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This is the World Bank's blog on governance and anti-corruption. It aims at providing a space for debate and knowledge sharing on this critical field of development. | Learn more...

Tanya's blog

"140 chars is a novel when you're being shot at"

Submitted by Tanya on Wed, 2009-07-01 09:20

-courtesy: @chadelund Quote of the day- #iranelection

In a previous blog entry, I wrote about how Web 2.0 is improving governance, with or without the help of the government in question, and irrespective of whether the country is developed or not.

Throwing traditional wisdom to the winds, the Web 2.0 story is continuing to unfold in a way that was not predicted by researchers and experts of the development community and outside.   When I last wrote my blog entry on this issue, it was specifically to explore how Bangladeshi citizens, independently of the government, NGOs, or media were sharing their experience of the BDR mutiny and its results.  This shone a light into the situation in Bangladesh to many who would have been otherwise left in the dark about the BDR revolt.

Then Iran happened.  The situation in Iran has many interesting parallels with Bangladesh and the BDR revolt – both related to the citizen-fuelled proliferation of news, occurring independently of the Government, and in Iran, even inspite of the opposition of the Government.

Twittering your way to improved governance

Submitted by Tanya on Fri, 2009-06-05 16:47

San Francisco is setting the US standard for using technology to improve accountability.  The Mayor recently announced the launch of a 311 Call Center through Twitter. Check out the site here.  San Francisco is the first US city to roll out a major service such as this on Twitter.

Talking about a revolution: governance, web 2.0 and Digital Bangladesh

Submitted by Tanya on Fri, 2009-05-08 11:54

Around March 4, someone posted on YouTube a thirty to forty minute clip from a meeting between Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and army officials. It showed the confrontation between angry army officials and the PM on her decision to negotiate with the mutineers rather than take military action.

Within hours, the clip had spread to the four corners of the world. Facebook users put the YouTube link in their status, bloggers wrote about the video, related articles were dug up, and TV stations around the world discussed the meeting and its implications on the newly elected PM and the army. (All of these applications are considered a part of Web 2.0, where Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second generation of web development and design that facilitates communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web).

E-Government: moving beyond services

Submitted by Tanya on Wed, 2009-04-22 17:56

A recent exchange between the members of the W3C group on e-government and the content of the last GSA’s newsletter on Transparency and Open Government, coordinated by Lisa Nelson, got me thinking about how narrowly we often conceive the scope of e-government, and in the process ignore important aspects of governance. 

To most people, e-government is all about better and improved services flowing from the government to the citizen (G2C).  Improvements in service provision usually imply more efficiency in the delivery and services of better quality.  However, the conversion of manual processes to automated processes -which is how most G2C implementation is done- discourages us from using new technologies able to change the paradigm of the relationship between citizens and their government.

Emerging e-government themes in the Obama administration

Submitted by Tanya on Mon, 2008-11-17 18:07

"Let us be the generation that reshapes our economy to compete in the digital age. Let's set high standards for our schools and give them the resources they need to succeed. Let's recruit a new army of teachers, and give them better pay and more support in exchange for more accountability.

Putting Governance before the “E” in E-Government

Submitted by Tanya on Fri, 2008-11-07 14:17

Taking e-government beyond the same tired e-government applications require innovations such as social networking, web 2.0/3.0 and mobile technology, all of which are democratizing the web in different ways.  The basics of e-government are in the process of moving from a top-down model (e-government strategy, vision, principles, down to agencies, businesses and citizens) to a bottom-up paradigm (citizen-level application managed and developed at the lowest level) with the citizen being the engine of the new e-government. 

When did e-government become stagnant?  Well, not so long ago it wasn’t stagnant.  The anticipation and optimism behind e-government when it first entered the international consciousness was immense, a prodigious vision of sorts.  Led in the US by the Clinton-Gore administration and pursued by other administrations in developed and developing countries alike, e-government became a mantra, a fix-all for the various problems in the public sector.  As e-government implementation matured, the potential for significant failure became clearer. Yet, when successful, e-government projects could make a real difference.  For instance, e-government -a significant part of Singapore’s “Vision of an Intelligent Island” with respect to public services-, helped to improve public sector performance and governance in a manner that positively impacted the daily lives of its citizens.

Governance in the public sector – a new paradigm?

Submitted by Tanya on Mon, 2008-10-27 13:40

The financial crisis has been spreading slowly but steadily from the US to Europe, and now to Asia.  It is neither clear when the markets will finally recover nor when the world can begin to get back to business as usual.  Last week in sunny Barbados, a tinge of pessimism pervaded many of the discussions taking place at CAPAM 2008 – the annual Commonwealth Association of Public Administration and Management conference, attended by career civil servants, public management professionals, and a smattering of politicians, private sector and civil society organizations.   The pessimism was about the potential effects of the crisis on the Commonwealth countries, but more broadly to the impact of the crisis on the role of the state and civil servants, and the implications on governance. 

With the plausible nationalization of private entities and a greater post-crisis emphasis on oversight and regulation, there is a temptation to declare victory over the “down-sizing government” faction. Many at the conference did not resist the temptation to do so.  Last week, even ex-Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan admitted that he had been mistaken about the market’s ability to regulate itself.

With a greater role of the state, both the private sector and the public sector will need to assume different roles in the new and emerging governance structure.  Some predictions about what is to come: