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Tag Archive for: accountability

China Train Crash News Brought by Netizens on Weibo

Chinese rescuers work around the wreckage of train cars in Wenzhou in east China's Zhejiang province, Sunday, July 24, 2011. A bullet train crashed into another high-speed train, killing dozens of people and once again raising safety concerns about the country's fast-expanding rail network. (AP Photo/Color China Photo)

Photo Credit: Color China Photo

Twitter’s Chinese counterpart, Weibo, has been the primary channel to inquire how the tragic high-speed train accident occurred last week.

The July 23 collision of two high-speed passenger trains near the eastern city of Wenzhou killed 40 people, left 191 injured and is proving to be an ailing political problem for Beijing.

Within the past week, the government’s growing dichotomy is wearing on Chinese citizen’s patience, as authorities have pledged transparency but suppressed the cause of the incident.

Premier Wen Jiabao, in a rare news conference last Thursday at the site of the deadly train wreck, promised an, “open and transparent,” investigation of an accident, which has incited questions on the safety of the country’s new high-speed rail system.

This comes in lieu of the Communist Party’s propaganda office instructing the media to play down coverage of the accident and emphasize positive news in their weekend reports. Chinese citizens have turned to Weibo to try and uncover what happened.

Weibo is the company Sina’s version of Twitter, and has over 100 million users.

Last week, there were ten million messages about the crash on Weibo and twenty million on Tencent’s QQ.com Weibo, the other major Chinese microblog. When combined, these two microblogging sites have more users than Twitter has worldwide.

When the crash first occurred, survivor Yangjuan Quanyang’s Weibo account broke the news by posting a plea for help at 8:47 pm local time. According to China Daily, she wrote, “Our train bumped into something. Our carriage has fallen onto its side. Children are screaming . . . Come to help us please! Come fast!”.

In ten hours, Yangjuan’s plight for help was reposted more than 100,000 times and the criticism continue to grow.

Chinese public opinion and doubts about the accident are all filled with anger. In user-created polls with hundred of thousands of votes, netizens illustrate that are wholeheartedly dissatisfied with how the government handled the crash.

Online poll on how the government handled the wreck

Photo Credit: Penn Olson

Some of the questions they demand answers to are:

What is the reason of the accident? What equipment was destroyed by lightning?
Why the train body was buried, is it to cover up the evidence?
Why give up the rescue work for early reopening? Rescue the little girl can be considered a miracle?
Is the new Shanghai Railway Official competent? He was once demoted three years ago due to railway accident.
How many deaths are there?

The CCP Propaganda Bureau has tried to control the media about reports on the incident, in an attempt to bury this information. After covering information on the crash all week, the Beijing News had an image of the weather forecast on its front page Saturday.

The Hong Kong Journalists Association condemned the Bureau’s efforts, saying it “is appalled by such a move and demands that the CCP Propaganda Bureau withdraw this directive and allows the media to report the truth freely.”

Instead of relying on the reports of these journalists, the citizens are reporting their own news to each other—usually more timely and accurate, still, than those of traditional sources.

Similar to citizens reporting on the Arab Spring uprisings, or recent photos and stories from the apocalyptic scene in Syria, civil society from around the world recognize the power of social media to hold their government’s accountable and circulate information to one another.

The Chinese working knowledge on the interworking of their communities, cities and country are slowly slipping from government control, and falling into netizens hands in 140 characters or less.

August 1, 2011/by actualize

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

Mexico’s Corruption Crackdown Is Always Top-Down

Photo Credit: Tribune Newspapers

This month, Mexican president Felipe Calderón, honored his recent Federal Anti-Corruption Initiative by arresting hundreds of federal detectives, prosecutors, and others, from the Mexico’s Attorney General office.

The recent expulsions are part of a broad effort across Mexico to clean up the corrupt police forces historically associated with organized crime, especially the drug cartels responsible for 40,000 deaths since Calderón came to power in 2006.

For the Mexican citizens, though, information on the detention of these authorities is inaccessible, stagnant, and corrupt practices go unprosecuted.

New anti-corruption mapping systems and platforms, however, can make these processes more transparent, and encourage citizen contribution, while holding dishonest authorities more accountable.

Last Tuesday, Mexican Attorney General Marisela Morales said that the agency was currently firing 424 officials, a majority of which failed to pass lie-detector tests, amongst other indicators aiming to oust corrupt authorities.

“We are strengthening our vigilance to make sure that our own officials abide by the law,” Ms. Morales said, according to the Wall Street Journal. This is the second substantial group of lay-offs for federal officers indicted in unlawful practices—last summer 10% of the entire federal police force was fired.

The office intends to administer the lie detector tests to all local, state and federal police this year, while aggregating the results and putting them in a national database, in an effort to ensure fired policemen will not be rehired.

Photo Credit: France 24

The recent measure coincides with Calderón’s Anti-Corruption law, approved last year by the Mexican Senate, created to diminish corrupt the police practices closely linked with the drug cartels.

Nevertheless, not evident within the current arrests is how the general public will be able to access this national database, and contribute to it on events they see everyday.

Particularly when the 2010 UN e-government survey found that Mexico had the most advanced e-services development in Latin America and Mexico’s IT spending is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10% over 2011- 2015.

Advanced within their connectivity and citizen participatory programs, Mexico should have this national database shared in an open source software system, similar to that of the Kenya’s Open Data Initiative.

Mexican residents should be able to view, and add their own instances of bribery and corruption to the database to lend their perspective on the, “bad cop vs. good cop,” boundary marks—helping to differentiate those people who supposedly protect them.

This website could also include an interactive Ushahidi map to illustrate towns where officers were arrested, and reporting features similar to Ipaidabribe.com.

These participatory mapping and reporting websites would allow Mexican citizens to demonstrate where corruption affects their everyday life the most, and where in public services corruption runs rampant.

Hopefully an engaging approach will help to prosecute abusers, rather than merely detaining them.

July 22, 2011/by actualize

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

Gov 2.0: Open Data Shaping Kenya’s Future

The President of Kenya, Mwai Kibaki, watches a demonstration of the Huduma platform at the Kenya Open Government Data Portal launch, looking on is Dr. Bitange Ndemo, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Communication

The President of Kenya, Mwai Kibaki, watches a demonstration Photo Credit: Ushahidi

Last Friday, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki inaugurated the Kenya Open Data Initiative (KODI), an online resource to catalog and display the government’s expenditures—launching the ICT pioneering country into a new epoch of transparency and accountability.

The new initiative is a crucial step for Kenyan citizens to monitor public spending amid previous corrupt practices, including the alleged manipulation of the 2007 elections.

Kenya ranked 154 out of 178 total countries in Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index.

Screenshot of Kenyan open data initative

Screenshot of KODI

The KODI contains 160 datasets arranged by country-level and county, and is organized within various sectors, including: education, energy, health, population, poverty, along with water and sanitation. Information for the datasets were taken from national census, government ministries, and information from the World Bank.

Prior to creating this information platform, the Kenyan government seldom made statistics and information on these sectors publicly available, or would postpone their release.

Now, however, they are taking a participatory approach to following the new 2010 Kenyan Constitution requiring the government to make information on the country publicly accessible.

On its homepage, the KODI website asserts the new transformation taking place:

Our information is a national asset, and it’s time it was shared: this data is key to improving transparency; unlocking social and economic value; and building Government 2.0 in Kenya

The platform allows citizens to actively engage on the information they want, and need to know.

Users of the open data portal can create interactive charts and tables, and developers can download the raw data to build applications for web and mobile. Additionally, users can press a “suggest a dataset” icon, which aggregates the requests for new information and sorts them according to relevance.

According to the Guardian, Kenyans have already made mass requests for data on youth unemployment, libraries, crime, and the locations of primary and secondary schools.

The data portal is managed by the Kenya ICT Board in partnership with the World Bank, and is powered by Socrata.

In addition to managing the data, the Kenya ICT Board plans to award groups and individuals who configure the data advantageously, intending to give out up to thirty grants to those with the best ideas.

A series of valuable initiatives have already been taking place.

Huduma (Kiswahili for “service”), derived from Ushaidi, has already started to use statistics collected on health, infrastructure, and education to compare the provision of aid across different districts of Kenya. Business Daily, a Nairobi-based news service, had announced plans to publish a series of articles on the newly released applications and services. Virtual Kenya built an application mapping counties where Members of Parliament declined to pay taxes.

Screenshot of Ushahidi's Huduma

Kenyan entrepreneurs are now in charge of publicizing this information and making it user-friendly.

Though the Kenyan government has been lambasted for a lack of transparency and accountability in the past, this open source data program allows Kenyan citizens to recognize development challenges and foster their own solutions—leading themselves and their county into a new era of progressive growth.

July 15, 2011/by actualize

Environment, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

What about e-Waste management?

a pile of dumped computers and other electronics, including wires.

Credit: Megan via greenlifesmartlife

Technology diffusion dominates the discourse on ICTs, leaving little room for action on e-waste management in the developing world. This is an unfortunate trend, as the rapidly changing technological landscape, brought forth by changes in media, obsolescence and affordability, spurs a surplus of global e-waste that is poorly managed.

This is exacerbated by stringent regulations in the developed world regarding the disposal of electronics. Consequently, much of the world’s 50 million tonnes of e-waste ends up in the developing world, including China, India and parts of Africa, where the e-waste regulatory framework and collection system is non-existent or far too weak to ensure compliance and accountability.

E-waste, which UNEP asserts will rise five-fold over the next decade, contains hazardous waste that may cause damage (health, social and economic) in excess of the perceived economic value of e-cycling and e-dumping. But experts contend that there are ways to combat this, specifically the removal of hazards before shipment. That is subject to stringent regulation of e-waste and heightened concerns about environmental harm in the developed world. This creates an underlying legal and economic disincentive to remove harmful residues before export to the developing world.

However, developing countries are taking greater interest in e-waste management. For instance, Kenya adopted guidelines for e-Waste management last year that provides a policy framework for regulating the booming sector. As the East African country prepares to launch its e-waste management policy, efforts are underway to raise public awareness on sustainable management. Kenya, a leading ICT hub with high technology adoption rates, will certainly experience a spike in local e-waste as its robust innovators churn out new technologies, replacing other widely used instruments.

The emerging policy framework will enable the country to better manage and benefit from the global expansion in e-waste, as the policy will categorize waste, itemize disposal procedures and practices. But the wider concerns about dangers posed by the disposal of e-waste versus other obsolete technologies remains a major concern, and could thwart proper management globally.

July 14, 2011/by actualize

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

Syria Protests: Making Amends Through the Lens

Photo Credit: © Sham News Network

Muhammad, 27, fled his home in the port city of Latakia last March, and deserted his job as cameraman for the Syrian state television network.

He now opts to use his acquired skills for media activism.

Similarly, Osama, 22, is a soldier for the state army who refuses to shoot at his fellow Syrians in protests.

He now arms himself with a brand-new-video-equipped smartphone, instead of a gun.

These two cases exemplify a recent transformation from Syria’s previous state media and soldiers, to activists who are “bearing witness,” to the atrocities being committed by the Syrian government.

Caption: Supporters of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad shout slogans in Syria's northern city of Aleppo, March 27, 2011. REUTERS/George Ourfalian

"Supporters" of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad shout slogans in Syria's northern city of Aleppo, March 27, 2011. Photo Credit: Reuters/George Ourfalian

The Syrian government uses their state television network as a medium to propagate images of citizens attacking soldiers during protests, when the opposite is reality; and airs images of peaceful demonstrators at pro-Assad rallies, instead of showcasing dissidents.

Civil society wants to achieve social change by recording what their eyes and ears see and hear.

Muhammad is rectifying his work on the state channel, arguing that the station “threatens people’s lives,” by refusing to film the violence against protesters, or blaming them for soldiers deaths.

He is making amends through his work exposing the true stories of Syria’s pro-democracy uprising, with a great combination of technical skill and secrecy.

The true stories of Syria’s revolution are unreported, he says, because the intelligence community, called the Mukhabarat, control everything projected outwards. “The world does not know what is happening here,” he says, “The Mukhabarat are killing people without any media attention.”

“Syrian media lies, lies, lies,” Muhammad states. “I had to leave my job to protect the Syrian people, here in the valley and everywhere else.”

Muhammad is part of a group of cyberactivists who clamor to obtain footage of military forces as they roll into towns. There are also Syrians within the military itself engaging in the cyberactivist movement, despite personal costs.

Military service is compulsory in Syria, unless they are the only male child or pay a heavy wage, and lasts almost two years. In 2010, army regulars were estimated at 220,000 troops, with an additional 300,000 in reserve.

22-year-old Osama is a Syrian soldier who obtains footage while serving since he bought a brand-new video-equipped smartphone in the Syrian tech capital of Bahtha.

“They told me that Israel had occupied Daraa, and some people there were siding with Zionism against our president, so we had to go and liberate the city,” he says. But “there was no Israeli occupation there. We were actually occupying the city, there was nobody else”.

In a still frame from video posted online by Syrian activists, a soldier appeared to plant ammunition among the bodies of protesters who had been shot and killed. Photo Credit: NYTimes

According to an article in Wired.com, Osama frequently takes days off to visit a friend’s house with a satellite link. The individual coordinates these teams of so-called video soldiers, taking their full flash cards and gives them back empty ones. He has recently been uploading and distributing the mobile camera footage on Youtube and Facebook.

One clip, posted online in the beginning of June and shared on a Syrian activist Facebook page, was supposedly produced by one of the shabiha, the militia loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

This featured activist’s video shows heroic music over images of heavily armed men in uniforms smiling and laughing as they chat near the bloody corpses of two men in civilian clothes.

“I decided to start filming and documenting the truth when I realized the amount of lies we are forced to believe at the army,” says Rami, who is another Syrian soldier interviewed by Wired.com.

“This will be my weapon,” Osama asserts, and wonders: “Maybe one day, when this is over, I will throw my gun away and become a video reporter. Inshallah.”

While the outside world has been watching video clips of barbarism, Syria’s state-controlled media has repeatedly published and broadcasted violent images that the government maintains stems from protesters. It seems, however, both state media and shabiha are taking initiatives to show the reality of the situation, one video at a time.

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July 5, 2011/by actualize

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

State Department Defends Innovative “Internet Suitcases”

Last week a State Department official responded to the NY Times article on the “Internet Suitcases,” defending the main goal of the U.S.’s investment on the innovative technology as upholding the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.

The Times article cited that the U.S. government is investing in individualized mesh networks, which are networks connected through individual nodes that do not have to rely on a central server to capture and disseminate information.

It was contested that this type of technology is ideal, and being provided by the U.S., for dissidents living in oppressive regimes to subvert censorship and avoid Internet shutdowns.

Acknowledging this, the official maintains, “…to fight against regimes is not the main aim, but rather, leveraging modern communication to uphold the freedom of expression of opinion is.”

Arguably, governments that respect the rights of civil society have nothing to fear in freedom of speech and opinion, further, they have no reason to fear freedom of the Internet.

The official admits that the Internet is not a one-size-fits-all solution and recent grants have been given to developing technology itself along with raining, and have been used on mobile innovation, citing mobile causing a, “pocket phenomenon.”

According to the official, “…the need is not one particular piece of technology or one silver bullet. The need is to be responsive to the ongoing challenges of people who are trying to call out the problems in their societies and give voice to their own future.”

The official referenced a Sudanese blogger writing about a YouTube video of a ballot box being stuffed, commenting that the National Election Commission would not investigate any evidence that was posted on the Internet. Instead, he/she cited, people posting the video were the ones being targeted and investigated.

In cases like these, the official recounted, it is the State Department’s obligation to help aid these freedoms by re-crafting the current model.

“And it hasn’t worked for Mubarak, and it hasn’t worked for Qadhafi, and it’s unlikely to work for Asad, and there are others who eventually will have to deal with either the stark choice of giving people the space to have a role in crafting their own futures or the lack of sustainability of their present model,” the official stated.

However, when asked by reporters which countries or groups this type of technology was being developed for, the official deferred questions about China, only stating that the Great Chinese Firewall and their type of censorship is a “different kind of freedom threat.”

…our goal is to make sure that we are doing what we can to amplify the voices and create the space for free expression and freedom of association and assembly online regardless of who the group is

The State Department’s recent statements are in light of the recent U.N. report declaring Internet access as a basic human right. The mesh networking innovation has the potential to leapfrog connectivity barriers and deliver freedom of expression to the oppressed.

June 23, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Governances, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Mobile Data Makes Projects & Policies More Efficient

Photo Credit: MobileActive

Aggregating and collecting data from cell phones is one of the best ways to ensure resources used to help fight poverty are efficiently being allocated, while gaining insight on what policies work the best.

According to Marcelo Giugale, the World Bank’s Director of Economic Policy and Poverty Reductions Programs for Africa, digital data collection is entirely transforming international development and bringing on, “revenge of the statistician”.

This transformation, he cites, have created two separate but interrelated effects in evaluating development projects.

Primarily, digital data collection allows funding from multilateral institutions, like the World Bank, to be more effective.

Goals set for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) are quantified to see if the results are reached. Such as: how many children were treated for malaria, or what proportion of women use contraceptives?

This increased accuracy in household surveys can precisely identify who benefits from each dollar the government spends, also known as “benefit incidence analysis,” then structural adjustments can then be made to funnel funds to the appropriate recipient. Giugale elucidates by providing an example:

Most developing countries spend more bankrolling free public universities than building primary schools. But the main beneficiaries of that subsidized college education are the rich (who could pay tuition) not the poor (who could not)…Statistics lets you quantify these aberrations—and argue that the money should be redirected to those who really need it

Secondarily, he observed that surveys conducted on cell phones provide data to assess human capabilities so future policies and projects can be altered to fit the needs of those living in poverty and make outcomes more useful.

By assessing non-cognitive skills—such as reaction time and social interaction—educational programs can be designed to teach behaviors that will increase people’s productivity.

Marcelo Giugale Photo Credit: World Bank

Giugale argues that digital data collection can also measure how personal circumstances affect human opportunity. “We all know that children have no control or responsibility over their gender, skin color, birthplace, or parents’ income,” he contends.

“And yet, those kind of circumstances are sure-shot predictors of a child’s access to vaccination, potable water, kindergarten, the internet and many other platforms without which her probability of success is close to nil.” Giugale cites the Human Opportunity Index as being a large proponent of this initiative in shaping policy.

The use of cell phones to collect data has broken the once unconventional method of researching people in their communities. These randomized trials are useful in gauging what policies and projects work best, and which are seemingly wasteful.

“As the use of cellular telephony expands among the poor — at flash speed in places like Kenya –the possibility of turning them into data sources becomes real…” he concludes, “How ironic that, in the end, the war against poverty may be won when those who try to help the poor get to literally listen to them.”

In this video, Guigale explains the Human Development Opportunity Index and how it helps reduce poverty:

June 20, 2011/by actualize

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

Kashmir & Facebook: Citizens and Journalist Against the State

Crowd up people will cell phones held up

In Kashmir Photo Credit: BBC

A year after the government imposed a ban on Short Message Services (SMS) in the Kashmir Valley for “security purposes,” the numbers of cell phones has decreased, but the demand for Internet enabled phones to access Facebook continues to rise.

Kashmiris avidly use the social media site, and last Friday it was the catalyst for the arrest of London-based BBC Urdu Services senior journalist Naeema Ahmed Mehjoor by the state.

Compared to June last year when the SMS ban began, the number of cell phone users in Jammu and Kashmir has gone down from 5,155,363 to 4,974,400 in April this year—a decline of 3.5 per cent.

Those Kashmiris who do own cell phones, however, want to use them to exchange messages and access social media sites like Facebook.

“After the ban on SMS services, every customer wants to purchase Internet enabled mobiles so that they can exchange messages on the move. Therefore the demand for the same is on a rise in the Valley as the Internet enabled mobiles are available at very cheap rates now,” says Ajaz Ahmed, an executive at a mobile shop there.

According to a study on social media usage by The Nielsen Company, nearly 30 million Indians are online where two-thirds spend time on social networking sites daily, more time than they do on personal email. 42 per cent of mobile users in India use their phones to go onto Facebook, according to the report.

A local, Jameel Bhat, says using Facebook on mobiles is a cheaper option. “I used to be in touch with my friend in Dubai through SMS but after the ban, I found making calls very expensive. Now, I chat through mobile as I cannot afford a computer and other Internet services,” he says.

Jasmine Kour, another avid Kashmiri Facebook user, also finds the social networking site a ‘good source of acquiring knowledge’ because it is easily accessible on her cell phone.

Access to Facebook on mobile phones has not always been easy though, as the state continually denies citizens access.

The cellular communication in Kashmir has been witnessing sharp ups and down since 2008. The most recent ban being in June 2010 when the government shut down the SMS service for the five month long agitation against killing of teenagers.

Incidentally, the BBC journalist, Naeema Ahmed Mehjoor kept the high response from the Kashmir people towards Facebook in view, using the social media platform as source for primary information.

This was until she was arrested by J-K police for “inciting violence and spreading disinformation,” on June 10th.

Mehjoor was booked under Section 66 of the Information Technology Act; using the IT for spreading dissatisfaction against the state.

She was taken in for her comment on Facebook, ‘Why did police kill this man in Lalchowk? Any reason?’ on June 6th. The comment was made the same day a man was killed in Srinagar’s Lal Chowk area by an unidentified gunman.

The man, police claim, was killed in a criminal conspiracy by three armed men and not police.

“As a journalist, I am working for peace,” she claimed.

Well-known broadcaster Mehjoor has been writing articles for local dailies about the 2010 unrest, where she would gain insight on Facebook to reflect the daily happenings. She also went public on her rejection to three-member Kashmir interlocutors’ invitation for a peace conference on the Kashmir problem.

This is another case where the combination of mobile and social media have helped to both push and pull information in civil society. Yet another example of how the oppressive states have attempted to circumvent citizens from accessing new technologies to control their freedom of expression and right to information.

June 17, 2011/by actualize

Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Governances, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Participatory Mapping for Government Accountability

map of roads either complete or incomplete

Photo Credit: Rising Voices

In India, fishermen living in the city of Olcott, Chennai have relied on the beach for hundreds of years to earn livelihoods. After the British acquired this three-mile strip of land, members of this fishing community were deemed trespassers in their own homes.

Now, participatory mapping drawn up by Olcott citizens helps to create a visualization of the relationship between the fishermen and the coastline to make the government more responsible and accountable.

This is the objective of Transparent Chennai, a hands-on platform created by The Center for Development Finance, working under a Rising Voices Microgrant.

Aggregating, collecting, and displaying data for public interest use, on Usur and Olcott fishing communities in South Chennai, provides a visual to the gaps where legislation needs to be created. This ensures that fisherman have access to the water and can claim rights to their land.

The statement on the website clarifies their end goal:

Our goal is to enable residents, especially the poor, to have a greater voice in planning and city governance

Residents of Usur and Olcott engage in participatory workshops where they contribute to the map, mark the boundaries of their village, and land use patterns. They can show varying livelihoods within the community, and how space outside of their homes is used, particularly along the water.

The maps identify local resources, points of historical and ritual importance, and gaps in local infrastructure and government services. By providing easy-to-understand information, the maps can better highlight citizen needs, shed light on government performance, and improve their lives in the city, one issue at a time.

Transparent Chennai believes that lack of data has sometimes allowed for the government to evade its responsibilities and to provide basic entitlements to all city residents.

They collaborate with citizen to integrate accurate, first hand information. “We work closely with individuals and citizens’ groups to create data that can help them counter inaccurate or incomplete government data, and make better claims on the government for their rights and entitlements,”

Creating the maps is not limited to just the perspective of adult citizens, though.

Recently, eighth grade students at Olcott Memorial School in Besant Nagar participated in a four-week mapping workshop run by Transparent Chennai. Using Google Earth and Google Maps, along with paper maps, they marked their own important landmarks of the city.

Students use paper to figure out how their symbols should look. Red writing with things like bathroom posted on it [Photo Credit: Siddharth Hande

Students use paper to figure out how their symbols should look Photo Credit: Siddharth Hande

Anjney Midhall, who facilitated the mapping workshop describes the scene at the school: “…around me, children of the eighth grade at the Olcott Memorial School in Besant Nagar are busy mapping out their school’s campus in groups, developing their own unique symbols and keys, color schemes and layouts…By the end of the session, maps emerge, each diagram telling a story of its own.”

Through locally generated maps, Transparent Chennai aims to do their part in rectifying a lack of data and the lack of government accountability to meet the basic needs of its citizens. ‘Participatory mapping’, is one of the best ways to do this.

June 15, 2011/by actualize

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

Make Aid Funds Transparent

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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.

June 13, 2011/by actualize

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