Democratizing International Development

Editor's Notes

• #3: One key driver of change which can result in a different approach is the rise of MICs. The rise of MICs and the emergence of MICs in G20 not only signals a shift in global power, but the success of these countries in creating growth and battling poverty. These countries now represent important sources of South-South knowledge and investment, to complement what the North can do, that were not prominent a decade ago. Technology, and particularly the phenomenal penetration of mobile phones into the developing world has opened dramatic new ways of participating in the political and economic decision making. Citizens are now able to track and give feedback on whether teachers are showing up in school, whether text books are being delivered. Combined with the Middle East Revolution, this calls for moving beyond governments to a broader social compact on development with government, civil society, citizens and non-state actors. Finally the financial crisis has created fiscal and political pressures on traditional donor assistance, including the pressure and imperative to show concrete and tangible results. And later this year when the aid community convenes in Busan, it provides an opportunity to think of a new approach to support country-led development.
• #18: USAID Project under implementation, Samsung Galaxy S phone used by local engineers for asset verification
• #19: In 7 countries in Africa, multistakeholder coalitions came together to ensure that oil, gas, and mining contracts are public, easy to understand, and monitored. We helped to launch these coalitions, and provide them with coaching and support through Bank operations. The coalition in Liberia has identified the need for communities to get access to and understand the content of contracts as a priority. This is driven by the fact that the majority of communities do not know what is in the contracts, or what the company has promised to do for the community (for example, in terms of job creation or providing infrastructure). Communities do not know who to hold to account for what, or where they should go if they have complaints or grievances. The coalition, in this case with strong input from the private sector, is summarizing and translating selected mining contracts into understandable language for communities (including local dialects) and will organize roadshows that will gather communities, private, public and civil society organizations around concessions, and explain key components of the agreements relating to the communities, including government and concessionaire responsibilities and obligations. The Ghana coalition has managed to include contract monitoring on the agenda of Public Accounts Committees and Auditors General in the entire West Africa region through resolutions adopted at the West African Association of Public Accounts Committees. The Auditor General in Ghana is now selecting two contracts for initial implementation audit.
• #24: Across the border in Bangladesh, Shamima Akter is an 18-year-old college student who lives in a small village in Jamalganj one of the nation’s poorest districts. The village has no running water or electricity and she and her friends walk five kilometers each way to college as there is no public transportation. She is the secretary of a youth group that was recently trained in ATI by an NGO called Intercooperation supported by the World Bank Institute's (WBI). During the training they learnt about their right to information and that of their community members. At the same time as the training, their local government administration was preparing a new Vulnerable Group Development list for 2011-12. Members on the list would receive financial assistance from the government. Shamima learnt that some extremely poor women from her village were not included in the list.  She and her fellow group members decided to use their recent  training lessons to fight this exclusion and submitted a ‘Right to Information’ application to see the list. Just a few years ago, Shamina would have been unable to submit such a request. The application was filed with the local government chairman on January 10th. She did not receive any written information by January 25th, the official response date. By this time the Upazilla Nirbahi Officer, a local official, came to know about the complaint and reviewed the list with a small team which decided to remove a few names that were not eligible and to include four women who actually were. On February 23rd, Shamima finally received the revised list from the authorities and saw the names of the four women. Shamima and other citizens can now verify if the beneficiaries selected are the appropriate ones and what criteria were applied.
• #25: Strengthen and leverage ANSAs to build CSO capacities to improve accountability of core themes and sectors-PFM, procurement, GEI - through cross – country learning and collaboration, and incubating innovations Support fledgling ANSA-MNA to be a catalyst for fostering accountability relationships for a new social contract between governments and citizens. Proposed Global CSO Fund to support CSO capacity building for social accountability and service delivery Improve capacities of multi-stakeholder coalitions (youth, journalists & ATI practitioners, business, parliamentarians) for reform advocacy Pilot and scale up, through these networks, use of ICT for more open and accessible government
• #26: Define global norms around openness, accountability, and participation in government Secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, civic engagement, fight corruption, and leverage new technologies Empower civil society as key partner in efforts to hold government accountable, make government more efficient, effectives, and responsive Led by Brazil and the US. Matching mechanism to include: India, Indonesia, Philippines, Mexico, South Africa, Norway, UK
• #30: This is the example of ICT use in Brazil: In 2006 the city administration of Belo Horizonte launched the Digital Participatory Budgeting (e-PB). Independent of the budget of US$43 million allocated for the traditional PB, a fund of US$11 million was allocated to the new initiative. The e-PB consists of a scheme where citizens registered as electors in Belo Horizonte, independent of their place of residency in the city, vote exclusively online for 1 out of 4 public works for each of the nine districts of the city. Drivers: i) to modernize its PB through the use of ICTs; ii) to increase citizens’ participation in the PB process and iii) to broaden the scope of public works that are submitted to voting. Participation of nearly 10%
• #31: 1) In the conflict-affected province of South-Kivu in Eastern DRC a WBI project introduced a participatory budgeting process which is being supported by mobile phone technology. Citizens are being mobilized with the help of SMS to attend townhall-meetings to deliberate and decide on priority projects, which become part of local budgets. Through this participatory process citizens decided to renovate schools, build bridges and water fountains in their local communities. Citizens can also use cell phones to vote on such priorities. The increased trust in government built through this participatory mechanism has mobilized additional resources as more citizens are paying their taxes. 2) The same technology allows citizens to give ongoing feedback in real-time of how satisfied they are with public services. Mobile enabled Citizen Score Cards help monitor the execution of the adopted projects and help assess how good of a job local governments are doing with renovating schools, building bridges and water fountains. At the national level, the public water provider has adopted the same score cards system to improve its performance.
• #35: Progress to date. Major partner here is Transparency and Accountability Initiative. They are commissioning a number of studies themselves about the effectiveness of technology and tools for accountability. These are the 4 reports we have completed to date. 3 year target Dissemination through our partners (Hewlett, DFID, Hivos, Omidyar, Ford, OSI, Revenue Watch, IBP, Publish What You Fund)