. The project hopes to move beyond e-mail and explore using the system for distance-learning and e-commerce but bandwidth remains the biggest hurdle to this goal.

October 14, 2011/by actualize

Anti-corruption, Democracy & Governance, Elections, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Social media buzz about Cameroon’s elections reveals widespread concerns

Cameroon’s October 9^th presidential election is fast approaching, and social media is being used to create a dialogue, raise concerns and share information about the event.

Paul Baya billboard, running for Cameroonians elections

Photo credit: CNN

The country’s incumbent, Paul Biya of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, has been in power for 30 years despite general dissatisfaction and outcries for the president to step down. There are currently 23 candidates in the race with John Fru Ndi of the Social Democratic Front running a distant second to Biya.

The blogging community, Global Voices, is running special coverage entitled Cameroon Elections 2011 that features blog posts from citizens around the world about the elections. The bloggers have discussed various issues surrounding the election, many accusing Biya of election corruption such as paying off politicians to falsely run against him.

CNN has reported on Biya’s “complacent attitude” since he has not been campaigning in the field. His behavior implies that Biya “plans to win through election rigging and fraud.” Youth are allegedly being paid by Biya to support the leader in the streets, and nearly all government campaigning money has been distributed to his party alone.

The Twitter community is also closely following the election, sharing articles, information, and social media tools with one another. A site that has been Tweeted frequently is one that keeps track of the election search trends. Through the tool, anyone can see which party leader or election issues are being searched the most on Google.

Cameroon election search trends on Google

Cameroon Election Search Trends, from http://www.google.cm/intl/en/landing/elections/2011/

Social media has allowed those interested in Cameroon’s elections to share information in ways that were never possible before. But the country lags far behind others in the region in terms of Internet penetration rates. With only 5% of the country having Internet access, most citizens will not be able to follow the social media that is providing critical perspectives on the election. Were the majority of the country’s citizens able to follow the elections online, there might be more potential for a nation-wide movement against Biya and his alleged election rigging.

October 5, 2011/by actualize

Anti-corruption, Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Elections, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Recipe for Democratic Entrenchment: Expert discusses the role of ICTS in advancing democratization

On September 15^th, George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs presented a guest lecture by Dr. Philip N. Howard about the role of ICTs in advancing democratization, especially in Muslim countries.

Howard, an expert scholar on the role of ICTs in political systems, based his lecture on research conducted in 75 countries in transition. The findings can be found in full in his book, The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. An aspect of the lecture that was particularly fascinating was Howard’s “recipe” for democratic entrenchment – one that involves state capacity and a vibrant, tech-savvy wired civil society. He highlighted the ability of social media to monitor government elections.

The lecture, which emphasized the use of ICTs as a successful tool in promoting democratic societies, can be found in the video below.

So who’s next on the agenda for a revolution using Howard’s recipe? He says to think of countries that have a wired civil society + active online journalists + good state capacity; then watch those countries during the next major elections. If the heads of the countries try to rig the elections, there is a good possibility that their citizens will protest, creating chaos, uprisings, and possible transition to a new state in the same vein as Egypt. Howard lists several countries to look out for, such as Algeria, Iran and Kuwait.

Howard’s research focused primarily on Muslim countries, but one wonders if other countries might fit the recipe for civil society protests and/or revolution. Several African countries have elections coming up. Kenya, which has one of the most vibrant and open technology sectors, but a history of allegedly rigged elections, could be one to watch during the 2012 elections.

October 5, 2011/by actualize

Anti-corruption, Asia, Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Eastern Europe, Elections, Governances, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Where we work

e-Government: a novel approach in tackling governance challenges?

The World Bank approved in June a $20 million credit to support Moldova’s Governance e-Transformation (GeT) project. According to Philippe Dongier, World Bank ICT sector manager, eTransformation is “about leadership commitment for institutional reform and for citizen-centric governance.”

The project is part of a Government initiative to address Moldova’s legacy of corruption and bureaucracy inherited during the Soviet Union era by improving and modernizing public sector governance and increasing citizen access to government services.

As part of an institutional reform, the Government established in August 2010 an e-Government Center charged to develop a “digital transformation policy, a government IT strategy, and an open data roadmap”. In April, Moldova became one of the first countries in the region to launch an open data portal.

“The initiative is aimed at opening government data for citizens and improving governance and service delivery,” says Stela Mocan, executive director of the e-Government Center.

Benefits of GeT

GeT has several intended benefits that include increased transparency. The Ministry of Finance recently released a spreadsheet of more than one million lines, detailing all public spending data from the past five years.

“Publishing information about public funds will increase transparency,” says Prime Minister Vlad Filat

GeT also intends to reduce the cost of public service delivery. Through “cloud computing” infrastructure—in which applications and data are accessible from multiple network devices—the Government also expects significant savings in public sector IT expenditure.

Promoting innovation in the civil society sector is another key feature of the project. The Bank’s Civil Society Fund in Moldova—which provides grants to nongovernmental and civil society organizations—is supporting the National Environment Center in the collection and mapping of information on pollution of water resources. Since 80% of Modova’s rural population use water from nitrate-polutated wells, this initiative aims to empower citizens with the necessary tools to hold the Government accountable on the environmental policy.

E-Government: a worldwide phenomen

According to the Wolrd Bank, “e-Government” is the use by government agencies of information technologies—such as Internet, and mobile computing—that have the ability to transform relations with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government.

Moldova is not the only country using ICTs as part of an innovative approach to address corruption and strengthen democracy.

Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan of the State of Maharashtra in Western India recently launched an e-Governance program that aims to tackle corruption by reducing personal interaction between the public and government officials and requiring government officials to use computers in their day-to-day operations. Limiting discretion and facilitating the process of tracking all transactions decrease the incidence of corruption.

To combat fraudulent activities during elections, the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) upgraded its computer and communication network in 2002 to verify the eligibility of voters who had lost their voting cards or whose names were missing from the manual voter registers in the respective polling stations.

ICTs’ potential for addressing governance challenges is significant. Through increased transparency and accountability, governments can better serve their citizens. Implementing successful e-Government initiatives in developing countries is a challenging endeavor. However, sustained political commitment to institutional reform, citizen-centric policies, and financial backing create an environment where ICT applications can improve governance.

September 20, 2011/by actualize

Anti-corruption, Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Economic Growth & Trade, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Rule of Law

Raising the Barcode: Using Smartphones to Monitor Labor Practices

Chocolate giant Hershey has been the target of unwanted smart phone campaigns recently in a battle to combat child labor violations. The Raise the Bar Hershey campaign, started by four activist organizations, developed “Consumer Alert” cards that include a QR code (like a barcode) to warn shoppers about the labor practices.

With the ability of ICTs to distribute information faster and farther than ever, it is no surprise that people all over the world are able to start campaigns that promote fair labor practices, transparency and equality, often gaining followers and media attention almost immediately. Those informed about a particular issue can raise awareness on it using social media like Facebook, posting a video on YouTube, or starting their own campaign on sites like Change.org, an organization that helps individuals or groups run social change campaigns. Knowmore.org empowers consumers to purchase products and support companies that promote fair trade, human rights, and democracy. The site makes it easy to determine which corporations use unethical (or ethical) practices through its browser extension that alerts consumers on where companies stand on particular issues as they browse the company websites.

Consumer alert placed next to Hershey displays in supermarkets

Photo credit: news.change.org

The Raise the Bar campaigners claim that Hershey “lags behind its competitors” in enforcing labor rights standards among its suppliers and in tracing the source of its cocoa which comes largely from West Africa, an area known for forced labor, child labor and human trafficking. Volunteers have been placing the alert cards next to Hershey products and displays, and shoppers are able to scan the code by using smartphone applications. The QR code on the cards opens a web page on the campaign’s website, allowing consumers to take action immediately by signing a petition on Change.org or getting involved in other ways.

QR codes have been used by shop owners to offer information and coupons to shoppers as they pass by as well as to show pictures of meals on restaurant menus. The codes can be easily built by anyone using free online tools.

Raise the Bar Hershey QR code- smart phone app takes consumers to website

Photo credit: raisethebarhershey.org

Other organizations also use smartphones in order to monitor businesses to ensure they are following labor laws. Free2Work evaluates major companies around the world based on their labor policies and has established a mobile app that allows consumers to easily find companies, share information, and receive updates. The United States Department of Labor has its own smartphone application for workers to keep track of their wages to help guarantee that they receive proper compensation. Through the app, employees can track their work hours for any of their employers, as well as access information on wage laws.

As smartphones become more advanced, the potential for increasing transparency and promoting fair labor practices worldwide grows. Concerned citizens have a plethora of tools at their disposal to gain and redistribute information on a topic, allowing them to hold companies, as well as governments, accountable to fair labor standards. Time will tell whether this will force companies to step up their standards.

September 20, 2011/by actualize

Connectivity, Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Nigeria’s elections set new records in use of social media

In Nigeria, a study says, elections held last April brought the use of social media in the political field to new levels. UN Africa Renewal’s André-Michel Essoungou reports.

By André-Michel Essoungou

In 2008, then US presidential candidate Barack Obama broke new ground by using social media in ways never seen before. Yet it was Goodluck Jonathan, the recently elected president of Nigeria, who took the extraordinary step of announcing his bid for the highest office on Facebook. On Wednesday, 15 September 2010, he informed his 217,000-plus fans on the world’s most popular networking platform of his intent. Twenty four hours later, 4,000 more fans joined his page. By the day of the election, on 16 April 2011, he had over half a million followers.

Mr. Jonathan’s online campaign was only one illustration of the social media fever that gripped Africa’s most populous country (with around 150 million people) during its most recent presidential, parliamentary and local elections. A report by two researchers who helped track online traffic during the month-long polls argues that the country’s use of social media reached unprecedented levels.* “Nigeria set a new record for recent African elections in the number of reports tracked using social media,” it says. In addition to the approximately 3 million registered Nigerians on Facebook and 60,000 on Twitter, almost every institution involved in Nigeria’s elections conducted an aggressive social networking outreach, including the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), political parties, candidates, media houses, civil society groups and even the police.

The report notes that between 10 March and 16 April 2011, the electoral commission posted almost 4,000 tweets, many in response to voter queries. Using Twitter, commission officials at polling stations around the country also were able to communicate among themselves, and even confirmed the death of one of their members who had been attacked. “Twitter ultimately proved to be the most efficient way to interact with INEC,” the document authors report. The commission’s use of social media led to its website receiving a record 25 million hits in three days during the presidential election. “By using social media to inspire voters, the electoral commission has redefined elections in Nigeria,” analyzed Punch, the country’s most circulated newspaper.

The boom in use of social media during elections also helped the media expand their readerships. Shortly before the polls, the Daily Trust newspaper had 32,000 fans on Facebook. A few weeks later, the number had more than doubled to 65,000, placing its online reach beyond its print distribution of 50,000. To build up its fan base, the newspaper also used social media in its reporting. Journalists solicited and used questions from Facebook fans for interviews with the chairman of INEC. Since the elections, the Daily Trust has further increased its Facebook presence, with 95,000 fans by July 2011.

The online networking platforms reflected popular interest. Unsurprisingly, social media use reached its peak during the presidential election on 16 April. On that day, a total of 33,460 text messages and 130,426 posts on Twitter and Facebook were sent by some 65,000 voters.

The content was mixed, the authors point out. “Social media, especially Twitter, was used to report occurrences [of fraud] — truthful as well as fabricated.” Yet, they add, it played a mostly constructive role during the post-election violence by exposing unfounded rumours.

“Social media tools,” the report concludes, “revolutionized the efficiency of election observing by increasing coverage and reporting, while minimizing costs…. They changed how information was disseminated in Nigeria. Citizens accessed information directly and more accurately, resulting in unsurpassed participation in politics during the 2011 elections.”

That upbeat assessment, however, needs to be put in context: An estimated 70,000 people posted contents online during Nigeria’s polls, but they were just a tiny fraction of the registered 73 million voters. Still, a new trend appears to have begun.

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Africa Renewal www.un.org/africarenewal

September 18, 2011/by actualize

Democracy & Governance, Elections, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

How social media can bring trust to Guinea’s 2011 elections

The following post is the response given to oAfrica by Francoise Stovall, Interactive Communications Manager at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI). Guinea’s legislative elections are to be held on 11/27/2011. How can Nigeria’s experience with crowdsourcing apply to Guinea, a nation where social media is less prominent and fact often gets tangled with fiction?

In support of open & accountable democratic institutions around the globe {NDI}

Question: What’s your take on how mobile or social media can facilitate trust & communication in the upcoming #Guinea elections?
Answer: NDI’s Technology team, drawing upon its regional and global experience in this realm, has the following response:
Social media provides a way for election officials to share information about what’s going on, communicate it to an engaged audience, and build public trust in the electoral process. For example, in the 2011 Nigerian elections, Nigeria’s Independent National Election Commission (INEC) did a wonderful job of communicating over twitter and other social media channels. However, it’s important to note that this type of dialogue requires proactive engagement and interest from such organizations. It provides a way to directly engage with those organizations publicly – if people see incidents or violations, they can communicate them to the authorities who can (theoretically) themselves respond. Using a collective hashtag on Twitter (if there is enough of an internal user base to make it viable) is a way for citizens to self-aggregate and share information. Eg, if the tag is #guinea11 then people can use it in their tweets to connect to all the folks communicating on the topic.

Citizen reporting can provide an avenue for people to share stories of legal violations, as mentioned above, but can also be a way to name-and-shame electoral code of conduct violations if that has been established. If there are CSOs who are attempting to collect and manage citizen reports it can be a good way to hold officials accountable for violations. There are significant challenges with such a “crowdsourcing” program, but in the right place can be a powerful methodology.

In the Guinean context, establishing public trust in the electoral process is indeed a challenge. Beyond the advantages of using social media and new technology to connect citizens to government, it’s also important to recognize the flipside of this: Social media can be the perfect way to spread pure rumor and hearsay – or worse, malicious, inflammatory information. It can prove an opportunity for the online community to work together to try to verify reports and quash misinformation. To enhance the transparency and credibility of Guinea’s upcoming legislative elections, NDI will be working with its local partner Consortium for Domestic Election Observation (CODE) to deploy citizen observers to polling sites around the country on election day to independently and systematically collect, analyze, and report information about election-day proceedings. As part of this effort, CODE and NDI, drawing on regional and international best practices, will explore ways to use social media, or to partner with organizations that are doing so, in order to better achieve its goals.

CODE used cell phone technology in its last observation effort (the country’s presidential elections of 2010) for improved reporting speed. CODE’s 2000+ citizen observers covered 20% of Guinea’s polling stations, and the coalition’s calculated election results were within 1 percent of those announced by the CENI.

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Learn more about upcoming African elections and how you can support government accountability: Connect with NDI on Facebook | Follow NDI on Twitter | Give to NDI

September 6, 2011/by actualize

Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

PLURAL+: Visualizing Youth Perceptions Worldwide

There are more than 1.2 billion young people aged between 15 and 24 years in the world, accounting for about 18 per cent of the world population, but living thousands of miles apart, rarely engaging with one another.

Multimedia platforms, like video, help the young, bright leaders of tomorrow engage in intercultural conversations—speaking beyond language barriers to provide a subjective youthful view of their countries and reducing cultural tensions for future generations.

The United Nations Alliance and the International Organization for Migration has united to celebrate the International Youth Day’s theme—Our Year, Our Voice—with their PLURAL+ Video Festival.

The video festival is an empowering tool for young people aged 9-25 to speak out about their opinions and experiences with migration and diversity.

“My video is about how I see diversity,” said 10-year-old Aarohi Mahesh Mehendale, winner of the PLURAL + 2010 International Jury Award (Age 9-12).

It would be amazing if we could live in peace and harmony and accept differences. I chose to do the video because I felt strongly about the topic

Through five-minute films, the applicants use their own views and voices to explore subjects about migrant integration, inclusiveness, identity, diversity, human rights and social unity, in an effort to foster globalized social harmony.

Developing countries are home to 87 per cent of youth who face challenges of limited access to resources, healthcare, education, training, employment and economic opportunities.

The PLURAL+ Video Festival is a form of video advocacy, a means for youth from developed countries to explore the challenges experienced by those in developing countries, and empathize with their struggles.

Although this project has good intent, the logistics of the equipment and details on how to film are largely inaccessible and problematic.

The PLURAL+ project intends to engage youth in video advocacy to foster understanding, but is missing a vital element—providing the actual video cameras and training on how to use them.

Although there are “useful links” on the website, this project should really consider partnering with an organization like WITNESS, who specialized in video projects in developing regions.

Having an alliance with an organization in this area of expertise can help prevent problems that PLURAL+ may encounter—making the project more useful for those youth in developing countries whose perceptions should truly be seen and heard.