Latin America and the Caribbean

Global Standards in National Contexts: The Role of Transnational Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives in Public Sector Governance Reform

Curated on December 19, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Brandon Brockmyer: “Multi-stakeholder initiatives (i.e., partnerships between governments, civil society, and the private sector) are an increasingly prevalent strategy promoted by multilateral, bilateral, and nongovernmental development organizations for addressing weaknesses in public sector governance. Global public sector governance MSIs seek to make national governments more transparent and accountable by setting shared standards for information disclosure and multi- stakeholder collaboration. However, research on similar interventions implemented at the national or subnational level suggests that the effectiveness of these initiatives is likely to be mediated by a variety of socio-political factors.

This dissertation examines the transnational evidence base for three global public sector governance MSIs — the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the Construction Sector Transparency Initiative, and the Open Government Partnership — and investigates their implementation within and across three shared national contexts — Guatemala, the Philippines, and Tanzania — in order to determine whether and how these initiatives lead to improvements in proactive transparency (i.e., discretionary release of government data), demand-driven transparency (i.e., reforms that increase access to government information upon request), and accountability (i.e., the extent to which government officials are compelled to publicly explain their actions and/or face penalties or sanction for them), as well as the extent to which they provide participating governments with an opportunity to project a public image of transparency and accountability, while maintaining questionable practices in these areas (i.e., openwashing).

The evidence suggests that global public sector governance MSIs often facilitate gains in proactive transparency by national governments, but that improvements in demand-driven transparency and accountability remain relatively rare. Qualitative comparative analysis reveals that a combination of multi-stakeholder power sharing and civil society capacity is sufficient to drive improvements in proactive transparency, while the absence of visible, high-level political support is sufficient to impede such reforms. The lack of demand-driven transparency or accountability gains suggests that national-level coalitions forged by global MSIs are often too narrow to successfully advocate for broader improvements to public sector governance. Moreover, evidence for openwashing was found in one-third of cases, suggesting that national governments sometimes use global MSIs to deliberately mislead international observers and domestic stakeholders about their commitment to reform….(More)”

Power To The People! (And Settings for Using It Wisely?)

Curated on December 13, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Public Agenda: “From its inception in Brazil in 1989, participatory budgeting (PB) has incorporated, to varying degrees, both direct and deliberative democracy.

In deliberative democracy, citizens become informed about an issue, talk about their concerns and goals, weigh different policy options and find common ground. They may give policy input to public officials, develop action ideas for implementation by other people and organizations or work to implement ideas themselves, or they may engage in some combination of the three. Advocates of deliberative democracy believe in the potential of citizens to be effective learners, advisors and volunteers.

In direct democracy, people have the opportunity to vote on policy questions through initiatives and referenda. Advocates of direct democracy believe in the potential of citizens to be effective public decision makers.

This white paper examines the extent to which North American PB processes are applying deliberative principles and practices, explore the tensions and challenges in making PB more deliberative, suggest questions for further research and offer recommendations for public officials and practitioners for improving their PB processes.

Boosting deliberative engagement in PB processes could have a variety of benefits for communities. First, higher levels of deliberation might produce greater empathy among citizens who hold different opinions or value different things about their communities—and greater understanding between residents and city staff. Second, more deliberative discussions would be more likely to bring to the surface issues of race, religion, class, immigration status and other differences that are always influential but seldom addressed in public life. Finally, the budget ideas produced might be more likely to represent compromises between different groups or opinions, and they might inspire greater efforts by participants to help implement them, beyond the decision to allocate public money.

PB organizers might improve the level and quality of deliberation in their processes in a number of ways:

1. Be more explicit about the importance of deliberation in the process…

2. Ensure participants have the chance to share their stories…

3. Connect the PB process to a broader discussion of city and/or district goals and priorities…

This report is the companion to “Brazil Has Reduced Inequality, Incrementally—Can We Do the Same?,” which focuses on the intersection of PB and economic inequality. Both draw on the data gathered by local PB researchers and by Public Agenda; on local evaluations of PB processes; and on interviews with public officials, also conducted by Public Agenda…(More)”.

Four steps to precision public health

Curated on December 13, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Scott F. Dowell, David Blazes & Susan Desmond-Hellmann at Nature: “When domestic transmission of Zika virus was confirmed in the United States in July 2016, the entire country was not declared at risk — nor even the entire state of Florida. Instead, precise surveillance defined two at-risk areas of Miami-Dade County, neighbourhoods measuring just 2.6 and 3.9 square kilometres. Travel advisories and mosquito control focused on those regions. Six weeks later, ongoing surveillance convinced officials to lift restrictions in one area and expand the other.

By contrast, a campaign against yellow fever launched this year in sub-Saharan Africa defines risk at the level of entire nations, often hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. More granular assessments have been deemed too complex.

The use of data to guide interventions that benefit populations more efficiently is a strategy we call precision public health. It requires robust primary surveillance data, rapid application of sophisticated analytics to track the geographical distribution of disease, and the capacity to act on such information¹.

The availability and use of precise data is becoming the norm in wealthy countries. But large swathes of the developing world are not reaping its advantages. In Guinea, it took months to assemble enough data to clearly identify the start of the largest Ebola outbreak in history. This should take days. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of childhood mortality in the world; it is also where we know the least about causes of death…..

The value of precise disease tracking was baked into epidemiology from the start. In 1854, John Snow famously located cholera cases in London. His mapping of the spread of infection through contaminated water dealt a blow to the idea that the disease was caused by bad air. These days, people and pathogens move across the globe swiftly and in great numbers. In 2009, the H1N1 ‘swine flu’ influenza virus took just 35 days to spread from Mexico and the United States to China, South Korea and 12 other countries…

The public-health community is sharing more data faster; expectations are higher than ever that data will be available from clinical trials and from disease surveillance. In the past two years, the US National Institutes of Health, the Wellcome Trust in London and the Gates Foundation have all instituted open data policies for their grant recipients, and leading journals have declared that sharing data during disease emergencies will not impede later publication.

Meanwhile, improved analysis, data visualization and machine learning have expanded our ability to use disparate data sources to decide what to do. A study published last year⁴ used precise geospatial modelling to infer that insecticide-treated bed nets were the single most influential intervention in the rapid decline of malaria.

However, in many parts of the developing world, there are still hurdles to the collection, analysis and use of more precise public-health data. Work towards malaria elimination in South Africa, for example, has depended largely on paper reporting forms, which are collected and entered manually each week by dozens of subdistricts, and eventually analysed at the province level. This process would be much faster if field workers filed reports from mobile phones.

Sources: Ref. 8/Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

…Frontline workers should not find themselves frustrated by global programmes that fail to take into account data on local circumstances. Wherever they live — in a village, city or country, in the global south or north — people have the right to public-health decisions that are based on the best data and science possible, that minimize risk and cost, and maximize health in their communities…(More)”

Solving some of the world’s toughest problems with the Global Open Policy Report

Curated on December 12, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Kelsey Wiens at Creative Commons: “Open Policy is when governments, institutions, and non-profits enact policies and legislation that makes content, knowledge, or data they produce or fund available under a permissive license to allow reuse, revision, remix, retention, and redistribution. This promotes innovation, access, and equity in areas of education, data, software, heritage, cultural content, science, and academia.

For several years, Creative Commons has been tracking the spread of open policies around the world. And now, with the new Global Open Policy Report (PDF) by the Open Policy Network, we’re able to provide a systematic overview of open policy development.

The first-of-its-kind report gives an overview of open policies in 38 countries, across four sectors: education, science, data and heritage. The report includes an Open Policy Index and regional impact and local case studies from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, Latin America, Europe, and North America. The index measures open policy strength on two scales: policy strength and scope, and level of policy implementation. The index was developed by researchers from CommonSphere, a partner organization of CC Japan.

The Open Policy Index scores were used to classify countries as either Leading, Mid-Way, or Delayed in open policy development. The ten countries with the highest scores are Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, France, Kyrgyzstan, New Zealand, Poland, South Korea, Tanzania, and Uruguay…(More)

Uber supports Brazilian health awareness campaign

Curated on December 9, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “Being a parent is a busy job and anything that can make the life of a parent easier, cheaper or simpler is likely to be met by an eager — if slightly bleary eyed — audience. We recently wrote about a lift sharing service parents can order for their kids, and now Uber have decided to reach out to the same demographic, offering a discount to parents who are vaccinating their children.

In September, Uber offered a discount to parents in Brazil taking their children to get vaccinated. The promotion was linked to ‘Multivaccination 2016’: a national campaign aiming to raise awareness about the importance of vaccinations and encouraging parents to update their child’s vaccination card regularly. The initiative was launched by Brazil’s Minister of Health and for one Saturday only parents travelling with their children in certain cities could enter the promotional code “UberGotinha”. In return they received BRL 20 (USD 6) in credit to cover journeys to and from participating health centers….(More)”

Open Government: The Global Context and the Way Forward

Curated on December 8, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the OECD: “…provides an in-depth, evidence-based analysis of open government initiatives and the challenges countries face in implementing and co-ordinating them. It also explores new trends in OECD member countries as well as a selection of countries from Latin America, MENA and South East Asia regions. Based on the 2015 Survey on Open Government and Citizen Participation in the Policy Cycle, the report identifies future areas of work, including the effort to mobilise and engage all branches and all levels of government in order to move from open governments to open states; how open government principles and practices can help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals; the role of the Media to create an enabling environment for open government initiatives to thrive; and the growing importance of subnational institutions to implement successful open government reforms….(More)”

Scaling accountability through vertically integrated civil society policy monitoring and advocacy

Curated on December 6, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Working paper by Jonathan Fox: “…argues that the growing field of transparency, participation and accountability (TPA) needs a conceptual reboot, to address the limited traction gained so far on the path to accountability. To inform more strategic approaches and to identify the drivers of more sustainable institutional change, fresh analytical work is needed.

The paper makes the case for one among several possible strategic approaches by distinguishing between ‘scaling up’ and ‘taking scale into account’, going on to examine several different ways that ‘scale’ is used in different fields.

It goes on to explain and discuss the strategy of vertical integration, which involves multi-level coordination by civil society organisations of policy monitoring and advocacy, grounded in broad pro-accountability constituencies. Vertical integration is discussed from several different angles, from its roots in politcal economy to its relationship with citizen voice, its capacity for multi-directional communication, and its relationship with feedback loops.

To spell out how this strategy can empower pro accountability actors, the paper contrasts varied terms of engagement between state and society, proposing a focus on collaborative coalitions as an alternative to the conventional dichotomy between confrontation and constructive engagement.

The paper continues by reviewing existing multi-level approaches, summarising nine cases – three each in the Philippines, Mexico and India – to demonstrate what can be revealed when TPA initiatives are seen through the lens of scale.

It concludes with a set of broad analytical questions for discussion, followed by testable hypotheses proposed to inform future research agendas.(Download the paper here, and a short summary here)…(More)”

The Crowd is Always There: A Marketplace for Crowdsourcing Crisis Response

Curated on December 4, 2016October 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Presentation by Patrick Meier at the Emergency Social Data Summit organized by the Red Cross …on “Collaborative Crisis Mapping” (the slides are available here): “What I want to expand on is the notion of a “marketplace for crowdsourcing” that I introduced at the Summit. The idea stems from my experience in the field of conflict early warning, the Ushahidi-Haiti deployment and my observations of the Ushahidi-DC and Ushahidi-Russia initiatives.

The crowd is always there. Paid Search & Rescue (SAR) teams and salaried emergency responders aren’t. Nor can they be on the corners of every street, whether that’s in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Washington DC or Sukkur, Pakistan. But the real first responders, the disaster affected communities, are always there. Moreover, not all communities are equally affected by a crisis. The challenge is to link those who are most affected with those who are less affected (at least until external help arrives).

This is precisely what PIC Net and the Washington Post did when they partnered to deploy this Ushahidi platform in response to the massive snow storm that paralyzed Washington DC earlier this year. They provided a way for affected residents to map their needs and for those less affected to map the resources they could share to help others. You don’t need to be a professional disaster response professional to help your neighbor dig out their car.

More recently, friends at Global Voices launched the most ambitious crowdsourcing initiative in Russia in response to the massive forest fires. But they didn’t use this Ushahidi platform to map the fires. Instead, they customized the public map so that those who needed help could find those who wanted to help. In effect, they created an online market place to crowdsource crisis response. You don’t need professional certification in disaster response to drive someone’s grandparents to the next town over.

There’s a lot that disaster affected populations can (and already do) to help each other out in times of crisis. What may help is to combine the crowdsourcing of crisis information with what I call crowdfeeding in order to create an efficient market place for crowdsourcing response. By crowdfeeding, I mean taking crowdsourced information and feeding it right back to the crowd. Surely they need that information as much if not more than external, paid responders who won’t get to the scene for hours or days….(More)”

Data Literacy – What is it and how can we make it happen?

Curated on December 1, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction by Mark Frank, Johanna Walker, Judie Attard, Alan Tygel of Special Issue on Data Literacy of The Journal of Community Informatics: “With the advent of the Internet and particularly Open Data, data literacy (the ability of non-specialists to make use of data) is rapidly becoming an essential life skill comparable to other types of literacy. However, it is still poorly defined and there is much to learn about how best to increase data literacy both amongst children and adults. This issue addresses both the definition of data literacy and current efforts on increasing and sustaining it. A feature of the issue is the range of contributors. While there are important contributions from the UK, Canada and other Western countries, these are complemented by several papers from the Global South where there is an emphasis on grounding data literacy in context and relating it the issues and concerns of communities. (Full Text: PDF)

Comparing resistance to open data performance measurement

Curated on November 23, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Gregory Michener and Otavio Ritter in Public Administration : “Much is known about governmental resistance to disclosure laws, less so about multi-stakeholder resistance to open data. This study compares open data initiatives within the primary and secondary school systems of Brazil and the UK, focusing on stakeholder resistance and corresponding policy solutions. The analytical framework is based on the ‘Three-Ps’ of open data resistance to performance metrics, corresponding to professional, political, and privacy-related concerns. Evidence shows that resistance is highly nuanced, as stakeholders alternately serve as both principals and agents. School administrators, for example, are simultaneously principals to service providers and teachers, and at once agents to parents and politicians. Relying on a different systems comparison, in-depth interviews, and newspaper content analyses, we find that similar stakeholders across countries demonstrate strikingly divergent levels of resistance. In overcoming stakeholder resistance – across socioeconomic divides – context conscientious ‘data-informed’ evaluations may promote greater acceptance than narrowly ‘data-driven’ performance measurements…(More)”