Paul Mitchell's blog

A Canadian band had a line in a song, "all touch, and all touch and no contact" which echoes the way that organizations try to reach people with information about development and governance. Very adept at knowledge production, material such as studies, books, reports, power points, research documents, they are often very good at sharing these among  ‘cocktail party’ colleagues. But what is being done about reaching the people who need to be convinced to take action with this knowledge?
 

If the earthquake in Haiti and the tsunami off Indonesia in 2004 have shown us anything it is that large scale natural catastrophes are not rare. Calamities that claim tens of thousands of lives happen with regularity (about every four years on average). Many others claim a smaller number of lives but are equally devastating to local communities. The claims that these disasters are unique “100 year events”, which cannot be predicated and therefore cannot be planned for, are increasingly hollow.

I was passing through Accra recently and while walking through the lobby of the hotel was stopped by a poster for a regional conference on Freedom of Information and at the same time ran into several colleagues and old friends. It was an interesting exercise to be very aware of an issue and personalities but be on the outside looking. The conference was well attended, drawn by the start power of former US president Jimmy Carter, his center and high level activist and political figures from Africa. The Carter Center which has been at the forefront of this work is able to draw attention to and raise the profile of the issue in West Africa.
 

But what did it all mean to local people? When I asked Ghanaians working or staying at the hotel about the conference, there was very high recognition but mostly it was linked to former President Carter. But the issue drew little recognition or excitement. Ghana did announce that after years of languishing on the books an FOI bill would be introduced into Parliament. But to the people outside of the conference this would have little impact on their daily lives. Their worries were much more about food, shelter, safety, schooling and the actions of the government in power on their lives. 
 

The recent release of Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI)  used to be as eagerly awaited by political leaders as chefs wait for the Michelin Guide’s ratings. Leaders of countries that move up the list or have improved their ratings were quick to announce the findings, taking all the credit for improvements.  Leaders of countries whose ratings have fallen in the index did not seem as motivated to go public accepting responsibility or promising to improve.
 

The majority of the 180 countries included in the 2009 index score below five on a scale from 0 to 10. No country scored 0, perhaps signaling optimism even in the worst circumstances. Given the lack of progress among the most corrupt countries is anyone trying new ways to reduce corruption?

I recently spoke at the World e-Parliament 2009 Conference held in Washington at the US House of Representatives. The conference attracted representatives from all Parliaments and was attended by more than 300 Members of Parliament, Clerks or Secretary -Generals of Parliaments, their deputies and other people working on e-Parliaments. With a global centre in Rome partially funded by the UN Department of Social and Economic Affairs, the group tries to coordinate and develop ICT systems for Parliaments. They strongly believe that ICT can be a tool for greater transparency and accountability of Parliaments and a larger platform for public consultation and interaction with citizens. They are looking at ways to harness new technologies for this purpose. 

Governments and development agencies have devoted many years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing democratic governance in countries around the world. The idea of creating democracies is still the primary driver of many governance improvement agendas. Clearly, democratic systems often bring with them improvements in governance and economic development, but simply putting a democracy into place is not enough.
 

Last week, this blog featured a quote by Elinor Ostrom, which contains an interesting sentence: “Yet I worry that the need for continuous civic engagement, intellectual struggle, and vigilance is not well understood in some of our mature democracies and is not transmitted to citizens and officials in new democracies….We have to avoid slipping into a naïve sense that democracy – once established – will continue on its own momentum." 

A recent report by the Bank's Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) entitled Public Sector Reform: What Works and Why? offers interesting insights into the recent work on governance at the Bank. The report notes that about one-sixth of Bank support in lending and advisory services now goes into public sector reform, although it makes the argument that most of this actually goes to reform of financial management.

There is a lot of attention paid to Freedom of Information (FOI) Acts. The World Bank outlined some of the issues related to the subject both in a World Development Report in 2002, with a chapter on media and also in the book, The Right To Tell. Active research also went on afterwards to identify countries that had an FOI regime and those that did not.  There are clearly many benefits to the public in countries that have enacted FOI laws.

In Liberia we have been working with the Ministry of Information and about 50 public relations officers from the various ministries and organizations within the government, including the Ministry of Information, the President's Office, the individual line ministries and a donor-funded economic development program.

CommGAP held a 3-day training program for senior government official undertaking reform programs on the role communication and participation can play in their reforms. Thirty government officials from 15 countries in Africa and Asia participated.  The value of a group like this is that they offer real world experiences in having undertaken reforms that have been successful or have failed and can offer lessons on what needs to be done to make reforms happen.

To me the training pointed out and the comments reinforced the perspective that the role communication plays in the reforms is equal to or greater than the policy work, yet the funding and support for governments in the area of communication or to make sure that the reforms get implemented is virtually nonexistent.