global mapping of technology final1

7/31/2019 Global Mapping of Technology Final1

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For more inormation contact:

Transparency &Accountability Initiativec/o Open Society Foundation4th oor, Cambridge House100 Cambridge Grove

London, W6 0LE, UKTel: +44 (0)20 7031 0200www.transparency-initiative.org

Copyright 2010 Open Society Foundation.All rights reserved, including the right to reproducethis report or portions thereo in any orm.


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Contents

Executive summary 4

Introduction 7

1. Methodology and scope 9

Selection criteria 10

Taxonomy 10

2. Technology or transparency and accountability:An Overview 11

Actors targeted by transparency and accountability eorts 12 Functions targeted by transparency

and accountability eorts 15

3. Conclusions and research recommendations 17

A ramework or considering the potential or technologyor transparency and accountability Initiatives 18

Cross-project fndings and trends 19

Findings and trends 1. 19





Annexes 24

Annex I. Case studies 25

Annex II: Commonly used tools 33

Annex III: Team members 37

About the authors 39

3TAI New Technology / Global mapping o technology or transparency and accountability


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For practitioners in the transparency and accountability

space, it is useul to rame the potential or leveragingtechnology towards transparency and accountabilityinitiatives in at least our ways:

Bringing projects and interventions to scale.

Bringing citizens closer to the policymaking processthrough new and improved channels o participationas well as citizen monitoring o government.

Identiying policy priorities and service deliverychallenges through data mashing and other visualisationand data manipulation techniques o both governmentand private datasets.

Improving the eciency o civil society organisations

working in the transparency and accountability spacethrough adoption o best practice technology platorms.

Executive summary

This report contains the key fndings rom having reviewed more than 100 projectsand having interviewed dozens o practitioners in Central and Eastern Europe, EastAsia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Arica, South Asia, Southeast Asia,the ormer Soviet Union, and Sub-Saharan Arica who use new technologies as ameans to increase transparency and accountability. This summary helps to takethe pulse o the Technology or Transparency and Accountability movement andsuggests both exciting possibilities or scaling impact as well as important caveatsand challenges.

4 TAI New Technology / Global mapping o technology or transparency and accountability


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4. Despite early successes, many eortsstill lack credibility and could createdistortions.

Some projects have been launched without sucientknowledge or expertise to design an eectivemethodology or conceive o and execute a easiblestrategy. Terms and labels such as demandingaccountability or exposing corruption tend tobe very loosely thrown about. Combined with asignicant amount o unveried data in some projects,particularly crowdsourced eorts, these conditionshave the dangerous potential to diminish technologyor transparency and accountability as an approachwithout greater rigor. The projects listed in this studywere chosen because they were considered to havea reasonable chance o success; however, some

o these cases could benet rom methodologicalimprovements.

3. Technology or transparency andaccountability projects have a betterchance o eectively producing change

when they take a collaborative approach,sometimes involving government and/orservice providers.

Projects that establish some sort o eedbackmechanism between inormation generators whether the public (e.g., crowd-sourcing) orinormation-generating organisations (e.g., NGOs) and those whose perormance they seek to inuence(government, service providers) tend to show moreresults. Although this study did not aim to analysethese projects ultimate impact, it is clear that projectswhose strategies include the participation o dierentstakeholders are producing above average results.

Key fndings

2. A key element o successul technologyor transparency and accountability eortsis their speed, both in execution and instimulating change.

Well-designed eorts are capable o producingrelevant inormation that can be used to exerciseor demand accountability quickly, whether by thecreators and managers o the project, by third-partychange agents or organisations, or by more collectivepublic stakeholders. This is typically achieved by:1) collecting and presenting new (or previouslyhidden) inormation that can be used to support theexercise o accountability; and/or 2) republishing orrepackaging existing inormation in a way that makesit more usable.

1. Online and mobile technology tools arebeginning to change the transparency andaccountability feld despite the lack o adedicated source o technical or fnancialsupport.

Many eorts are just starting, and some are betterdesigned than others, but selected initial eortsappear to be moving ahead o traditional transparencyand accountability organisations and their models,most o which continue to think that using techtools reers to tweeting and having a website. Thesetraditional organisations oten ail to take advantage opowerul online and mobile tools that could magniytheir impact.



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Introduction


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We have attempted to document the current trends in thehopes that doing so will be useul or current technology ortransparency and accountability practitioners curious aboutwhat their colleagues are doing, or traditional transparencyand accountability activists and organisations who maybe interested in incorporating online and mobile tools intheir work, and or grant-makers seeking an overview o thetechnology or transparency and accountability space.

In the rst section o the report, we present ourmethodology, the scope o the project, and ourproposed taxonomy, which we believe can help improve

understanding o the broad range o technology ortransparency and accountability projects around the world.

Our second section is an overview o the trends ourresearch ound in the course o the year. It contains detaileddescriptions o dierent areas these projects are exploring,the ways in which they are updating and re-energisingthe elds traditional methodologies and how they areengaging actors rom citizens and media to authorities andthe private sector.

Finally, our third section oers conclusions and suggestionsor urther research.

The technology or transparency and accountability feld is an increasingly dynamicspace as internet and mobile phone use rise and new actors join the feld. The goalo the Technology or Transparency Network (TTN) over the past year has been tocollect a sufciently large sample o projects rom a variety o regions and a varietyo thematic categories in order to place our fnger on the pulse o the feld.



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2. Methodology

and scope


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Types o Tools

Data collection

Data visualisation

Connect and engage (social media)

Mobile

Traditional (print and broadcast)

The research began with a widespread call or case studysuggestions, ocused largely on citizen-led projects.Researchers, members o the wider Global Voices community,and the general public were invited to submit theirsuggestions through an online orm. Nearly 150 projects weresuggested, and nearly 100 were selected or urther study.

Interviews were then carried out by a team o more thana dozen researchers to prole over 60 selected projects.Team members had experience in transparency researchand were intimately amiliar with citizen media in theirparticular geographic areas o expertise. This report

draws on these case studies, which can be ound on theTechnology or Transparency Network website (http://transparency.globalvoicesonline.org/)along with additionalshort articles by our researchers on various aspects o theeld. Additional projects that were identied as within thescope o our research but not interviewed due to time orother constraints are also listed on the site.

Selection criteriaOur selection criteria looked at whether the projects metthe ollowing conditions:

The projects had a clear objective o producing data that

can be used to support transparency and accountabilityeorts by: a) collecting and presenting data; and/or b)republishing or repackaging existing data in a way thatmakes it usable.

Technology tools were essential to the development orexistence o the projects.

The technology tools and quality standards seemedcoherent enough to assume that the projects had areasonable possibility o accomplishing their statedobjectives.

The projects demonstrated collaborative approaches orhad the potential to develop them. This reers to whetherthe projects appeared capable o establishing links with

other actors who could boost or accelerate the objectiveso the projects. In some cases, collaborative strategies arealready in place; in other cases, they do not yet exist, butthe projects seem capable o eventually developing them.

This research did not intend to evaluate the impact oeach one o these projects, nor did it conduct an in-depthanalysis o each project within its local context. Theobjective o the research was rather to collect a sucientlylarge sample o projects to document current trends andshow a snapshot o the current state o the eld.

For an in-depth review o some o these projects werecommend reviewing a companion paper in this series,Technologies o Transparency or Accountability: AnExamination o Several Experiences, by Archon Fung, HollieRusson Gilman and Jennier Shkabatur.

TaxonomyThe projects we reviewed are multiaceted, and we haveattempted to develop a taxonomy that reects this. Forexample, Dinero y Poltica (Money and Politics) in Argentinaocuses on campaign nance; however, because o the type otechnological tools it uses and its approach to nancial data, itcould also be considered an example o budget monitoring.

Thereore, our taxonomy allows projects to be categorisedthrough our dierent lenses. This approach separates theactor(s) whose actions the projects target (or example,

the legislative branch o government) rom the unction(s)these actors perorm (or example, elections, budgets orgovernment service delivery).

We have also categorised projects by the type otechnology tools they use and have explained those trendsin Appendix II: Commonly Used Tools. The ourth categoryreers to the geographic scope o each project.

Visitors to our website can browse and compare projectsacross multiple categories and sub-categories withinthis taxonomy. The categories and sub-categories wedeveloped are:

Actor

Donors

Executive Branch

Judicial Branch

Legislative Branch

Media

Political Parties

Private Sector

Function

Budgets

Elections

Extractive Industries/Natural Resource Governance

Government Services

Geographic Scale

Neighborhood

Municipal

Sub-national

National

International

This report ocuses on the results o interviews conducted with technology ortransparency and accountability practitioners in Central and Eastern Europe,East Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Arica, South Asia,Southeast Asia, the ormer Soviet Union, and Sub-Saharan Arica.

http://transparency.globalvoicesonline.org/http://transparency.globalvoicesonline.org/http://transparency.globalvoicesonline.org/http://transparency.globalvoicesonline.org/


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2. Technology

or transparencyand accountability:an overview


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Actors targeted by transparencyand accountability eorts

Executive and legislative branches

In Malaysia, Penang Watchs objective is to encourage localgovernment authorities to improve their perormance byproviding them with both positive and negative eedback.It also aim to empower citizens by providing them withelectronic tools to demand solutions.

The projects website collects citizen complaints, whichmust come accompanied by pictures, documents or othertypes o evidence. A group o volunteers then brings thosecomplaints to the attention o city ocials and monitors theprocess. I the complaint has not received a response atertwo weeks, the responsible ocials are named and shamedon the website and via emails to all council departmentsand media organisations.

According to project coordinator Ong Boon Keong, about50% o the complaints the project has processed ollowingthis procedure have been eectively resolved. While itis impossible to determine i the cases would have beenresolved without Penang Watchs participation (there havebeen no randomised controlled trials to vet this), Keong saidthat project representatives oten meet with authorities andthat communication and relationship building have startedto yield results.

Purely legislative projects track both individual politiciansand legislative bills. Mam Prawo Wiedzie (I Have The Rightto Know) is a Polish parliamentary monitoring site thatreports and aggregates publicly available inormation aboutcandidates and current Members o Parliament. Projectcoordinator Anna Czyewska said that the project visitscandidates websites, collects yers, keeps track o mediareports and directly asks politicians to disclose inormation.It is interesting to note that many politicians have started torespond to the groups requests, though some still ignore it.

One o the key eatures o the Polish website is its ability topair candidates and MPs proles with their voting records,which is theorised to be a key monitoring technique towhich the media and citizens in many countries otenlack access. This approach o allowing citizens to matchcandidate proles with voting records has also been takenby Colombias Congreso Visible.

In Brazil, Excelncias operates a similar database that tracksdonations, representatives absences in national and stateassemblies, government spending, and bills. Excelncias isused primarily by journalists seeking to uncover corruption

in the Brazilian government and was awarded the 2006 EssoJournalism Award or the best contribution to the press.

In Slovakia, the Fair-Play Alliance, a project run by journalistZuzana Wienk, is pushing or greater transparency ingovernment nance. The Fair-Play Alliance operates asearchable online database containing inormation aboutthe ow o public money to private hands (via statesubsidies, privatisation, tax and customs remissions, grantsand other mechanisms). The organisation works primarilywith other non-prot organisations and with the media,who use the database to monitor government spending.

Several times per year, the Fair-Play Alliance contactsthe media to bring their attention to specic cases itdeems worthy o urther attention.1 According to Wienk,inormation made available by the Fair-Play Alliance hashelped increase awareness o government spending inSlovakia; the organisation recently worked to help drat andpass a new law on political party nance in the country.

Judicial branch

Projects related to the judicial branch monitor the selectiono members o the Supreme Court or other senior memberso the judiciary and reorganise and publish court decisionsthat are otherwise inaccessible.

In Guatemala, a country with severe impunity problemsin which the selection o judges to the top courts ishighly politicised, Guatemala Visible, set up a group onon-governmental organisations (NGOs), maintains awebsite that closely monitors the selection o the GeneralProsecutor, the Auditor General, the Public Deender andthe national Ombudsman.

During the countrys most recent selection process orSupreme Court justices, in 2009, the website publishedpersonal background inormation on the nominees as wellas details o legal complaints that had been ormally ledagainst them, directly exercising pressure on the members

o the nomination committees to ully investigate thebackgrounds o ostensibly unqualied candidates. Thewebsite also oered live transmissions o the sessionsin which the nomination committees evaluated thecandidates.

The United Nations International Commission againstImpunity in Guatemala (CICIG) praised the work o thewebsite or its contribution to making the election processmore transparent or citizens.2 Guatemala Visible wasinspired by a similar project in Colombia called EleccinVisible, suggesting that in certain cases, successultechnology or transparency projects can travel.

This section is an overview o the trends our research ound in the feld and isorganised by two o the areas identifed in our taxonomy: actors and unctionstargeted by technology or transparency and accountability eorts.

1 A list o times Fair Play Alliances database has been used by themedia is available on its site at http://www.air-play.sk/index.php?u2=38andu1=6.

2 Inorme: Proceso de Eleccin de Magistrados a la CorteSuprema de Justicia y Cortes de Apelaciones y Otros TribunalesColegiados de Igual Categora Ao 2009. CICIG. http://cicig.org/uploads/documents/Inorme_proceso_de_eleccion_de_magistrados_2009.pd

http://www.fair-play.sk/index.php?u2=38andu1=6.http://www.fair-play.sk/index.php?u2=38andu1=6.http://%20http//cicig.org/uploads/documents/Informe_proceso_de_eleccion_de_magistrados_2009.pdfhttp://%20http//cicig.org/uploads/documents/Informe_proceso_de_eleccion_de_magistrados_2009.pdfhttp://%20http//cicig.org/uploads/documents/Informe_proceso_de_eleccion_de_magistrados_2009.pdfhttp://%20http//cicig.org/uploads/documents/Informe_proceso_de_eleccion_de_magistrados_2009.pdfhttp://%20http//cicig.org/uploads/documents/Informe_proceso_de_eleccion_de_magistrados_2009.pdfhttp://%20http//cicig.org/uploads/documents/Informe_proceso_de_eleccion_de_magistrados_2009.pdfhttp://www.fair-play.sk/index.php?u2=38andu1=6.http://www.fair-play.sk/index.php?u2=38andu1=6.


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Political parties

These projects tend to be aimed at providing votereducation and oering voters a centralised source oinormation that helps them make sense o competingparty and candidate platorms during what is oten a noisy

and propaganda-laden electoral process.

KohoVolit, operating in the Czech Republic and Slovakia,distributes questionnaires to politicians beore elections torecord their proposals and positions on diverse issues. Theproject then uses that inormation to develop a short quizthat allows voters to match their own voting preerencesand political belies with those o the candidates. Mostimportantly, the website monitors whether political partiesactions in the legislature match their campaign promises. Theinitiative also publishes otherwise dense inormation, suchas proposed laws and legislative debate, in a way that regularcitizens can easily grasp.

In Hungary, Kpmutats works to increase transparencyin political party nance by monitoring the activitieso political parties via press releases and news articles,analysing dierent parties expenses (or example, by tallyingapproximate costs or political advertisements in dierentpublications or or the rental o venues or political rallies),then using this analysis to construct an estimated campaignbudget or each party. Kpmutats work was prompted bysuspicions that most political parties ar exceed the legal limitor campaign expenditure o HUF 386 million (just under $2million). A running total graph or 2010 estimated that twoo six parties had ar exceeded the limit, while a searchabledatabase listed each estimated campaign expense.

In Argentina, Dinero y Poltica (Money and Politics)advocates or campaign nance transparency by publishingcampaign nance data online. Users can navigate thewebsite by political party, district, or type o donation orexpense and can consult lists o campaign contributionsrom individuals. Large portions o the inormation areculled rom data posted by the political parties on theirwebsites in PDF ormat; Dinero y Poltica processes andtransorms this data to make it easily searchable.

Media

Media-related projects generally attempt to inject moreinormation into the news cycle and/or to provide members

o the media with better tools and/or skills with which to dotheir work.

While our research did not attempt to evaluate theseprojects claims o providing deeper reporting thanthe mainstream media, some projects were created byproessional investigative reporters and, in one case,by a group o our media development organisations,suggesting that they indeed had the potential to createhigh-quality inormation.

Centro de Investigacin e Inormacin Periodstica (CIPER,Centre o Journalistic Investigation and Inormation) in Chilepublishes investigative reports developed by some o thetop journalists in the country; the members o its editorial

board include key names in American and Latin American

journalism. Its reports include evaluations o the publichealth system and the Senates expenses and coverage osensitive issues such as crimes committed by members othe Catholic Church, among others. The dierence betweenCIPER and other media outlets is not only in its distributionmethod but also in its ocus: CIPER is dedicated to coveringunderreported stories about corruption in both the privateand public sectors; it obtains its material by exercisingChiles access to public inormation laws; and it publishes itssource documents. The organisations approach to undingalso diers rom traditional media organisations: as CIPERobtains most o its unding rom the Copesa Group (aChilean media conglomerate) rather than relying directlyon commercial unding, it is less vulnerable to retaliation orstories that expose corruption in the private sector.

In Puerto Rico, the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPIPR,the Centre or Investigative Journalism) is the rst non-protinvestigative journalism project in the Caribbean. It usesan online platorm to distribute investigative reportingconducted by its journalists. Like CIPER in Chile, whichprovided inspiration, CPIPR was ounded by two top PuertoRican journalists. Recent investigations include a reporton the Caribbean Petroleum Corporation and a number ostories on corruption within Puerto Ricos judicial system.

Pera Natin to! (Its Our Money!) is an initiative o the PhilippinePublic Transparency Reporting Project, which was ounded byour media development organisations (the Institute or Warand Peace Reporting, the Centre or Community Journalismand Development, the National Union o Journalists othe Philippines and the Mindanao News and InormationCooperation Centre). Pera Natin to! encourages civil societyorganisations (CSOs), individual citizens and journalists towork together to document corruption by providing an onlineplatorm where people can publish reports, complaints,photos, videos, podcasts and blog posts documentinginstances o bribery or other corruption.

Other projects are based on citizen journalism under theguidance o proessional journalists. One o them is CGNetSwara, a mobile phone-based service that operates inChhattisgarh, India. Citizens some but not all o whomhave had training in reporting call in and record a shortupdate o anything they consider news. Reports are vettedby a group o three proessional journalists who thenconduct their own reporting or add a disclaimer saying thatthe inormation has not been veried. When the updatesare published, subscribers receive an alert via text message.Listeners can call in and hear the three most recent stories,some o which are translated rom Chhattisgarhi into Hindiin order to reach a wider audience.

The Arican Elections Project covers several countries andhas a dierent goal: to help the media use technology tocover elections throughout the continent. The organisationswebsite includes country-specic election portals thataggregate election-related news articles, blog posts,photographs, events, and editorials. The project monitorsexisting media coverage o elections, tracks the distributiono coverage across dierent parties, and allows journalistsand other subscribers to receive news via e-mail and SMS.



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Private sector

Only three o the projects we studied ocus on eorts topromote transparency in the private sector. Reclamos, inChile, receives inormation rom individual consumers (orexample, about businesses that ail to ollow consumer

protection regulations or poor-quality public services) andorganises the inormation so that it can be used by otherconsumers, journalists and researchers to better understandconsumer behaviour, preerences and product complaints.The platorm has evolved into a large and vibrant communityo consumers that has managed to eectively put pressureon corporations and has compelled some o them to respondto complaints posted on the website. It is now one o thebiggest user-generated content websites in Chile.

Ishki is a Jordanian project that started with a similar goal:building an attractive, easy-to-use platorm designed tocrowdsource citizen complaints about both public andprivate sector service delivery. However, ounder Waheed

Al-Barghouthi explained that the website has not beenvery successul, in his opinion, in part because o a lack oresources to advertise the site and in part because Jordaniansworry about commenting on public websites out o ear thattheir IP address will be tracked by the authorities. This is auseul example o where context truly matters in designingeective technology or transparency eorts.

In Costa Rica, Quien Paga Manda is a bridge betweenconsumers and both public and private companies.3 Thewebsite publishes inormation related to customer serviceand the low standards o consumer rights in the countryand uses consumers experiences to highlight legal gapsand commercial practices detrimental to the public interest

that go unreported. The website assumes that visibilitycan be more eective than legal processes to counteract

such practices. It intends to help consumers learn rom themistakes and experiences o others so they can be moreproactive in deending their own interests and in makingtheir rights eective. Among other tools, the websiteincludes a blog, a rating system and a section to submitquestions to experts. In some cases, the website connectsconsumers with government agencies, businesses orlawyers who react quickly to solve specic cases.

Donors

Ujima is the only project we interviewed that ocuseson donor spending in the developing world. Ujima hascreated an online repository o aid-related datasets thatincludes data about USAID spending, lobbyists hired byoreign governments and organisations to inuence USoreign policy, data rom the Arican Development Bank,inormation on health spending by the Global Fund, andinormation on weapons sales. All o this inormation ispublicly available but can be dicult or individuals in thedeveloping world to access. The project was ounded bytwo ormer New York Times journalists and is aimed primarilyat supporting investigative reporting in Arica. Ujima doesnot track whether or how the inormation it provides hasbeen used in the media or elsewhere. It also has a decidedlyAmerican ocus in its choice o datasets, though it hasrecently begun to expand to include data rom the UKDepartment or International Development (DFID) and theArican Development Bank.

3 Disclosure: Quien Paga Manda is led by Hazel Feigenblatt, whois also the editorial advisor or the Technology or TransparencyNetwork and a co-author o this report.



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Functions targetedby transparency andaccountability eorts

Government servicesNearly hal o the projects we studied ocus on some aspecto government service provision, largely surrounding citizencomplaints and educating citizens about how governmentsare spending money on public services. Since most o theprojects in this sub-category also all in other sub-categoriescovered in detail elsewhere in the report (Executive andLegislative Branches earlier in the report and Budget lateron), we have not reiterated the inormation here. However,one smaller category o projects took a slightly dierent tackworth describing: engaging citizens to tackle problems ogovernment service delivery by collaborating with each otherand/or with the government, rather than by naming and

shaming government authorities or ailing to adequatelyaddress citizens needs.

In Brazil, Cidade Democrtica is an online platormthat allows citizens, politicians, journalists and NGOs tocollectively identiy community problems and proposesolutions. The project has had some success in the city oJundia: or example, an online discussion about bicyclepaths prompted the towns deputy mayor to commit$200,000 to the construction o new paths, while anotherdiscussion about how the citys public hearing scheduleprevented ull-time workers and students rom attendingprompted it to consider expanding or changing its publichearing hours.

In India, Praja (Citizens or Public) operates a similarplatorm to collect citizen input on civic issues oimportance to them and to acilitate collaboration betweencitizens and government to develop solutions to theseissues, and bring them to the attention o the properauthorities. Praja tracks the authorities response to thecomplaints it raises by posting ofine communication withgovernment oces on its website.

In Russia, TakTakTak also works to connect citizens and tohelp them collaborate to solve social problems. TakTakTakwas created by a group o Siberian journalists and a smallweb development company as an online meeting placeor parties interested in social change. The creators intend

their project to help people sel-educate and to create whatthey describe as a crowdsourced citizen survival guide.The organisations platorm allows citizens to submit bothproblems and solutions (called algorithms). The project isintended to ll the gap between journalists, citizens, civilsociety activists, and government.

Elections

Several projects ocus on monitoring elections. Manyo these projects Amatora mu Mahoro in Burundi,Cuidemos el Voto in Mexico, Eleitor 2010 in Brazil, Save.kgin Kyrgyzstan, Sharek961 in Lebanon, Sudan Vote Monitor,

Uchaguzi in Kenya, and Vote Report PH in the Philippines use Ushahidi, a well-known ree platorm that allows peopleto send in reports via e-mail, text message, Twitter, or a weborm. The sotware then displays the reports on a map andon a timeline. Some projects have developed their ownapproaches and use other tools.

In Bangladesh, Vote BD publishes voter registration recordsonline so citizens can check their registration status andmonitor any errors in the voter lists. The site also tracks,compiles and disseminates inormation about politicians andelectoral candidates. This inormation includes the results o aquestionnaire on political belies and experience that Vote BDdistributes to candidates, as well as inormation gleaned rom

candidates adavits and tax returns.

On the eve o Russias 2004 presidential elections, electionobservation organisation Golos (Voice) created a hotlineto provide inormation about the elections and to collectreports o electoral raud. Ater its initial success duringthe 2004 elections, Golos extended the project byuploading inormation submitted via the calls to a website,the URL o which matched the hotline number (http://www.88003333350.ru/). In 2009 and 2010, the hotlinecollected reports on eight dierent local, regional and nationalelections, including multiple allegations o electoral raud.

The Association For Democratic Reorms (ADR) in India also

ran a nationwide election hotline during the Lok Sabha(lower house o the national parliament) elections in 2009.The hotline was connected to MyNeta.ino, a platormthat provides inormation about electoral candidates tothe public. Citizens could also access inormation on theplatorm via SMS.

Projects that use Ushahidi could be perceived in someinstances as taking a more sophisticated strategy comparedwith the Golos or ADR approach and seem to be movingahead o traditional transparency organisations and theirmethods. Among the projects we studied, this is bestillustrated by Uchaguzi, a ollow-up to the rst use oUshahidi in Kenyas 2007 elections. Uchaguzis goal was

to monitor the countrys 2010 constitutional reerendum.Months prior to the elections, Uchaguzis organisersbegan talking to potential partners, including the SocialDevelopment Network (SODNET) and the Constitution andReorm Education Consortium (CRECO).



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CRECO and Ushahidi then trained 500 ocial electionmonitors on how to report incidents to the Uchaguzi platormvia text message. CRECO also established a partnershipwith the Interim Independent Election Commission (IIEC),which oered a channel o communication through whichallegations o raud reported via Uchaguzi would beinvestigated immediately by government authorities.

Uchaguzi received more than 1,500 reports during thereerendum, some o which were orwarded to the IIEC oraction. In one example, a monitor sent Uchaguzi a photoo a poster hung in two polling stations. In the posterthe colours or Yes and No had been inverted. The errorwas reported to the authorities, and the IIEC removed theposter. Since the media could not possibly ollow up oneach small incident, and since traditional organisationscould not collect and process 1,500 reports with the speedthat Uchaguzi oered, this collaborative approach providesa promising model to explore.

However, one lesson rom the Ushahidi/Uchaguzi experienceis that the success o a tool in one context can inspire othersto quickly launch projects using the same tool without a clearstrategy or a solid methodology capable o yielding credibleresults. We identied a number o these cases during ourresearch; while they are not proled here, they reinorce thepoint that the cool actor o technology tools can at timesexacerbate the lack o rigor ound in some initiatives. Thisposes a risk o diminishing the role that technology can playin the transparency and accountability eld.

Extractive industries/naturalresource governance

Few examples were ound o local organisations usingtechnology to push or greater transparency andaccountability around extractive industries and naturalresources. Most national resource initiatives continue tooperate at the international level.

One o the most interesting projects we discovered hadyet to launch at the time o our interview. In Tanzania, thenon-prot organisation Daraja (bridge in Kiswahili) worksto acilitate communication between citizens and thegovernment. In November 2010 it launched a three-yearprogram called Maji Matone (Raising the Water Pressure).Daraja ounder Ben Taylor said that when rural waterpointsbreak down, it can take months or even years or the

government to repair them; this is partly due to a lack ounding but also to a lack o communication between ruralcommunities and the district centers, where decisionsabout repairs are made.

Maji Matone enables citizens to report waterpointbreakdowns to district water engineers, who areresponsible or repairs, via text message. Text messages aresent daily to the engineers phones via a partnership MajiMatone has established, and monthly aggregated reports

are also published. This inormation is sent to local radiostations, which sometimes broadcast the inormation andput additional pressure on the government to act quickly.Currently, only 54% o rural waterpoints in Tanzania areunctioning properly. Daraja plans to monitor this numberover the course o its project to determine i Maji Matone ishaving an eect.

Considering that several international projects (PublishWhat You Pay, Revenue Watch Institute, and the ExtractiveIndustries Transparency Initiative) work to increasetransparency and accountability in the extractive industries,greater collaboration between these organisations,technologists and local organisations may help developinnovative approaches or integrating technology into thesectors transparency and accountability eorts.

Budgets

Projects ocused on public budgets monitor local

and national government budgets, donor unding, andat times campaign nance issues, especially i publicunding is involved.

In India, the Accountability Initiative collects economicand budgetary data through open government datasetsas well as through ocial Right to Inormation requests. Itthen makes the inormation available online, where userscan search or relevant inormation such as ood subsidyinormation, education and health spending and watersanitation resources. The organisation also provides a Howto Read the Budget primer that describes the languageused in government budget documents and the structureo the documents in order to acilitate better citizen

understanding o these documents.4

Lastly, the open data movement, in which budgetary andother government inormation is made publicly availableonline, is beginning to spread rom the United States andthe United Kingdom to the rest o the world. 5 One exampleis in India, where Praja is working with the government oKarnataka State to develop a pilot open data project orgovernment inormation.

Most o the budget-ocused projects we documented makeuse o searchable databases and interactive graphs andcharts to enable closer examination o the data by citizens,

journalists, and NGOs. However, some eorts, such as PeraNatin to! in the Philippines, are limited to publishing budgetanalyses without making the budgetary data itsel availableto the public in a more detailed or interactive ashion.6

4 Accountability Initiative, How to Read the Budget, http://accountabilityindia.in/sites/deault/les/know_your_budget.pd.

5 Becky Hogge, Open Data Study, Transparency andAccountability Initiative, May 2010, http://www.soros.org/initiatives/inormation/ocus/communication/articles_publications/publications/open-data-study-20100519/open-data-study-100519.pd.

6 Pera Natin to!, Looking Through the Presidential andCongressional Budgets, http://www.transparencyreporting.net/index.php?option=com_contentandview=articleandid=65:looking-through-the-presidential-and-congressional-budgetsandcatid=52andItemid=77.

http://%20http//accountabilityindia.in/sites/default/files/know_your_budget.pdf.http://%20http//accountabilityindia.in/sites/default/files/know_your_budget.pdf.http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information/focus/communication/articles_publications/publications/open-data-study-20100519/open-data-study-100519.pdf.http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information/focus/communication/articles_publications/publications/open-data-study-20100519/open-data-study-100519.pdf.http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information/focus/communication/articles_publications/publications/open-data-study-20100519/open-data-study-100519.pdf.http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information/focus/communication/articles_publications/publications/open-data-study-20100519/open-data-study-100519.pdf.http://www.transparencyreporting.net/index.php?option=com_contentandview=articleandid=65:looking-through-the-presidential-and-congressional-budgetsandcatid=52andItemid=77.http://www.transparencyreporting.net/index.php?option=com_contentandview=articleandid=65:looking-through-the-presidential-and-congressional-budgetsandcatid=52andItemid=77.http://www.transparencyreporting.net/index.php?option=com_contentandview=articleandid=65:looking-through-the-presidential-and-congressional-budgetsandcatid=52andItemid=77.http://www.transparencyreporting.net/index.php?option=com_contentandview=articleandid=65:looking-through-the-presidential-and-congressional-budgetsandcatid=52andItemid=77.http://www.transparencyreporting.net/index.php?option=com_contentandview=articleandid=65:looking-through-the-presidential-and-congressional-budgetsandcatid=52andItemid=77.http://www.transparencyreporting.net/index.php?option=com_contentandview=articleandid=65:looking-through-the-presidential-and-congressional-budgetsandcatid=52andItemid=77.http://www.transparencyreporting.net/index.php?option=com_contentandview=articleandid=65:looking-through-the-presidential-and-congressional-budgetsandcatid=52andItemid=77.http://www.transparencyreporting.net/index.php?option=com_contentandview=articleandid=65:looking-through-the-presidential-and-congressional-budgetsandcatid=52andItemid=77.http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information/focus/communication/articles_publications/publications/open-data-study-20100519/open-data-study-100519.pdf.http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information/focus/communication/articles_publications/publications/open-data-study-20100519/open-data-study-100519.pdf.http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information/focus/communication/articles_publications/publications/open-data-study-20100519/open-data-study-100519.pdf.http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information/focus/communication/articles_publications/publications/open-data-study-20100519/open-data-study-100519.pdf.http://%20http//accountabilityindia.in/sites/default/files/know_your_budget.pdf.http://%20http//accountabilityindia.in/sites/default/files/know_your_budget.pdf.


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3. Conclusions

and researchrecommendations


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How to distinguish between projects, how to nurturecredible eorts, and how to identiy opportunities inspecic contexts are some o the big questions currentlychallenging the transparency and accountabilitycommunity, and the ollowing conclusions intend toprovide some elements to keep in mind when consideringprojects on a case by case basis. We also recommend someareas that could benet rom urther research and analysis.

A ramework or consideringthe potential or technology ortransparency and accountabilityinitiativesFor practitioners in the transparency and accountabilityspace, it is useul to rame the potential or leveragingtechnology towards transparency and accountabilityinitiatives in at least our ways:

bringing projects and interventions to scale;

bringing citizens closer to the policymaking processthrough new and improved channels o participationas well as citizen monitoring o government;

identiying policy priorities and service delivery

challenges through data mashing and other visualisationand data manipulation techniqueso both government and private datasets; and

improving the eciency o CSOs working in thetransparency and accountability space throughadoption o best practice technology platorms.

Bringing initiatives to scale: Whether crisis mappingapplications o Ushahidi that involve thousands o publicreporters, or sotware such as FrontlineSMS that allowsproject managers to communicate simultaneously withthousands o users via simple text messages, some othe most eective technology or transparency andaccountability applications generate impact because theyallow practitioners to rapidly scale their interventionscheaply and quickly.

Bringing citizens closer to the policymaking process:Projects such as Reclamos in Chile and Penang Watch inMalaysia are eective and innovative because they bringcitizens directly into the governing process. In some casescitizens are empowered (and protected) to become directreporters o service delivery problems or rights violations;in others, they act as regulators themselves by applyingmarket-based pressures to service providers throughcollective action responses (as in the case o Reclamos).

Data mashing: Perhaps the best developed technology ortransparency and accountability modality, the burgeoningpractice o making government and private data moreuseul and accessible to the public has led to interesting,early successes. The World Banks open data initiative, orexample, has led to critical internal discussions o why aidprojects, when mapped systematically by geography, areowing to regions o a beneciary country where servicedelivery challenges are not has severe as in other partso the same country.7 In other cases, the mapping andvisualisation o government expenditures has helped

to create accountability eedback loops by challenginggovernment spending priorities where resources are scarce.

CSO efciency: Arguably the least developed o thetechnology or transparency and accountability modalities,the leveraging o best-o-breed technology platorms toimprove the internal eciency and eectiveness o CSOsworking in the transparency and accountability spacehas only just begun. Many CSOs, both large internationalorganisations and domestic grassroots groups, relyon outdated technology and cumbersome projectmanagement tools (oten, Microsot Word documentsand hard copy paper) to collect and disseminate theirinormation, making replication o successul eorts

exceptionally labor intensive and costly. One initiativethat is seeking to address those challenges is the Indabaeldwork platorm, a web-based project management andinormation gathering tool aimed at easing the challengesassociated with gathering and publishing data aroundissues o service delivery, government accountability, andtransparency.8 Indaba represents one o the ew eorts thusar to explicitly target the internal processes o CSOs in thetransparency and accountability space.

Ater reviewing dozens o projects rom the developing world, we have oundpromising successes as well as less developed eorts that do not represent ordo justice to the potential or the quality o work that increasingly characterisesthe technology or transparency and accountability feld.

7 Data: The World Bank, http://data.worldbank.org. 8 Indaba: http://getindaba.org.

http://data.worldbank.org/http://getindaba.org/http://getindaba.org/http://data.worldbank.org/


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Despite early successes, however, manyeorts still lack credibility and could becounterproductive. Some projects arelaunched without sufcient knowledge orexpertise to design an eective methodologyor conceive o and execute a easible strategy.

Terms and labels such as demanding accountability orexposing corruption tend to be very loosely thrownabout. Combined with a signicant amount o unverieddata in some projects, particularly crowdsourced eorts,

there is a dangerous potential to diminish technology ortransparency and accountability as an approach withoutgreater rigor.

The projects listed in this study were chosen because theywere considered to have a reasonable chance o success.In some cases, research proved the opposite and wedecided to exclude them; in other cases we kept projectsthat need renement and could benet rom methodologyimprovements.

In addition to the lack o knowledge on an academiclevel, we also sometimes observed a lack o knowledgeabout the specic issues that project organisers intend tomonitor or evaluate, such as electoral protocols or complex

mechanisms o corruption in public procurement, all owhich hurts the good intentions the creators o manyprojects have.

Lack o rigor also comes into play when successully usedtools inspire other actors to try to replicate them quicklywithout basic standards. While it is always desirable thatcitizens are interested in monitoring governments actions,there is a line sometimes a thin one between seriousand anecdotal eorts that needs to be marked.

Transparency and accountability literacy needs to beimproved both on the side o individuals attemptingto launch monitoring eorts and on the side o regular

citizens who provide and/or consume the data producedby the projects. This is essential to ensure that less wellthought out projects do not come to deepen existingmisconceptions among citizens about what the exercise otransparency and accountability encompasses.

There is also a risk that such projects create or unnecessarilyexacerbate citizens distrust o government or electedocials. This could potentially be a counterproductiveresult o, or example, a project that claims to presentdata about electoral crimes committed by politiciansduring political campaigns and that criticises them or notengaging online with citizens. In that setting, citizens arereinorcing the perception that public ocials reuse to beaccountable, when in act some politicians might be willingto engage in such eorts as already seen in some casesaround the world should the project present reasonably

veried data (to avoid presenting alse inormationanonymously spread by opponents as a act) in an accurateway (or example, not labeling unveried actions o a non-criminal nature as crimes).

Unveried reports collected through crowdsourcing toolscan be processed and used ofine in a way that resultsin credible, useul inormation. Each technology projectshould be considered in light o not only the type otools it uses, but also its methodology, quality standards,and ofine strategy. In many cases, the reputation andexperience o the individuals behind a project can be agood indicator as well.

However, we recommend keeping an open mind when

considering a project, as great ideas may come rom themost unexpected sources, particularly in such a rapidlyevolving eld and in the current context in which thesetools are still new or many practitioners. Traditionallyambitious objectives might be possible to take on usingsome o these tools. The trick is identiying the dierencebetween projects whose approaches have a reasonablechance o success and those that simply lack the potential.

While several countries, mainly in Latin America, appearto have groups o transparency-ocused organisationsthat collaborate and share experiences on technology ortransparency and accountability projects, ew projects wereaware o similar eorts in other countries. We came across

several projects that were unded by the same donor butwere unaware o the existence o each other. Promotingmore communication among technology or transparencyand accountability practitioners could be very useul orthem to take advantage o the lessons learned.

FIndings and trends 2.



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A key element o successul technology ortransparency and accountability eorts is theirspeed, both in execution and in stimulatingchange. Well-designed eorts are capable oproducing relevant inormation that can beused to exercise or demand accountabilityquickly, whether by the creators and managerso the project, by third-party change agentsor organisations, and/or by more collectivepublic stakeholders.

This is typically achieved by: 1) collecting and presentingnew (or previously hidden) inormation that can beused to support the exercise o accountability; and/or 2)republishing or repackaging existing inormation in a waythat makes it more usable.

A project such as Uchaguzi, in Kenya, is a good example. Ituses Ushahidi, a crowdsourcing tool, in conjunction witha more sophisticated approach consisting o creating keyalliances: with a NGO able to provide 500 trained electoral

monitors and a NGO that had a partnership with the InterimIndependent Election Commission (IIEC). As a result, whenelectoral issues were reported to Ushahidi, either by theocial CRECO monitors or by members o the public,they could also be reported to the authorities, who tookimmediate action in several instances.

Since media cannot possibly ollow each small incident,traditional NGOs cannot collect and process data withthe speed that Uchaguzi can and authorities cannot beeverywhere citizens are, this collaborative approach provedmore eective than any o those actors alone could have.

In other instances, projects themselves step in to executethat which they advocate to solve, as is the case with eortsthat collect and organise data that the government itselneeds to better ulll its regular duties. This is the casewhen government ocials use public data as published bythese projects, which in itsel represents an improvementin transparency and accountability and in the conditions oservice provision.




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Technology or transparency and accountability

tools do not necessarily have to be sophisticated

to succeed, but they need to be designed

intelligently and with an eye towards local

context. Launching a web-based efort in a

locality that lacks reliable broadband internet

is one example o a project that lacks this

approach.

Technology or transparency and accountability eortsmust be careul to avoid exacerbating societal inequalities

by disproportionately empowering elites. Mobile phone-based projects reach more people than online-onlyinitiatives, but in some countries, large swaths o thepopulation are still without access to mobile phones. Inorder or technology or transparency and accountabilityprojects to reach the widest possible audiences, theyshould careully assess their audiences and make theirinormation available in as many ormats as possible. Thismay involve making eorts to connect with both traditionaltransparency groups and with traditional media.

On a more immediate level, communication betweenleaders o a project and the developers when they arenot the same actor is essential to avoid the creation o

sophisticated but unamiliar tools or the users.

Overall, current technology or transparency andaccountability eorts may be seen as pull or push eorts.What is ascinating is that in some cases they are both at thesame time, or could even be perceived to outgrow the basicassumptions o this categorisation.

Push eorts aim to use technology to ampliy the voices othe public (in practice, usually a small set o the generalpublic, or example voters or particular neighborhoodsand communities) in ways that would not be achievablewere those voices to individually share their concerns and

preerences about the way in which government operates.

Pull projects operate in the opposite direction. The theoryo change driving pull projects is that the public woulddemand better perormance rom government and serviceproviders i only they understood the true extent anddetails o the governance decits acing them. To raise thatawareness on the part o the public, technology solutions inpull projects aim to provide an accessible inormation poolrom which the public can pull relevant inormation to betterinorm their demand or improved governance and servicedelivery.

Projects included in this research show that some are ableto develop strategies tting both categories, while othersgo urther and can be perceived as outgrowing the basicassumptions o that binary categorisation in their desire toexecute that which they advocate to solve. This is the casewith eorts that intend to organise and publish public datathat the government itsel needs to better ulll its regularduties.

As is the case in any eld where constantly evolvinginormation and communications technology is a actor,identiying risks worth taking and openness to design andtry new approaches are indispensable abilities to produce

innovation. The transparency and accountability eld couldsubstantially benet rom those abilities.




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Annexes



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The Technology or Transparency Network intervieweddozens o projects that use online and mobile technologyto promote accountability and transparency. These projectsare based in Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, LatinAmerica, the Middle East and North Arica, Southeast Asia,South Asia, the ormer Soviet Union, and Sub-SaharanArica. Below are short summaries o each case study.Full interviews, including audio podcasts and relateddocuments, are available on our website:http://transparency.globalvoicesonline.org/

Central and Eastern EuropeFair Play Alliance

A lack o necessary laws, a lack o access to inormation,the lack o political will and a lack o access given to

journalists all pushed Slovakian journalist Zuzana Wienk in2002 to become a watchdog journalist. For the past eightyears, Wienk and her team have been constantly pushingSlovakian politicians to become more transparent andhave advocated or legal changes that bring about moreopenness and create the potential or public awareness.One o the rst projects undertaken by the Fair-Play Alliancewas a special database or politicians to submit their ullnancial reports. In Slovakia, only a small amount o publiclydisclosed inormation is legally required, but more shouldbe made available this is where the work o the Fair-PlayAlliance comes in.

Kpmutats

Kpmutats is a joint initiative by Freedom House Europeand Transparency International Hungary to bring moretransparency to party and campaign nancing in Hungary.The word kpmutats means hypocrisy in Hungarian.While parties proess their desire to clean up the currentsystem and eliminate the corrupt practices surrounding it,they continue to spend as much as ten times the legal limiton their campaigns, abuse state and municipal resources ortheir campaigns, raise unds through illegal channels andspend money in ways that are incompatible with the word,as well as the spirit, o the law. This joint initiative seeks toestimate the true amount that parties spend on campaignsby analysing and estimating their likely expenses. It alsoincorporates the analysis and policy recommendationsdeveloped by the Etvs Kroly Institute9 and the lessonslearned rom the organisations own earlier attemptsto exert pressure on parliamentary parties to arrive at aconsensus on campaign nance reorm.

KohoVolit

Just over 20 years ago the Czech Republic and Slovakiawere a single country Czechoslovakia and its residentsdid not expect to have much o a say in how politiciansran their country. When the two countries transitioned todemocracy, there was a lot o excitement about gettinginormation rom Parliament out to the public, but soon itbecame more dicult to access and harder to understandthe parliamentary websites in both the Czech Republicand Slovakia. KohoVolit aims to take legislative bills,voting records and inormation about political parties andindividual politicians and to organise this inormation moreclearly and present it in a way that inorms rather thanoverwhelms readers. The website has also developed a quizso that prospective voters can compare how they wouldvote on key issues and which politicians are most closelyaligned with those decisions.

Mam Prawo Wiedziec

Mam Prawo Wiedzie is a website created to helpPolish citizens access inormation about their electedrepresentatives in an easy, user-riendly way. The projectcollects inormation rom candidates campaign websites,yers, politicians blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and

various other online and traditional media sources. The sitethen pairs proles o each candidate or MP with their votingrecord, where applicable, so that citizens can learn moreabout their politicians while also tracking their behavior.Beore Polands 2007 parliamentary elections and the 2009European Union elections, Mam Prawo Wiedzie distributed aQuestionnaire o Experience and Opinions to all candidates.The answers were then made available online so voters couldmatch their political belies to those o the candidates.

Sejmometr

Sejmometr (rom the Polish words Sejm, or parliament, andmetr, or monitor) is an online portal that aims to provide

easily digestible insights into the legislative processes othe Polish government, particularly the Sejm (Polandsparliament). Launched two years ago, the site has gainedpopularity due to its content and in the summer o 2010underwent a major re-development to move to a second,more sophisticated version. Supported by internationalsponsors, the new version o the portal allows users tobrowse key parliamentary decisions by sponsoring partyand by status in the Sejm. New eatures, including proleso individual members o parliament, will continue to beadded over the next year.

Annexes I. Case studies

9 Etvs Kroly Institute, http://www.ekint.org/ekint/ekint_angol.head.page?nodeid=27.

http://transparency.globalvoicesonline.org/http://www.ekint.org/ekint/ekint_angol.head.page?nodeid=27http://www.ekint.org/ekint/ekint_angol.head.page?nodeid=27http://www.ekint.org/ekint/ekint_angol.head.page?nodeid=27http://www.ekint.org/ekint/ekint_angol.head.page?nodeid=27http://transparency.globalvoicesonline.org/


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East Asia

InMedia HK

Inmediahk aims to overcome the problem o Hong Kongsshrinking public sphere ater the handover o sovereignty

to mainland China by providing independent reporting. Itsgoal is to protect reedom o speech in Hong Kong, and itboth digs deeper into published government documentsthan other media outlets and conducts independentinvestigative reports. InMedia HKs goal is to promote abetter, more rounded understanding o issues that themainstream media tend to gloss over.

Latin America

Adote um Vereador

Adote um Vereador (Adopt a Politician) encourages Braziliancitizens to blog about the work o their local elected ocials

in order to hold them accountable. The organisationsuggests that each citizen adopt a local politician andwrite about his/her activities on a blog so that politiciansknow that they are being watched and also to create abridge between their work and online users who may askquestions or leave complaints as blog comments. A wikiwas created to group and coordinate participants whoadopt politicians. The organisation also plans workshops toteach citizens how to use internet tools to become involvedin the project.

Centro de periodismo investigativode Puerto Rico

The Centro de Periodismo Investigativo de Puerto Rico(CPIPR, the Puerto Rico Centre or Investigative Journalism)is a non-prot entity created by journalists Omaya SosaPascual and Oscar Serrano to promote access to inormationthrough investigative reporting and judicial litigation,using an online platorm to distribute the inormation.CPIPR works on the assumption that the practice o

journalism in traditional media is marked by a patternwhere investigative journalism is increasingly less visible,due to political, economic and editorial pressure. Since theexercise o investigative journalism is closely connectedwith the strengthening o democracy, CPIPR sees itsel as aninstrument o transparency required o public and private

practices that relate to the public interest.

Cidade Democrtica

Rodrigo Luna, the ounder o Cidade Democrtica(Democratic City), observed that when citizens complainedabout their citys problems they typically blamed thoseproblems on others. He realised that there was not enoughcommunication across dierent demographic communitiesabout the issues a city aces. Ater learning about onlinetechnologies and the possibilities o collaborative websites,he decided to create a site with the goal o being an openspace so that people could point out problems, proposesolutions and generally share their opinions about theirown city. In October 2009, Cidade Democrtica wasinaugurated by the Seva Institute, an NGO based in SoPaulo, with a platorm that enables citizens, organisationsand government institutions to comment on problems andpropose solutions on a variety o issues related to their city.The content published on Cidade Democrtica is organisedby category, user-dened tags, city and neighbourhood.

Registered users can: 1) document problems and proposesolutions; 2) support proposals created by other users; 3)comment, question and discuss problems and proposals;4) publicise a proposal and/or problem by email; 5) createa prole to ollow particular topics and places o interest.Despite its short time in existence, the site already hasalready yielded some results. For example, a discussionabout the city o Jundia, which pointed out that there wasno public hearing to discuss the municipalitys Master Plan,led City Hall ocials to schedule a public audience in 2010.

CIPER Chile

Centro de Investigacin e Inormacin Periodstica (CIPER,Centre o Journalistic Investigation and Inormation) is anonline journalism research and inormation centre ocusedon reporting and investigative journalism. All reports arepublished exclusively online, and CIPER relies on socialnetworks to disseminate their content. CIPERs journalistsoten base their reporting on inormation sourced throughonline platorms. Many o its stories are replicated bytraditional media.

Congresso Aberto

Congresso Aberto (Open Congress) tracks, visualises andanalyses ocial data rom Brazils Congress. The objectiveis to provide ocial data in a more accessible way in orderto promote greater transparency in Brazils Congress. It alsoincludes academic research and basic statistics about thebehaviour o politicians, such as their voting records. Theounders have had problems sustaining the sites contentbecause they cannot easily access data, which is notcentralised on the congressional website. Cesar Zucco, one

o the ounders o the initiative, says, We have to search theinormation rom all the governments sites. We hope thatwhen Brazil has a reedom o inormation law, we can moreeasily access the data that we need. Our idea is that the basicactivities o the site will be automated, and that nobody willneed to update it. Our eort would be in avour o increasingthe amount o inormation and to improve our analysis o it inCongresso Aberto.

Congreso Visible

The University o the Andes is the leading academicinstitution in Colombia. Its project Congreso Visible wasstarted in 1998 by a group o academics and students

concerned with the deteriorating perormance o Congressand its members. It began with a public campaign calledVisible Candidates, which provided inormation about theproles and curricula vitae o candidates beore the 1998congressional elections. Once the Congress was elected,Candidatos Visibles became Congreso Visible, an initiativeto provide citizens with timely, accurate inormation rom anon-partisan source. More than a decade ater its creation,it has evolved into a watchdog o all activities relatedto the Congress, and its work is recognised nationallyand internationally as a leading model o parliamentaryaccountability and transparency to help inorm voters. Itprovides inormation about members o Congress, politicalparties and legislative activities. It includes nearly 2,000proles o members o Congress and aspiring candidates,5,614 legislative documents and almost 1,133 voting records.



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Cuidemos el Voto

Mexico ocially transitioned to democracy in 2000, whenthe long-ruling PRI party lost to the PANs Vicente Fox. Therole o Mexican NGOs, as well as the independent electoralcommission, was essential to this transition. Ten years later,

civil society continues to play an essential role in Mexicospolitical landscape. But how clean are Mexican electionstoday? In advance o the 2009 contest, Oscar Salazar andAndres Lajous set out to answer this question, partneringwith local CSOs and university students to implement andpublicise an Ushahidi-based election monitoring project.Cuidemos el Voto split reports into two categories: thoserom the public at large, which required administrativeapproval to be published, and those rom ocial electionmonitors, which where published immediately. Atermonitoring the presidential elections, Cuidemos el Votoestablished ollow-ups o the project or each state tomonitor local elections as well.

Dinero y Poltica

Dinero y Poltica, an initiative o the Argentinean PoderCiudadano Foundation (Citizen Power Foundation),consists o an interactive database and wiki that aggregatepolitical nance data in real time rom 23 dierentprovincial databases and track 713 recognised politicalparties (414 o which participate as members o 97dierent coalitions). Political parties must disclose theorigins and destinations o their unds, including a list oprivate donors, on an annual basis. The inormation mustbe published in a national newspaper and on a website.Ten days beore an election, political groups must present

a report outlining their public and private donationsand details o their campaign expenses to the ElectoralBody.10 When they do so, each province uploads a PDFdocument o the inormation on its individual website.Beore Dinero y Poltica, it would have been necessary todownload 23 dierent documents and hand-check eachone to understand the relationship between money andpolitics. The existing system did not allow or comparisons,data sorting or any type o analysis. Now, however, whatormerly would have taken over a week to analyse can bedone immediately. Dinero y Poltica has developed newmodes o visualising numbers and categories to providemore eective tools to analyse the nancial panorama opolitics in Argentina. Its platorm has made this inormation

accessible or the average citizen, who can quickly visualiseand understand which corporations und which candidates.

Eleitor 2010

Eleitor 2010 is an Ushahidi-based project set up to monitorBrazils October 2010 presidential elections. Thoughthe elections prompted a number o online initiatives,including Googles Eleies Brasil 2010 website, aimed atcollecting all o these initiatives in a single place, Eleitor2010 was the rst and only project in Brazil to monitorelections via crowd-sourcing.

Excelncias

Excelncias (Excellences) is a website created in 2006 bythe NGO Transparncia Brasil (Transparency Brazil), whichhas been ghting corruption in the Brazilian governmentsince 2000. It publishes news and reports about corruption,

and oers a database with public inormation about 2,368parliamentarians in the Senate, the Chamber o Deputies,27 state legislatures and 26 municipal legislatures, withthe objective o promoting transparency. It provides dataon donations, absences in the assemblies, spending oparliamentary unds, bills, lawsuits and other matters.Additionally, the website oers reports on the budgetsand the costs o Brazilian legislatures. It is used especiallyby journalists, who use data in their reporting to criticiseparliamentarians or request inormation about legislativehouses. In 2006 the project won the Esso Journalism Awardor the best contribution to the press.

Guatemala VisibleOrganised crime and clandestine groups in Guatemalahistorically exert vast inuence over some o the mostimportant governmental institutions: the courts, thegeneral prosecutors oce, the Government AccountabilityOce and the Oce o the Public Deender. Inspired byCarlos Castresana, the Spanish prosecutor appointed by UNSecretary General Ban Ki-moon to head the InternationalCommission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), andollowing the model o Eleccin Visible in Colombia, agroup o young entrepreneurs ounded Guatemala Visible,an inormative platorm aggregating updates on theselection processes o the courts, the General Prosecutor,

the Accountant General, the Public Deender and theGuatemalan Ombudsman. Guatemala Visible aims toincrease the accountability o key ocials by encouragingmore public oversight o the nomination and selectionprocesses, providing a centralised source o inormationon the process and broadcasting nominating committeesessions online.

Quien Paga Manda

Quien Paga Manda ocuses on consumer rights and

customer service. It allows users to report good

and bad experiences with businesses in Costa Rica.

It also serves as a bridge between customers and

businesses, many o which try to address complaintsquickly, and a source or news and inormation related

to customer rights. Quien Paga Manda was ounded

by Hazel Feigenblatt, Media Projects Director at

Global Integrity and an award-winning investigative

journalist and ormer Washington correspondent.11

Reclamos

Reclamos collects consumer complaints in order to promotetransparency in the public and private sectors. The projectanalyses the complaints it receives in order to publishconsumer satisaction rankings or Chilean companies andgovernment agencies. Reclamos also distributes these

complaints to the traditional media.

10 Electoral National Chamber in Argentina,http://www.pjn.gov.ar/.

11 Disclosure: Hazel Feigenblatt is also the editorial advisoror the Technology or Transparency Network anda co-author o this report.

http://www.pjn.gov.ar/http://www.pjn.gov.ar/


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Accountability Initiative

Accountability Initiative is an Indian organisation ocusedon two main aspects: research and creating innovativetools to promote transparency and accountability, mainlyregarding government expenditure in public delivery

systems. The organisation collects data rom governmentwebsites, where it is oten presented in an unclear way,and reorganises it into a searchable, sortable database.An Expenditure Track tool pulls data rom 1520 keygovernment websites and converts it into clear act sheets.The website is the main tool or disseminating inormationand placing it in the public domain and, as o October 2010,it was working on the development o a crowd-sourcingplatorm to enable eld researchers to engage in real-time data entry. The website also has a blog where peoplecan engage in accountability issues and connect withFacebook to generate discussion and debate. AccountabilityInitiative also maintains a document library (an inormation

clearing-house that pulls together both government andNGO reports, creating an easily searchable database) andpublishes its own research in Bries, which non-academicand non-specialist audiences can access. These initiativesare attempting to start a sustained discussion on the issueo accountability among real stakeholders.

Centre for Monitoring ElectionViolence

The Centre or Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) is SriLankas leading organisation in reporting election-relatedviolence and voting irregularities. The organisationsapproach has been to gather inormation rom ground zero,

cross-veriy and name and shame candidates and politicalparties involved in any kind o malpractice, includingviolence, by publishing detailed inormation to help votersmake inormed decisions. CMEV works around the clockduring election times, constantly veriying and publishingreports as they are submitted by CMEV election monitors.It uses a combination o maps, audio podcasts and blogposts to stimulate debate and inspire pubic interest, whilearchiving inormation or urther use in research and review.

CGNet Swara

CGNet Swara gives voice to the tribal population oChhattisgarh, India by providing them a voice-based portal

where they can report local issues using a landline or mobilephone. The reported content is reviewed by moderatorsand appropriate submissions are published or playback onthe audio channel. Subscribers are alerted via SMS that newcontent is ready. To listen to the content, listeners send amissed call to the system - which then calls back and leadsthe caller through a simple interactive voice response system,allowing them to listen to the latest news/stories. The audiocontent can also be ound on the CGNet Swara website orweb browsers.

Jagoree

Jagoree is a non-partisan platorm that aims to enable the

youth o Dhaka, Bangladesh, to engage with and participatein the political process through inormed analysis, advocacyand activism. Jagoree uses online technology such asFacebook, Twitter and blogs, both in English and Bangla. Itis also working on two new online initiatives. The rst is theJagorometer, which aims to track the promises made by theAwami League government in its election maniesto (titled

Charter or Change) prior to the 2008 general elections.The data or Jagorometer is largely based on the Jagoreecore teams analysis o articles in major Bangla and Englishnewspapers. The second initiative is the Digital BangladeshTracker, which aims to monitor the countrys progresstoward achieving the vision o a Digital Bangladesh.

Kiirti

Kiirti is a platorm where any individual or CSO can makea complaint or raise an issue by telephone or by using thewebsite. That issue is then tracked, categorised, mappedand orwarded on to authorities. The issues can rangerom cleanliness to environment to sexual harassment.Kiirti enables aggregation o a number o issues in a singleplace so that they can be tracked and collaborated uponby anyone interested. It uses the Ushahidi platorm toaggregate and visualise submitted reports. It also mapsand aggregates partner organisations that deal with civiccomplaints at the local level throughout India. It is a way toaggregate and integrate data rom across platorms onto asingle map that users can lter by location and topic.

Mumbai Votes

Mumbai Votes is an attempt to measure the perormanceo Indian politicians against their promises. The projectswebsite provides a page or each political party thatincludes its sel-published maniestos and tracks thenumber o elected representatives, stated party maniestos,and any alliances with other parties. The site also includesa prole or each elected ocial that contains a politicalbiography, voting records, related videos and articles anda system o red, orange and green ags to indicate poor,

mediocre and satisactory perormance.

Praja

Praja, an Indian organisation that describes itsel as a socialnetworking site or people interested in local urban civic issues,collects citizen input on what civic issues matter the mostto them, encourages participants to help develop solutionsto these issues and brings these issues to the attention ogovernment authorities. Prajas website tracks discussions,proposals, specic tasks and events related to specic issues one recent example was a campaign or a commuter railwayservice in Bangalore. Specic problems and their proposedsolutions are then reported to the relevant government

authorities, and ofine communication with these authoritiesis posted online so that citizens can see what progress is beingmade. The organisation is also spearheading an open dataproject in Karnataka State. The project is still in the pilot phase,but the goal is to dene and collect government datasets,make them available in open ormats and encourage citizendevelopment o applications using this data.

Vote BD

Vote BD is a web-based platorm rom SHUJAN(Shushashoner Janya Nagorik, or Citizens or GoodGovernance) that tracks, compiles and disseminatesinormation about politicians and electoral candidates in

Bangladesh. The website was the rst in Bangladesh tomake voter registration records accessible to citizens sothat they could check the presence/absence o their namesand any errors in the listing. This enabled citizens to takenecessary steps to ensure that their names and correctdetails were entered in the list, thereby making themeligible to cast their vote in the various elections.



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Southeast Asia

ALTSEAN Burma

ALTSEAN Burma is a network o human rights and socialjustice organisations, journalists, academics and activists.

The organisations 2010 Election Watch initiative presents alist o seven key indicators or ree and air elections. Eachindicator has several sub-sections (or example, the electioncampaigns indicator has the sub-section misuse o stateunds and resources). Each sub-section has a related list odevelopments that ALTSEAN has collected rom existingmedia reports. ALTSEAN makes a body o inormation thatis otherwise scattered across multiple sources available on asingle website.

Blogwatch

According to a 2009 study by Yahoo and Nielsen, 42% o thePhilippines estimated 20 million internet users read blogs as

a primary source o news a higher percentage than bothprint newspapers and television.12 Aware o their increasinginuence, a group o bloggers initiated Blogwatch to coverunder-reported stories that traditional media do not cover.The Blogwatch team believed that mass media, whichhave oten been criticised during past elections or theirsupercial coverage, have a great responsibility to produceaccurate reports on the political and technical aspect o theMay 2010 elections in order to keep both the process andpolitical parties held accountable. The better the calibre omedia coverage, the more credible the election results willbe, said Blogwatch project editor Noemi Lardizabal-Dado.Though it proved challenging and time-consuming to make

appointments with political candidates in order to interviewand host discussions, Blogwatch persevered to bringnearly all candidates (seven out o nine candidates wereinterviewed) to a platorm o civic discussion. This did nottake place in traditional media.

Penang Watch

Acknowledging the ineciency o the traditional methodso lodging complaints through letters, telephone calls orpersonal contact where the complaint might not reachthe right person, residents o Penang, Malaysia startedPenang Watch to make sure that local complaints areeectively dealt with. Penang Watch encourages residentsto submit their complaints through its online channel. Thesubmitted complaints are rst orwarded to the appropriateauthorities; i no response is given, Penang Watch sends areminder. In cases where the complaint is unresolved dueto lack o accountability, a name and shame approach isemployed to push or complaint settlement.

Pera Natin to!

Pera Natin to! (Its Our Money!) is an initiative o thePhilippine Public Transparency Reporting Project. Theproject encourages Filipino citizens to use text, photos andvideos to report occasions when they are asked or bribes.The goal is to put under the public spotlight importantissues such as control and management o the nations

public wealth and keep them there. The project engagesin investigative reporting based on these crowd-sourcedsubmissions.

Sithi

Sithi, which means rights in Khmer, is the rst Cambodianhuman rights portal that aims to create a single map-based database o reports o human rights violations withcontributions rom human rights activists, organisations

and ordinary citizens rom across the country. Registeredusers can submit reports under a variety o sub-categoriesincluding judicial airness, land tenure and reedom oexpression. The project was initiated by the CambodianCentre or Human Rights (CCHR) with the aim o raisingawareness about human rights abuses through collaborativeadvocacy. The site also aims to incorporate relevant laws,including the constitution, land law and human rightsconventions, and to build a directory o NGOs, donoragencies and media.

VoteReportPH

VoteReportPH, a project o the Filipino Computer

Proessionals Union, came about to inorm and educateFilipino voters, mobilise them to advocate or meaningulreorms to ensure more transparency and report any votingirregularities on election day. VoteReportPH uses Ushahidito enable voters to report electoral raud and irregularitiesvia text message, e-mail, Twitter and an online orm. The sitehas received nearly 700 reports.

Former Soviet Union

Democrator.ru

Democrator.ru seeks to empower citizens ability to enactchange by helping to discuss, vote or and send petitions

and inquiries to government bodies. Democrator.ru works byallowing citizens to post an initiative (a petition, plea or anocial inquiry). Others comment on it, propose amendmentsand nally vote. The nal petition is reviewed by a teamo lawyers, then sent to the appropriate governmentauthority. Democrator.ru publishes the entire contents o itscorrespondence with government authorities. Governmentresponses are monitored, and the project publicly identiesthe most and least responsive authorities. The range o issuesvaries widely two examples are a petition to build a bridgeover a railroad and a petition to stop construction o a roadthrough a orest near Moscow.

Golos

On the eve o Russias 2004 presidential elections, electionobservation organisation Golos (Voice) created a hotlineto provide inormation about the elections and to collectreports o electoral raud. The hotline allowed citizens tocall in or inormation and to report anything suspicious.Ater its initial success during the 2004 elections, Golosdecided to extend the project by uploading inormationsubmitted via the calls to a website, the URL o whichmatched the hotline number (http://www.88003333350.ru/). In 2009 and 2010, the hotline collected reports oneight dierent local, regional and national elections;nearly 2,000 reports have been submitted so ar. Golosalso operates a Fact Bank that documents recorded,

proven cases o electoral raud. The bank includes courtdocuments and audio and video recordings.

12 Yahoo-Nielsen Net Index 2009 Philippines,http://tonyocruz.com/?p=2073.

http://tonyocruz.com/?p=2073http://tonyocruz.com/?p=2073


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Save.kg

Save.kg is a website that used Ushahidi to monitor electoralproblems during the Kyrgyz Republics constitutionalreerendum in June 2010, which took place ollowingmassive ethnic conict (the Osh riots) in the southern part

o the country that ended up with the overthrow o thegovernment. The website worked with electoral observerslocated at polling stations throughout the country, whomade reports and reviewed those submitted by ordinarycitizens, which would be marked as veried i approved bythe observers. Save.kg recei

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