Citizen engagement in aid projects is crucial!

Participation has for a long time been a popular buzz word in development cooperation. In reality however citizen involvement often seems to be considered a "nice to have". A recent report by the British NGO INVOLVE approaches the issue of participation from a different angle and argues the complexity of most social problems in development cooperation and in social policy generally cannot be adequately addressed by planning of some experts. Instead, the report argues, complex problems need "distributed dialogue"- crowdsourcing. In combination with web 2.0 technology and of mobile services citizen engagement has the potential of not only enhancing the democratic culture in our societies but also finding creative and adequate solutions to complex problems. Access to information and transparency is a prerequisite to "distributed dialogue" - this is why the Open Data Movement and Freedom of Information activism around the world are so important. Exciting e-participation initiatives around the world are already using new technology and open data to promote citizens engagement.
Development cooperation, ridden with complex problems, is still legging in e-participation. Aid transparency is only very slowly building momentum with the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) being the key project on the donor-side. Feedback processes are lacking and tight management for result procedures don't leave much space for genuine civic engagement. This is why OpenAid is promoting Public Online Monitoring - we need feedback processes and discourse at the project level to improve aid and to be serious about ownership.