Policy Forum on Global Development: What can open government contribute to community and economic development?

Several weeks ago in Calgary, Alberta, tangentially with the Engineers Without Borders annual national conference, I co-hosted an event called the “Policy Forum on Global Development.” I co-hosted with two other teams at EWB: the aid effectiveness advocacy team based in Toronto, Ontario, and the Governance and Rural Infrastructure team based in Tamale and Accra, Ghana.

The topic of the event was “How can an open government contribute to community and economic development?” We aimed to have a focus on both the larger questions of the ‘why’ behind open government and the ‘what and how’ of open government. Our other aim was to bring together a diverse set of people from around the world to discuss the question. We were very lucky to have participants and speakers from Canada, the USA, Finland, Ghana, and Malawi.

Here is a picture of the forum: Joonas Pekkanen, one of the panelists who spoke on a panel with Ms. Lois Brown and Mr. Samuel Yebeoh, is on the screen at the top left of the photo. Joonas spoke about his Open Ministry work in Finland. You can find more about his exciting work on Open Gov in Finland here.  Joonas tweets here @joonaspekkanen

Here is the definition of ‘open government’ that we shared with participants prior to the event:

‘An open government is one that works with its citizens, civil society, and other actors to collaboratively solve important problems faced by their society. [1]

Open government is built on three intertwined foundational principles:

Information and data transparency: the public is easily able to locate, understand, and use information about governmental activities (eg. Decision making, policy formulation, service provision, results).

Public engagement: members of the public, equally and without discrimination, are able to influence, develop, contribute to, monitor, and evaluate governmental activities.

Accountability: There are robust policies, mechanisms, and practices that enable the public to hold the government accountable for its actions and commitments.

Open government is not the same as open data. The provision of open data alone does not make a government open. For instance, governments can provide open data on politically neutral topics and remain opaque on others, or lack mechanisms for citizens to hold them accountable.

Similarly, governments can pursue the foundational principles of open government without utilizing the new technologies that they are often associated with, such as the internet. However, technologies are important tools that can support governments in their pursuit of openness.’

Instead of sharing my own commentary in this post (I’ll do that shortly in another) I would like to point you towards several other places on the web where thoughts have been shared about the event:

Linda Raftree, one of the panellists  shares the ideas she presented on this post: http://lindaraftree.com/2013/01/18/open-data-and-critical-consciousness/

Ms. Raftree also did us all a favor and shared what she thought were the most interesting points from the day-long discussion here: http://lindaraftree.com/2013/01/16/16-thoughts-on-open-government-and-community-and-economic-development/

Ms. Lois Brown, the Parliamentary Secretary to Canada’s Minister for International Cooperation also spoke on a panel during the event. Because the event was held under Chatham House rules to encourage honest discussion, I cannot share what Ms. Brown spoke about. What I will do however, is point you towards the speech she gave to the entire conference delegation. It can be found on her website here: http://www.loisbrown.ca/media_/riding-news/keynote-speech-at-engineers-without-borders-national-conference

I wasn’t in the room for Ms. Brown’s speech, but what I did hear, is that she received at least three rounds of applause from the audience for the Canadian government’s commitment to aid transparency through the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). The audience was full of 600 young Canadian activists, who just a year and a half before, were holding events and meeting with Members of Parliament across Canada to advocate that Canada sign onto IATI.

[January 30th addition: Owen Scott (of Development Gateway), has written a post about the event as well. Check it out here: http://www.developmentgateway.org/news/how-can-we-make-open-data-meaningful-citizens ]

If you are interested in hearing more about this policy forum or have comments on any of the outcomes or content, please do leave a comment or get in touch.

Thanks to both Samantha Burton and Merlin Chatwin for the fun we had in organizing this event together.

Merlin tweets here: https://twitter.com/MerlinChatwin

Sam tweets here: https://twitter.com/ASamBurton I tweet at @ianfroude

[1] Our definition of open government is based on a number of widely-cited sources, including: Open Government Partnership, Open Government Declaration, September 2011; Harlan Yu and David G. Robinson, The New Ambiguity of “Open Government”, UCLA Law Review Discurse 59:178 (2012); Beth Noveck, What’s in a Name? Open Gov and Good Gov, Huffington Post, 4 June 2011; Nathaniel Heller, A Working Definition of “Open Government’, 22 May 2012.