OPEN THINKING: OPENING UP A NEXT WAVE – INCLUDING ‘OPEN POLITICS’ (extended version)
Longer 'discussion draft' of our think piece on the 'Open' movement. Reader reviews (thank you all!) made the short versions much better. Sharing here for more thoughts, warts, and puns.
This is the longer essay from which the shorter (and better!) Think Piece was pulled (see Opening up about Open Government – Many Happy Returns) on the TAI Collaborative’s Blog, with an even shorter take for Duncan Green’s FP2P Oxfam Blog - ‘A (tough) love letter to the Open movement’.
INTRODUCTION
The ‘Open Movement’ has been an exhilarating two-decade ride, so far. It’s dynamism is demonstrated by the growing Open family (from Budgets, to Extractive Industries, to Government, Contracting, Ownership, Justice, and Environment) and unusual collaborators (including politicians, bureaucrats, technologists, legal beagles, economists, philosophers, and activists of many stripes.)
‘Open’ has proved enduring, inclusive, and adaptive to new challenges. It has managed to be at the forefront of related but very different goals – persuading international organizations to establish standards, and governments to use them; generating unprecedented volumes of public data; harnessing technology and building skills to interrogate this data; and mobilising people and governments in common action.
If you started working in accountability, governance, or anticorruption after 2010, you might imagine that progressive coalitions, big data, and a rolling calendar of set piece events are the natural order. What came before was not quite the Dark Ages, but was fragmented and ‘closed’. There is much to be positive about.
But it is also worth taking stock. ‘Open’ has made many gains, yet momentum gathered just as enabling conditions wobbled then plummeted: closing, or at least changing, civic space (conservative mobilisation is still ‘civic’). Theoretical challenges - what happens if governments sign up then move as slowly as possible (or worse?) - are now real.
We share these thoughts as two firm friends of the Open Movement (one deeply involved from the start, the other a fellow traveller). We focus primarily on the different components of fiscal openness to reflect on four questions:
1. Where did Open come from?
2. Where have we got to?
3. What have we learnt?
4. What next? (shaping a next wave)
We hope that such ‘open thinking’ will engage and stimulate. And not just irritate.
1. WHERE DID OPEN COME FROM?
We did not invent open government. Its roots in Western Europe at least can be traced back to impressive accountability practices in ancient Greece and Rome, with progress gaining and losing momentum repeatedly over centuries1. The recent surge in interest since the late 1990s was driven by factors including the Asian Financial Crisis, the Third Wave of Democratization, aligned leadership in the Global North and South, and the human rights, anticorruption, and debt movements.
This 21st century surge stands out because of the breadth of devotees - international institutions, professional associations, donors of all stripes, to diverse country governments, think tanks, and NGOs from across the political spectrum. It is this wide range of adherents that makes it remarkable and potentially really powerful. We did not invent Open, but we all shaped its depth and sustainability.
Open’s vision was that it is both an end in itself (the deepening of democracy), and an instrumental means to better ends - positive outcomes in anti-corruption, growth, equity, environmental sustainability, countering illicit financial flows and transnational crime. It promised to unite big, broad, cross-stakeholder coalitions that could help secure ‘Open Government’. This would in turn broaden democratic engagement, bolster investment, improve public resource management, and herald a new era of equity.
In simple terms, the Open strategy (of founders, key participants, funders) was to combine broad transparency of information with multi stakeholder engagement by:
i) investing in global norm development, convening, and in country application,
ii) building skills and capacity in expert civil society organizations to use the information, and funding their action,
iii) continuing to build the executive branch of governments.
The strategy was more about ‘organisation’ (structure, function) and ‘institutions’ (rules of the game) than ‘politics’. Transparency and Openness are sometimes conflated but are different. Transparency alone is passive. ‘Open’ is active, engaging, participatory. It needs citizens willing to be involved, and governments willing to let them.
Over the same period, governments still received the vast bulk of foreign assistance (while continuing to marshal revenues and borrow additional funds). Therefore, the Open movement could be seen as a ‘side bet’ that tried to lubricate the mainstream investments, while also inducing governments to ‘play nice and do better’. The earliest funders were private [US] donors, joined later by bilateral government funders (FCDO and SIDA), but foundations still largely carry the movement. A key question is whether Openness can move from side-show to center stage, and so garner long-term support.
2. WHERE HAVE WE GOT TO? (an impressionistic stock take)
The movement is wide, deep, diverse, and complex. Here are ten stylized observations and gut feelings. Feel free to disagree, refine, or propose your own.
1. Norming, some storming: There has been great progress in development and agreement of global norms, and some harmonization of practice around these. This is partly due to the long-term positive effects of professional norms, international associations, and technical capacity building (three cheers for accountancy, audit, tax, and public procurement. Civil society learnt to love you!).
Going forward, we need to repeat the magic in frontier themes with shallower roots – beneficial ownership, debt, contingent liabilities, formal participation, subnational government and service delivery….
2. Growth, and beyond?: Evidence indicates some impressive, growth-supporting benefits of fiscal openness2, particularly fiscal transparency: easier and cheaper access to international credit, better macro-economic and debt management, lower deficits, improved execution, and so on. This is heartening, though correlation and causation are worth disentangling.
There is less evidence of contribution to the broader Open dream - redistribution, inclusion, democracy, though it is important to note that these were priorities of some, but by no means all, involved3.
3. Transparently satisfactory: Country transparency is improving but progress is incremental, lagging agreement on expanding norms. Progress in budget transparency, as measured by the Open Budget Index, has been most notable among those countries that were the least transparent to begin with. Most countries that improved, however, have failed to achieve the benchmark score for providing “sufficient” information (a score of 61 or higher out of 100) to support robust civil society engagement, instead often getting stuck at providing “limited” information (scoring between 41 and 60.)
Looking forward, there are still significant data gaps, whether by type (beneficial ownership, debt, contingent liabilities, service delivery), quality (see below), or region (Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle-East, North Africa are data thin).
Sustaining transparency improvements is another concern: Three big impediments are regression (governments backtrack on new practices), volatility (governments stop and start publication of data), and stagnation (the failure to make progress)4. Identifying ways to institutionalize - ‘bake in’ - practices is a key challenge if we want to lock in the legacy of this phase of Open.
4. Quantity over quality: Across the movement, quantity (number of members, and amounts of data) runs ahead of quality (mission driven members, and clean, accessible, usable data and transformative improvements). For the spectator, Open risks celebrating expansion and lukewarm progress, rather than strong performance. Reflecting a common challenge we all face, Open Government Partnership (OGP) finds that country commitments are more ‘useful’ than transformational5.
5. Open Up, or Open Wash?: Civic participation is stubbornly stuck at low levels. The average score for formal participation in fiscal processes among 125 countries covered in the OBS 2021 is just 14 out of 100. No country provided adequate participation opportunities, scoring over 61 out of 1006. Only four countries scored over 61 out of 100 or satisfactory levels. Moderately increasing access to public information without increasing opportunities for formal participation drives public frustration and benefits elites that already have informal access. Opening information while closing civic spaces creates a real risk that bad regimes are ‘Open Washed’ – lent legitimacy in return for thin commitment.
The challenge of laggard members was apparent from the creation of EITI. Like any club, at some point there needs to be a critical assessment of membership. In hindsight the general approach was to throw open the doors wide at the beginning, hoping for a “race to the top.” This generated early profile, traction, quick wins, and rapid growth. However, low entry barriers for governments and executives gave them the upper hand. Despite the rhetoric of broad civil society engagement, power was not really at stake.
It also meant a down-the-line challenge of finding ways to motivate, discipline, or eject laggards and prevent “Open washing.” Without this, there risks being a “race to the mediocre” with countries coasting (or moonwalking7) through the initiative, looking to reap the benefits of being seen to join with no intention to really open up much. Our field is increasingly alive to ‘unintended consequences’ and Open washing is precisely this.
A second challenge is being able to force countries to leave when they undermine the core values of the initiative. A few, like Russia and India in OGP, left of their own accord when the risk of public criticism became too real. But apart from Azerbaijan, it has been hard to really hold governments accountable when they undermine the initiative. And if Azerbaijan goes on to host the next COP, why care about OGP?
6. Civic skilling up: The analytical and advocacy capacity of individual CSOs and networks is improving significantly in a broadening range of themes and countries. However, the active use of data seems more limited than envisaged, and this needs more interrogation. The case studies on various websites are terrific, but are these true ‘case studies’ - emblematic examples drawn from a wide array, or are they ‘crown jewels’ - intensively cultivated and relatively rare positives? Why is this? What can be done to catalyse the expected action?
There is also unequal capacity and voice within civil society, and too little cross-pollination. Civil society actors still work in silos – debt, tax, expenditure, procurement, illicit flows, and beneficial ownership advocacy all take place somewhat independently of each other. Strategies - engagement and partnership versus holding to account - can undermine each other. And, with some important exceptions, open government work has still to attract broader civil society - social movements, faith organizations, trades unions - broad-based organizations that can help shift incentives and bargaining power.
7. Saluting SAIs: One of Open’s undoubted successes has been to provide spaces for government reform champions, such as an emerging cadre of “activist auditors” - Supreme Audit Institutions working successfully to find new avenues for accountability, including during COVID. However, these efforts have also attracted some backlash – such as in Sierra Leone, where the Auditor-General was suspended. SAIs remain vulnerable overall, with fragile independence and uncertain budgets.
8. Lacklustre legislature: In contrast, an Open disappointment has been the performance of legislatures, which seem largely stuck. This is ironic as they were one of the earliest partners in donor funded ‘budget for development’ projects. The theory of their involvement was good, but politics gets in the way, as they struggle to deploy “the power of the purse” to stand up to increasingly powerful executives.
9. The still very private sector: Parts of the private sector are active participants in ‘extractives’ initiatives, particularly EITI. Ratings agencies and private banks have started to – formally and informally - integrate governance reforms into lending criteria, as have multilateral banks. However, ESG’s complex, fractious history demonstrates that there is no single, simple path for the private sector to be on ‘the right side of history’. Even the tech sector is largely absent in driving open government. In pursuit of deeper reforms, it is important to understand experience to date, and what we can realistically expect from the private sector from here on? Is there real mutual interest and opportunity in going Open, or not? Do we also risk giving them an Open Wash?
10. Openly effective?: A complex, diverse movement is inherently hard to evaluate, measure, or demonstrate effectiveness. Open can therefore draw skepticism from the ‘results’ crowd, for bad reasons (it is not amenable to randomised experiments and cries of ‘it works!’ - see Tom Aston’s defence of the complex in evaluation) but also good - it is right to set out what success is expected to look like when you are spending other people’s money. Between victory and failure are a number of strategic - and beneficial - paths. What are the tools - between the extremes of RCTs and crown jewel case studies - that can best measure Open’s effectiveness and guide us from here?
3. WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT?
Open’s values driven mission and expectations of real world change are still an intoxicating vision, and implementation can be exhilarating too.
One powerful lesson is that excellent work can emerge anywhere, and capacity for reform can be built relatively quickly. Best practices are no longer the preserve of high-income countries. The countries now driving rapid Open fiscal progress are mostly in the global south, including unusual suspects such as Benin, Dominican Republic, Georgia, the Gambia, and Nigeria8 .
Open accelerated as governance, accountability and anti-corruption attracted more empirical research, and evidence-based policy and practice. This exposed some of the grand assumptions and leaps of faith in values driven missions. For example, evidence tells us that there is no ‘golden thread’ - good things do not always go together (eg reduce corruption and increase growth). If they do, this may be a long run association, and causal relationships are complex. In short – a values driven mission is worthy, and components of Open may have intrinsic value in themselves, but it is risky or naive to expect these to also be a roadmap or instrumental means of delivering real world outcomes.
Transparency has inherent merits (see deepening democracy above), but alone it is not enough to shift the accountability equilibrium, catalyse complex reform, and deliver better outcomes. We have known this for a long time, but still risk over-investing - time, money, hope - in transparency. In a tough field and in tough times, pursuit of transparency alone, or as a goal in itself can be the safe vanilla option.
We sometimes fetishize ‘openness’ but also conflate it with transparency. If development outcomes are delivered without openness or transparency, do we mind? Several major states are doing just this (not just China). Transparency does not have to be achieved first in a change sequence. It can be, but is not always, a precondition for positive change. The limitations of data alone are well known – in common models (Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom – the DIKW pyramid) as well as art9. Big data can be a bit too much like ‘field of dreams10 ’. Data and tools need people to use them, ideally on their own priority problems.
Transparency without participation may reinforce inequality, thin out democracy, and benefit those with power that seek to ‘Open wash’ not ‘open up’. Citizen engagement seems necessary to reap and track the distributional benefits of transparency, such as improved budget execution and service delivery.
We have squeezed out the “easier gains” of Open11, yet we are still in a “low accountability equilibrium” – not as low as before, given the gains described, but lower than hoped. Deeper changes require additional or new strategies. And until we go deeper, we will not reap the full benefits of the investment in openness already made.
Key lesson: In hindsight, the Open movement was idealistic but not very political.
This is the gap that we need to fill, not just through language (eg just saying that we will be ‘politically savvy’ from hereon) but by using political analysis to direct how we use data to target dialogue and reform.
Over twenty years the environment has also changed. In Open’s glory days (2008-14), there were a range of progressive country leaders – politicians such as Obama, and senior bureaucrats - committed to openness. As democracies spread on each continent, civic space broadened and movements emerged targeting government accountability. There was a passion and belief in Multi Stakeholder Partnerships, and these spoke to an enlightened moment. But we are not in Kansas anymore…autocracy is on the rise in those same previously enlightened countries, and many others, in both south and north.
Shifts in approaches to governance are not unusual. Interest in transparent and accountable government has waxed and waned in Western Europe for example over hundreds of years, in each period garnering meaningful improvements, but without really redistributing power12. Maybe that is the promise and ultimate limitation of a strategy where transparency or openness becomes the goal, not the means to the goal.
Re-entering equity as the goal of openness seems urgent as inequality deepens and available public resources dwindle. With expenditure needs and debt repayments skyrocketing, and tax receipts decreasing – most countries face severe budgetary trade-offs. The Open movement also faces tougher financial times, with some original funders reconsidering their investments, and few new funders joining the party.
The key strategic question is political: What configuration of institutions, incentives, and actors can wield the bargaining power to ensure that governments respond to these trade-offs by making progressive policy choices that benefit underserved and excluded communities and bring the real world changes foreseen? The challenge to the Open movement is whether or not it can assemble coalitions powerful enough to influence these choices. And allied to this is pursuit of the elusive win:win or development gamble13: can governments make this a viable political strategy that increases the likelihood of electoral success?
Finally: writing this piece threw up a fundamental question - who, or what, is Open? Different parts and players involved in the broad movement have different expectations, and some of the transformational aims assumed by people like us (for inclusion, equity, democracy), may not be shared by others.
4. WHAT NEXT? Shaping the next wave with ‘Open Politics’.
‘The P wave’ – more focused on power, political constraints, system-oriented, problem focused (and less ‘all inclusive’).
What lessons for framing, goals, coalitions, and strategies do we draw from 20 years of Open, which are also appropriate to the new, tougher environment? What can catalyse deeper changes in growth, development, democracy, and in fiscal accountability systems, and so reap more of the results that ‘Open’ promised, and could still support, but has not yet delivered?
These suggestions are to complement the Open movement, not displace or replace it.
We propose three emphases for the next decade:
I. Open Power and Open Politics (‘the P wave’)
II. Systems orientation (working the ecosystem)
III. Tackling real, specific problems
We then suggest some immediate actions for 2024.
I. Open Power and Open Politics (‘the P wave’)
We imagine a next wave that is ‘more open’, confident and frank about power and politics – both 'Big P’ (Elections, Parties, Parliaments) and ‘small p’ (‘political economy’ or simply political constraints - and opportunities).
The essence is a more actionable understanding of power and feasible redistribution in an environment where power has long been tilted to executives and elites, and others with privileged access. It also means being alive to risks that Open’s welcoming ‘big tent’ may perpetuate inequity, rather than challenge it.
‘Political economy’ offers a set of tools to better understand this power, how it might shift, who to work with, and what levers to push. Experience suggests that ‘Zero sum’ reform rarely works as it induces elites to cling on to the status quo. We need to identify relatively ‘win: win’ strategies where existing elites can also see the benefits of a progressive change as a political – and electoral - strategy (what Dercon calls ‘gambling on development’).
Shrinking resources all round (public budgets, Open’s funding) make the challenge extreme. Building new power to unlock progressive change may necessitate restructuring, even shrinking for the Open family, losing some current members and allies in government, business, even civil society if we refocus and rebalance to include a broader sweep of activists (eg movements, trades unions, faith and feminist networks) more acutely motivated to deliver change, as well as government oversight institutions.
We recognise that ‘political’ framing can deter target governments and funders alike – both because it is inherently sensitive and challenging, but also requires more context specificity than ‘transparency’. Therefore it needs to be better explained, tooled, incentivised, and ‘normalised’. This could mean adding capability to the existing Open organisations, and working with new partners. Each of the Open family may need a specialist ‘critical political’ friend, or a platform approach could support all. For how this might look in practice, see an idea here and here drawing on policy relevant political economy research, as well as tools and communities of practice such as ‘PEA’ (Political Economy Analysis) and TWP (Thinking and Working Politically). We don’t need to reinvent wheels but do need credible engineering or an ecosystem to integrate politics, not just talk politics.
II. Systems orientation (working the (eco) system)
Fiscal decisions and outcomes (including tax, expenditure, and debt policies) are determined by the balance of power in an ecosystem of actors within and outside government. Shifting power through the fiscus therefore requires building partnerships and coalitions that can leverage key parts of the ecosystem. This fits with a key finding from 20 years of fiscal accountability work - the importance of assembling partnerships and coalitions with counter-veiling power to move issues from transparency to impact.
For 20 years we focused on expanding fiscal transparency and building the skills of individual actors in civil society and government. This produced important gains but fell short of significantly improving outcomes for excluded communities. We can see this to have been an essential ‘phase one’.
We now propose a phase two using a “fiscal ecosystem” approach. This should consider a wide range of formal and informal actors and interests that might animate a cause; examine the incentives that each face and the powers that each has; the roles they play, and the relationships they build with others in the system. The emphasis on relationships is fundamental: how components interact, and these can work collectively to generate new strategic approaches (and greater collective bargaining power) to move public resources towards greater equity, and accountability (in results as well as intention.)
There are reasons to be optimistic about a renewed, broader coalition that can knit together elite and grassroots action to advance inclusion and equity building on Open’s advances and tools. In several countries, powerful social movements and community organizations - many led by women and people of color - are forging alliances with expert NGOs and the media, as well as national and local service delivery departments to unblock funding for social services for excluded communities14. Active SAIs are fighting alongside communities for stronger anti-corruption measures; while new allies emerge within government ministries and tax authorities, looking to expand targeted spending and increase public revenues. Multilateral donors, like the IMF and World Bank, are rethinking their approach to civil society, public finance, and equity, while organizations of professionals such as auditors and financial managers are looking to stretch their impact.
This may be an unprecedented moment for coalitions of state and non-state actors at local, national, and international levels to challenge (or co-opt) powerful actors and secure real gains – from social safety nets in Rajasthan to world leading Open tools for public procurement in Ukraine. Neither of these were quick or easy. There are also meaningful incremental steps that could be taken right now to strengthen the “ecosystem” that governs public money. Many of these revolve around strengthening the relationships between accountability institutions.
III. Tackling real, specific problems:
This approach is most practical if focused on understanding and tackling specific problems for which there may be generalisable global lessons (eg ghost workers on government payroll), but which then require a context specific application by and with partners motivated enough to care and skilled enough to take effective action. This is partly a passion and values endeavour – but only partly. Instrumental change can also be built with cool heads and evidence. The target is a specific change or problem tackled, not ‘openness’.
Openness is no longer the goal but a powerful tool in our toolbox.
Such an approach offers big organizing opportunities for broadening the base of the Open or the ‘Open Plus’ coalition. The key is to start with the core problems faced by communities - so access to housing and health care, not access to information. And to work with the local communities and organizations that have coalesced around that problem and understand it best. This gives us an exciting organizing opportunity that is often lacking: local and national movements will more readily connect with the goal, are energized to act, and bring information drawn from lived experience of the problem. Government leaders also smell an opportunity to solve real problems and/or to earn votes. Finance ministries rally around an opportunity to spend better, while auditors take out their green pens. And formal civil society has an important role in weaving together the coalition, doing research, framing asks, and holding governments accountable for agreements.
The Open movement’s case studies offer clues to this, as do research and policy efforts such as the SOAS ACE research programme and the range of initiatives with Ps in the acronyms – PDIA, TWP etc. Interested actors – researchers, think tanks, CSOs, citizens – also need the skills, incentives, and risk appetite to use data and tools to shine a light on systemic problems including political corruption. For example, to complement greater transparency in procurement, SOAS ACE – has demonstrated the impact, and potential Return on Investment (RoI), of relatively small budget political economy research on procurement constraints in very large, growth-critical sectors – such as energy generation and skills training – and developed politically feasible policy options to unlock these. To tackle real world problems, Open needs to be sharper, pricklier, more pointed, focusing on key constraints and calling out regressive power plays and inaction. This means using tailored treatment as well as the ‘general hygiene’ of transparency.
The political economy of the Open movement also needs to be examined, including defining “who” or what” is open. Regardless of intent and principles, ‘Open’ is a political actor, and affects the nature and distribution of power in its associates – whether governments (benefiting from opening up or Open washing), civil society, or private sector (e.g. in the case of EITI). This requires self-criticism but also external critical analysis (this note!). It also means being open to challenging possibilities such as scenarios where some components change, shrink, or close, as well as planning a normative future of ‘like now, but even more so’.
Combining these three emphases - power, systems, and a problem focus, suggests a need for a renewed and changing, as well as broad, coalition. Who should be on board for any problem or in any place? We need to break down silos within the movement and broaden voices; talk to different parts and champions in government (especially in oversight institutions); generate support for problem solving from different groups of elites; identify framing on specific problems that can galvanize bottom up voices more than a call for open information does; and also develop theory and hypotheses to test, rather than ploughing on with a model, mission, and values that we are most comfortable with.
Inconsistencies?: You may read the three emphases above and think ‘hold on! are they arguing for both wider and narrower; more focused and less focused?’. We also see the inherent contradictions, but are arguing for
reconstituting and rethinking coalitions based on specific change,
thinking politically - who can get us there - rather than sentimentally - who has been on our side to date;
avoiding path dependence in relation to the roles of existing and new members.
In the P wave, leadership might not be based on movement seniority. It might mean joining other coalitions and campaigning on specific problems, not ‘Open campaigns’. Or something in the middle - parallel open and problem focused efforts that can work together and retain their original identities. This is the hard organizational shift to absorb in moving from Open goals to Open tools.
And (to repeat) shrinking donor funding for the existing family is a sad reality. Pruning/merging/dying within Open is likely to happen regardless of the ideal strategy. This means that there is all the more reason to make the most of resources already committed as we figure out how to make new alliances and tap funds for aligned goals that motivate for broader coalitions, but come from more ‘mainstream’ sources that do not self-identify as funders of the Open movement.
This imagines ‘Open Plus’ as a toolkit to help unlock the goals of the health, education, climate, and poverty mainstream – and draw on their budgets.
THE MONTHS AHEAD:
Here are some thoughts for early action:
Healthy, critical debate: Rethinking Open is a live conversation and this is an important time for it to happen. Of course, the inhospitable environment demands new approaches. And many Open practitioners, activists, academics and donors are talking about this, as their organizations work through strategic challenges and implications.
This note is intended as a contribution to these discussions, and could serve as the basis for a convening of ‘Open actors’ in 2024. Some questions posed here – such as the role of the private sector, what/who is Open?, or a deeper 20 year review – might merit rapid research.
Strategic hope (not blind faith), and baking in reforms: Open’s progress has been variable, as enthusiasm and push-back wax and wane. It seems that the long-term trend is towards greater openness, even though the pace of change can feel glacial. Despite the accountability setbacks during COVID, for example, most countries on the OBS bounced back to pre-Covid transparency even while the pandemic was ongoing15.
At the same time, there is no automatic upward progression for Open. It is vital to do whatever possible to bake in reforms through legal statute, bureaucratic practice, capacity building, digitalization, and so on. Good work is possible here, learning from the sustainability of Open reforms over the past 20 years. Perhaps a further opportunity for rapid research.
Beware of unintended consequences. We mention above that the Open movement could do more to be aware of and use its collective power. Also, are there other unintended consequences we are missing? Here is one to think about: The Open movement and associated institutional vehicles rely quite a bit on bargains between formal (elite?) civil society and champions in the executive. This is the nature of the ‘political settlement’ or ‘elite bargain’ in many places, but as a practice over time, it might undermine other necessary actors in the system, such as legislatures and SAIs and even broader civil society. At the very least, being more inclusive could expand strategic options and help to sustain reforms. (This is a criticism often leveled at the participatory budgeting movement. Could it be more widely applicable?)
A long, loud thank you! Finally, it is relatively easy to type out critical ideas, but much harder to guide organizations through tough strategic questions and transformation. The future of Open is a live and often fraught discussion occurring now within civic actors, universities, governments, and donors. It is fitting to end with a shout out to leaders and teams that hold the space for discussions and decisions that have real impacts on the trajectory of organizations and lives of those working within them.
We write this note because there may be value in “critical allies” and collective discussion. We would be happy to use this paper as part of this process.
END NOTES
See Timothy C Irwin (2013): Shining a light on mysteries of State: The origins of fiscal transparency in Western Europe. IMF Working paper No. 2013/219.
See here for examples ‘(When) Do Open Budgets Transform Lives?’ (2022) https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/When-Do-Open-Budgets-Transform-Lives-Progress-and-Next-Steps-in-Fiscal-Openness-Research.pdf
Deepening democracy (through transparency and civic engagement) was a goal of Open’s founders. Equity was part of the broader mission for founders and most CSO participants, even if seen as a change to emerge in the longer term from transparency. Some participating governments were ambivalent. While the longer term goals of democracy and equity were shared by many supporters, some member countries had little intention of investing deeply enough to get to these ultimate outcomes. ‘Transparency’ was a common denominator, but for some it was the start of the journey, for others it was the destination.
Open Budget Survey 2019, pp. 37-38, box 3.2
Open Budget Survey 2021 p. 23.
Moonwalk: Appearing to move forward while actually staying still or going backwards.
See Open Budget Survey 2021, pp. 41 and 51.
Some think that the DIKW relationship originates from two lines in T.S. Eliot’s poem "Choruses" (1934):
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
To misquote the baseball film: ‘if you build Open Data, they [he] will come’
David Pozen records the ideological drift of the Open movement in the US, and the diminishing marginal returns to government transparency. The global Open movement could benefit from a reflection on this. https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/Pozen_5xbpkxy6.pdf
Timothy C Irwin: Shining a light on mysteries of State: The origins of fiscal transparency in Western Europe. IMF Working paper No. 2013/219.
See Stefan Dercon’s ‘Gambling on Development’ (2022). https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/gambling-on-development/
See Open Budget Survey 2021, p. 48.