Contents:

Critical Assessments

Crossing Borders

Fresh Measures

New tools and Tech Trends

 

 

Critical Assessments

 

The end of 2010 saw a number of critical discussions on the methodologies and applications of governance assessment frameworks, as well as the broader concepts of transparency and even governance itself.

 

Several discussions arose in response to Index launches late in 2010. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2010 was especially provocative, with the CPI methodology received significant criticism. The OECD blog questioned the finer points of basing a corruption assessment on citizen perceptions in the first place. Open Democracy took the question of perceptions further by exploring the sources used to construct Iraq’s CPI score, concluding that the CPI is an unreliable in at least this instance, and calling for more national ownership of corruption assessment. The Economist went so far as to question whether the best-known corruption index may have run its course. Less critical contributions included a discussion of activities to complement corruption assessments, generally and with a focus on Kenya, as well as the observation that corruption follows conflict. Transparency International also opened its own webspace for discussion and relevant commentary.

 

The idea that data transparency can be equated with accountability was also subject to significant critique in light of the new international impetus towards open data transparency.  Transparency International’s Georgia chapter blogged that Visibility is not Usability, and the Guardian’s TechBlog bemoaned the disparate and “obstructive” data publishing practice by local councils in the UK. Basic Craft’s Ross Ferguson also questioned the utility of government data transparency and argued that academic analysis must underpin the type of public debate that would make government data transparency useful. Ferguson singled out Bannister and Connolly’s ‘The Trouble with Transparency: A Critical View of Openness in e-Government‘ as the type of analysis needed, and concluded his post by noting that, “Ironically, for this to happen the academic world itself needs more openness. It is still too hard for the public to access high-quality academic work, which is why the efforts of the Oii to get itself and its peers ‘out there’ into the public domain are to be applauded.

 

In keeping with a critical approach to established principles, two World Bank blogposts took on the very idea of governance this fall.  The first post opened with the title, What is governance anyway? (answered coyly with 5 questions to authority) while the second suggested that ambiguity of “governance” is useful when engaging with decision-makers, while offering concrete suggestions for dimensions of governance understood both as results and as institutional practice.

 

Other events and launches also provoked discussion. This Fall saw both the International and the African Statistics Days (October 20^thand November 25^threspectively), complete with blogpostings on how to use statistics to achieve human rights, to promote gender equalityand to strengthen forest governance, and the importance of sensitizing national decision-makers.

 

Western bloggers covered the launch of the 2010 Ibrahim Index of Governance, alternately commentary extolling its importance for Africa, and arguing that it was most important outside the continent, while African press reported country rankings and government reactions to them.

Global Integrity’s Nathaniel Heller blogged a highly critical review of the methodology used in USAID’s NGO Sustainability Index for Sub-Saharan Africa, while Afrique en ligne argued that the APRM is driving improvements in governance across the continent.

 

Africa was also the subject of much discussion surrounding the release of the Open Budgets Index 2010, with the top ranking prompting a close look South African transparency and led the OBI to title their blogpost on methodology “How can South Africa rank first in a Transparency Survey?” The index also prompted analysis in Mozambique, Nigeria, and a host of other countries. Principled issues underpinning the OBI methodology were also common, including the OBI’s own post on evidence from Brazil and the instrumental value of budget transparency.

 

The summer’s previous debates on disaggregation and composite indices were followed up at Vox, where the World Bank’s Martin Ravallion warned that mashups should be “handled with care”.  Noting the temptation towards composition that a rich variety of indicators inspires, Ravilian weighs the strengths and weaknesses of composite indices and concludes that “a composite index is not essential for many of the purposes of evidence-based policymaking. Recognizing the multidimensionality of policy goals does not imply that we should be aggregating fundamentally different things in opaque and often questionable ways.”

 

 

Crossing Borders

 

Global indices of governance also made a splash this fall, with the Economist reporting over 650 academic studies on how the World Bank’s Doing Business affects countries’ progress. From the international to the national: Indian media reported on how Indian social audit frameworks were attracting international attention in the fight against corruption, the Global Integrity assessment framework was applied by national stakeholders to Trinidad and Tobago, and istanbul notes drew on Diamond and Morlino’s 2003 book to propose a framework for assessing democracy in Turkey.

 

Crossing sectoral borders, Jim Evans summarized the UNESCO Media Development Indicators in his blogpost on how agricultural journalists can assess the media in their societies.

 

 

Fresh Measures

 

There were a number of calls for new assessments and new assessment approaches on the blogosphere this fall. At the World Bank, Francesca Rancanitini and others suggested that the next big step in fighting corruption should be to monitor and assess anti-corruption enforcement in the judiciary and asked for comments, while Maria Soledad Martinez Peria blogged on how to start measuring bank competition.

 

In India, People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) used its blogspot to call for a People’s Audit on Police Torture, while livemint.com published  Gulzar Natarajan’s continued argument for third-party assessments of public service delivery, and the "I Paid a Bribe" initiative continued to expand its efforts to crowdsource information on corruption.

 

In Africa, academics in Kenya went to press calling for decision-makers to put their research to use in policy, while the South African government may soon be self-assessing with “lifestyle audits.”

 

 

New tools and Tech Trends

 

Checkmyschool.org, a Philippines initiative that uses crowdsourcing to facilitate public accountability in the education sector was featured in a post on the World Bank’s education blog investigated the contextualization of and transportability of technologies.  Local context was also a running theme in New Tactic’s online discussion on participatory research, featuring perspectives from country level practitioners and international aid organizations, including arguments for the interplay between qualitative data and local intuition and problem solving and comparative experience with data collection technology.

 

A number of online resource collections were also presented this fall. The Sunlight Foundation presented a wrap up of 12 social media resources to drive government transparency and ACM Queue presented an online tour of data visualization techniques. The Guardian UK’s datablog posted a guide on how to be a data journalist and Mashable’s post on Investigative Journalism Tools and Social Accountability in the Age of Social Media included a section on “social question and answer tools can be used to collaboratively investigate issues and keep powers accountable.” One World Trust posted a FAQ sheet on their Online Database for Social Accountability Tools.

 

The International Open Government Data Conference met in Washington, D.C. in November, and the Huffington post blogged on the events’ focus on digital platforms for transparency (for references to the more polemic discussions surrounding open data, see Critial Assessments, above).