United States: A Congressional Research Service report addresses government transparency. The report “assesses the meaning of transparency and discusses its scholarly and practical definitions. It also provides an analysis of the concept of transparency, with a focus on federal government transparency in the executive branch.”It is described by Steven Aftergood in a Secrecy News blog posting.
The CRS report says:
This report subsequently examines the statutes, initiatives, requirements, and other actions that make information more available to the public or protect it from public release. It also examines transparency and secrecy from the standpoint of how the public accesses government information, and whether the release of government data and information may make operation of the federal government more or, counter-intuitively, less transparent. Finally, this report analyzes whether existing transparency initiatives are effective in reaching their stated goals.
Open Government Research: A new World Bank report says that “involving local communities in decisions that affect their lives is central to making development more effective, and it has the potential to transform the role that poor people play in development by giving them voice and agency,” according to the Bank press release. “But inducing civic engagement in development is not easy,” according to Localizing Development: Does Participation Work? by Ghazala Mansuri and Vijayendra Rao. Monitoring and evaluation needs to be taken far more seriously, the report says, among many of its conclusions and “the use of new, more cost-effective information and communications technology (ICT)-based tools, could help enormously.”
Google Reports: Blogger Nic Halverson summarizes the numbers of the latest Google Transparency Report. “This is the sixth time we’ve released this data, and one trend has become clear: Government surveillance is on the rise,” Dorothy Chou, Senior Policy Analyst, explains on Google’s blog.Between January and June of this year governments from around the world filed 20,939 requests with Google to access data on 34,614 accounts. Most of the government requests were made by the United States, followed by India, Brazil and France.
Funding Available: The British development secretary has announced a new $50 million fund called Making All Voices Count to support the development of web and mobile technologies in developing countries that can empower their citizens. “Making All Voices Count will bring about change, and enable governments to open up and be more transparent and more accountable to their citizens. [It] will provide support, prizes and know-how for people and organisations with the most innovative ideas for how to help citizens and governments use mobile and internet tools.” Making All Voices Count is being run by the DfID in collaboration with USAID, the Omidyar Network and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.
Funding Received: Global Integrity, “an innovation lab that produces high-quality research and creates cutting-edge technology to advance transparency and accountability in governments,” announced that it has received a “renewed financial commitment of up to US$2.0 million from philanthropic investment firm Omidyar Network. Stacy Donohue, Director of Investments for Omidyar Network’s government transparency initiative, will remain on Global Integrity’s Board of Directors.
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