For those of us keen to support progress towards more open governance, 2018 was a challenging year. The politics and incentives that all too often drive the rich and the powerful to act in their own short-term interests, make the road towards more open and effective governance a very bumpy one, full of obstacles, in the US and globally. Supporting those at the sharp end of navigating the obstacles, and addressing governance-related challenges, requires much more than promoting transparency and extolling the virtues of openness.
As this edition of the Integrity Insider details, over the course of 2018 we provided practical support to local partners around the world as they tackled governance-related challenges. This included supporting partners in Kenya, as they sought to improve the provision of agricultural extension services to local farmers, and helping government officials and citizens in Durango, Mexico, in their efforts to track the flow of public resources.
Informed by our country-level work, and that of other organizations, we also sought to nudge the evolution of the governance agenda. This included providing detailed feedback on new strategies by DFID and OSF, setting out how the fiscal transparency agenda might be strengthened, and continuing to build bridges between the opengov and adaptive development communities. We have been pleased to see the open data, and the governance agendas, focus increasingly on problems, politics, and incentives, and the use of data to inform cycles of action and learning to address those problems, in line with the direction we’ve been heading.
As 2019 rolls on, we look forward to providing problem mapping, data use, and strategy & learning support to front-line actors and their international partners as they address challenges around the management and use of public resources, and to sharing the insights and evidence generated from this work in order to inform policy and practice on governance and development. There are major challenges to address, but with a strengthened and more diverse team and board, and exciting new work underway, including through the Global Integrity Anti-Corruption Evidence Programme, we are up for the challenges and set to make 2019 our best year yet!
To read the full Integrity Insider/Annual Report for 2018 please see here
