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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...

Voice and Human Rights

Mobile Innovations for Social and Economic Transformation: From Pilots to Scaled-up Implementation

Submitted by Alfredo on Mon, 2009-09-14 08:29

On Wednesday, September 16, the World Bank's e-Development Thematic Group will host the workshop "Mobile Innovations for Social and Economic Transformation. From Pilots to Scale-up Implementation."  The workshop features six sessions that will touch on the transformative role that mobile technology can play in five thematic sessions, including governance.  We have blogged before about examples and the potential of mobile phones for advancing the governance agenda in the development community, so the workshop will be an interesting opportunity to continue this dialogue.

You can follow the event via live webcast.  You can register for the webcast here.  Below you can find more details about the event. 

 

Empowering citizens to report crime via SMS... what else can they do with mobiles?

Submitted by Alfredo on Fri, 2009-08-07 16:27

In a previous entry, I blogged about how mobile technology has been used to address some governance issues.  Crime denunciation was among the activities mentioned in which mobiles have empowered people by giving them a tool to report crime and violence outbreaks as they happen. 

Because a video is worth more than a thousand words, I'll share with you the case of CiviRep, an application that will allow citizens of Caracas to report crime via SMS.  Very similar to Ushahidi's platform, CiviRep aims at capturing on-the-go feedback from citizens to then map it with the help of Google Maps (see here Ushahidi's original example in Kenya).

 

CiviRep Team Video Spring 2009 from nextlab on Vimeo.

 

Arab Human Development Report 2009: Will improvement in Voice and Rights come from within?

Submitted by Kaufmann on Mon, 2009-08-03 20:57

A few weeks ago Obama went to Ghana and delivered a major speech to Africa.  He spoke candidly about the dire governance challenges faced by many countries in the continent.  I also noted that Obama was not explicit about the implications of his message for rethinking donor aid strategies to the continent. Hopefully such revamp in donor aid will be part of the follow through of his speech, if there is follow through.

A month before his momentous trip to Accra to address the Ghanian Parliament, Obama had gone to Cairo to deliver a major address to the Arab world.  It is a speech, which is also worth studying in depth.  But it was more muted and unfocused, refraining from being too direct on the governance and freedom deficits in the Arab world. For one, Obama is not seen as a prodigal son there, in contrast with how he is regarded by Africa...

"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.

Governance Matters 2009: Learning From Over a Decade of the Worldwide Governance Indicators

Submitted by Kaufmann on Mon, 2009-06-29 11:15

Today we are releasing the report Governance Matters VIII, which includes the new update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI).   Now collaborating from the Brookings Institution, I continue to take part in this research project with my former World Bank colleagues Aart Kraay and Massimo Mastruzzi.

Promoting rural youth engagement through radio and cell phones in Burundi

Submitted by Susana on Tue, 2009-05-26 11:57

For several weeks, local radio waves transmitted an unusual program in Burundi. This time, by combining radio and cell phones, the marginalized youth from rural Burundi received a chance to express their views on a series of issues that affect their daily lives. A rap song, composed with key findings of the study “Voices of the Youth” and the "Governance Survey," served as background of this pioneer and different approach, transmitted by Radio Publique Africaine.

Cell phones and radio were a way of outreaching places where information hardly makes its way, as well as to engage leaders in rural communities in debates about information obtained through studies that are hardly disseminated among the locals.

When blogging becomes an issue: worst places to be a blogger

Submitted by Alfredo on Tue, 2009-05-19 18:29

Blogs have changed the way people put into practice concepts such as voice and freedom of expression.  In a matter of minutes, anyone who has access to a computer with internet connection can create a blog and start posting ideas, experiences, opinions, pictures and videos that will be become available to more than 1.5 billion internet users in the world.

Also, blogs' features enable two-way communication and interaction between users, very different to the "static" dynamic of traditional websites. Most important, people can do all of these things at no cost.

However, the expansion of the blogosphere has also triggered negative reactions, especially in environments where censorship and control of information still prevail. Touching on several of these reactions, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) launched a special report in which it highlights the "10 worst countries to be a blogger."

 

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-democracies: will Digg-like social networks pave the way for participatory decision-making?

Submitted by Alfredo on Fri, 2009-04-24 18:16

The hype about social networking sites doesn't seem to come to an end.  If it's not Facebook, it's MySpace, and now it's Twitter.  Even though some people are still reluctant to believe in the functionality of some of these web 2.0 applications, it's a matter of years before they become a tool that we have to use on a daily basis, as it happened with email and the internet not so many years ago. 

In this entry, I will follow-up on one of Tanya's three points mentioned in her last entry -namely, participation-, and will make the case for Digg, one of some applications for social bookmarking that allow its users to share, comment and vote on their preferred bookmarks.  From my perspective, these participatory features can give us a glimpse of how decision making processes in the public sector might look like in the not-very-remote future.