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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...

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"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.

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.

From m-euphoria to m-governance, thinking about the potential of mobile technology

Submitted by Alfredo on Fri, 2009-03-27 10:55

The hype about mobile technology for development work is going on the rise.  It's not for granted.  More than four billion worldwide mobile subscriptions -with the fastest growth trend in developing countries-, sounds like a great opportunity to reach and interact with broader groups of people, including the poor.  Actually, mobile penetration in Africa has expanded from about 2 to 28 subscribers (per 100 inhabitants) since 2000 (see graph at the bottom). 

This looks like a great scenario, but putting aside the m-euphoria let's explore the role for mobile technology in the field of governance.