Lauren works on transparency, accountability and education within the global policy team. She has been a member of the global policy team since October 2008, and previously supported the global policy and US community partnership teams as senior administrative assistant. Lauren graduated from Richmond and the American International University in London. Before ONE, Lauren worked on Capitol Hill for her congressman, Rep. George Radanovich (CA-19) (Ret.).
Lauren Pfeifer from ONE’s policy team reports on Transparency Camp, a 2-day “un-conference” on open data and open government hosted by the Sunlight Foundation. Instead of writing a regular blog post, she compiled an interactive social media story using tweets, photos and Facebook updates from the web. Scroll through to read her story.
As part of ONE’s agenda on Open Development, we’re encouraging citizen engagement to unlock the potential of public resources through transparency and accountability, and sharing stories about how technology can help.
This morning, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped open the first annual meeting of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in Brasilia, Brazil. The two-day conference brings together representatives from 73 countries to create a “global ethos of transparency and accountability.” The vision of Open Government includes promoting transparency, empowering citizens, fighting corruption, and strengthening governance. Brazil, which has served as co-chair OGP with the United States for the past year, has a strong advocate for Open Government in President Dilma Rousseff. Secretary Clinton said in her speech of President Rousseff:
Last week, the International Budget Partnership (IBP) hosted a very informative session about citizens’ budgets, why they’re important, and how they can increase participation and transparency in budgetary processes in developing countries. A citizens’ budget is a short, easy-to-understand summary of government priorities and spending. It is usually the only budget document created expressly for a government’s citizenry. Ideally, a citizens’ budget illustrates how government spending impacts the daily lives of its citizens and increases transparency and access to budget information.
The key to citizens’ budgets is digestibility. Budget documents are highly technical and usually very long. In many developing countries, budget information is inaccessible, convoluted or entirely unavailable. However, the capacity of civil society to analyze and disseminate digestible budget information is growing. The Malawi Economic Justice Network has taken an active role in creating citizens’ budgets. The Nigerian organization BudgIT has taken to Twitter to provide Nigerians visual budgetary information through infographics. With an increasing understanding of the value of a citizens’ budget, more and more governments are interested in publishing their own. The International Budget Partnership has helped five governments produce citizens’ budgets, and provided technical assistance to others.
Africa is the fastest growing mobile market in the world. Over the last decade, mobile subscriptions in Africa grew by an average of 30 percent per year, indicating that the technology has the potential to play an important role in creating jobs and driving economic growth. In Africa’s health sector, mobile health (mHealth) programs are saving lives right now. Some are in the pilot stage, making big progress in small areas and looking to scale up, while others are already operating at the national level.
Much progress has been made in providing the insecticide-treated bed nets and ACTs (artemesinin-based combination therapies) necessary to prevent malaria. However, making sure that those ACTs are available in rural health facilities in sub-Saharan Africa is critical to managing the disease. Mobile technology has increased access to ACTs and made monitoring supply levels in rural health centers more manageable and timely.
The Group of 8 (G8) and Group of 20 (G20) grew out of “fireside chats” held in the early 1970s, when a small set of world leaders met informally in the White House library. Though world leaders have met annually since 1975, participants and their priorities continue to evolve. This year, leaders from the G8 will meet in Chicago, Ill. on May 19 and 20. The following month, the G20 countries will gather in Los Cabos, Mexico on June 18 and 19.
Last weekend, the ball started rolling toward this year’s Summits as foreign ministers from the G20 met in Los Cabos to brainstorm. Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa, host of the meeting, hoped the meetings would lead to progress on issues such as eradicating famine and illiteracy, promoting green growth and sustainable development, and enhancing the rule of law. The meeting of the foreign ministers is an indication that the G20 may take on broader global development issues, as participation is historically limited to finance ministers. And word has it that Secretary of State Hilary Clinton met with Mexican president Felipe Calderón to discuss food security.
An introductory look at the World Bank’s Global Partnership for Enhanced Social Accountability, currently under construction and inviting comments on how it can help civil society organizations hold their governments to account for more effective development.
What is the Global Partnership for Enhanced Social Accountability?
In April 2011, World Bank President Robert Zoellick addressed the Peterson Institute for International Economics about the implications of the political revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa on how we should think about development. He focused specifically on the importance of citizen action and civil society: “An empowered public is the foundation for a stronger society, more effective government, and a more successful state,” he said. The World Bank is currently developing a proposed Global Partnership for Enhanced Social Accountability to support civil society organizations (CSOs) in developing countries to hold governments accountable and improve development outcomes.
Last week, the Brookings Institution hosted an event on US Aid and Transparency for Global Development. Administrator Rajiv Shah of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) gave a speech focused on the ways that USAID is fulfilling a government-wide commitment to increase transparency and accountability, both in relation to aid and to development more widely. Administrator Shah’s message was that we should keep pushing relentlessly, for it is only through a “more transparent, honest, and clear system” that citizens will understand the results we can achieve in development.
After the event, I had the opportunity to interview USAID’s Deputy Assistant Administrator for Policy, Planning, and Learning Tony Pipa on USAID’s transparency strategy and the work ahead:
Why does transparency and accountability matter for development?
First, it allows partner countries to better manage their aid flows, and also helps empower their citizens to hold their governments as well as donor governments to account. From our standpoint, it provides a better understanding of what we’re doing, where we’re doing it, how we’re doing it, and to what effect. And then there’s the international accountability component. It sheds light on commitments and progress that both the US and other donor countries and organizations make. Transparency that empowers citizens to hold their governments to account forces us to be more effective and to be better cooperators and coordinators, to engage in development cooperation that lowers our own transaction costs by making sure we’re as focused as possible, and -– as the Administrator was saying –- be relentless.
Right now, some of the world's biggest oil companies are fighting to keep some of their deals with foreign governments secret. Let's tell big oil we won't be bullied.
Cuts to poverty-fighting programs won't balance the budget, but they will set back progress on Canada's development priorities and risk jeopardizing existing investments.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
