Alan Hudson, Executive Director – April 6, 2017
The last 12 months have been an exciting time at Global Integrity. We’ve upped the tempo in terms of implementing our strategy, moving wholeheartedly from making the case for a learning-centered approach to open governance, to putting adaptive learning into practice across everything we do.
At project level, highlights have included working with Mexican partners to support the use of data about public resources and service delivery, helping civil society organizations working on open governance in Africa and Asia to sharpen their effectiveness by improving their own learning, working with partners in 5 countries to explore how the Open Government Partnership is playing out across different contexts, and collaborating with researchers across Africa to assess the quality of governance.
Beyond our project work, we have worked hard to make the case that while data is important, what really matters is how data is used, and what impact it has. We have begun to explore the value of a learning-centered approach to anti-corruption. We have made great strides in making the OpenGov Hub a center for learning and collaboration, and as a result an even better place to work! And, last but not least, we have made a powerful case – for instance through our engagement with the World Bank – that navigating and shaping the complex political dynamics of governance reform requires pro-reform actors, and those who aim to support them, to apply approaches that enable them to learn and adapt to those complex political dynamics.
November 2016 brought momentous and troubling political change in the US. The election of Donald Trump and the events of the last 3 months – along with events in the UK, Brazil, the Philippines, Colombia and elsewhere – have demonstrated that open governance is under threat in countries across the world, and can be stalled or reversed, by political developments.
To play our part in resisting the rise of authoritarianism, we need to think afresh about how we can best support open, inclusive and responsive governance, here in the US and around the world. With a long and proud history of working on bad governance in rich countries as well as poor, we are well-placed to do so. As we refresh our thinking and practice, we – along with others working to support more open governance – should redouble our commitment to listening and learning: listening to people who have felt poorly represented by political elites, listening to people with more experience of dealing with governance crises, and learning alongside both.
We’re energized by the political challenges that we face and excited to continue working with partners around the world to support progress toward more open and accountable governance, and to put adaptive learning – for more effective political engagement – front and center of the governance and development agenda.
Our Annual Report for 2016 provides further information about our work over the last 12 months. To get a sense of what we’ve done, what we’ve learned and how we’ve adapted over recent years, please see our Annual Reports for 2015 and 2014.
