Do we need five-star open development?

According to Beth Noveck open data can probably not make government more transparent and accountable. Instead, she holds the value of open data is primarily in making use of the wisdom of crowds to solve complex problems in society. Opening up data, she explains, allows third parties to make sense of existing data, create sense through data mash-ups or create public attention for hitherto neglected problems.

This week the biggest open data and open knowledge event ever will take place in Helsinki, Finland, organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation and a network of open data enthusiasts from around the world.

The growing importance of open data in many different sectors is illustrated in the thirteen topic streams ranging from open government and open democracy, over open education and research to open geodata and open gender. Together with other colleagues from different countries I have been part of the open development stream – a number of workshops and sessions about how development cooperation and development can become more open.

One key question for the open development stream will be what exactly we mean by open development. Many of our participants have already described their view on open development here. It seems to me, that the visions of open development expressed in these statements clearly goes beyond facilitating the collective contribution to the complex problem of development. Instead many of the participants see open development as a concept challenges existing power structures and procedures for decision making. It is not only about “third parties” and self-selected geeky citizens to help the government and other organisations “in charge” to do their job better. It is about changing the existing structure of who's voice counts in development and who's voice does not count. In the understanding of Beth Noveck the added value of open data is primarily to improve the knowledge base for decision making. In the development stream, the focus is much more on who takes the decisions.

It is not a surprise, that it is precisely in development, where there is a strong focus on power and decision making processes. It is the development sector, that more than any other public realm suffers from a broken feedback loop. Those who pay for and have a large impact on development in poorer countries (citizens, tax payers, policy makers, NGOs) are not those who receive the “development services” and often do not exactly know whether or not development measures have the intended effect. At the same time, those, who are the beneficiaries of development have very little knowledge about how decisions are taken and how they can influence these decisions.

Like most of my colleagues in the development stream I agree, that both information flows and decision making processes are important. You cannot hope for changed and more inclusive decision making processes if the flow of information on which decisions are based is not improved. Comprehensive, open and inclusive information is necessary but not sufficient to achieve open decision making. Decision making is open, when those who have the highest stakes in decisions, those most concerned, understand how decisions are taken, can participate in decision making and can have an impact on the outcome of decision making. Ultimately, I think, open development aims at challenging existing power structures in favour of the poor and the marginalised.

At the moment, discussions about open development are very often focused on open data and open information. And rightly so. The quality of information flow in development cooperation is really bad. For examples In many countries there is no public overview about who is doing what with how much money and based on which policy. Often this information is not even accessible for governments in partner and donor countries. So there is a lot of potential in making information flows more comprehensive and open. We want more information to to be shared by more stakeholders, in different formats, using more channels and reaching more stakeholders than before. Lets go through this in detail:

• More information: In the call for more open development we are asking for much more information related to development, not only selected success stories on donor websites but also failures, not only aid scandals and starving children in the press, but also achievements, not brief annual finance reports but detailed financial data, comprehensive evaluation reports, outcome data and personal experiences by those affected by “development”. More information means, that it is not enough to report about projects or activities but also about about overall agendas, including agenda by governments in other sectors like trade, migration, etc.
• To get more information, it is essential that we also extend the circle of information providers. It is just not enough to get the perspective of donors communications departments. It is crucial that beneficiaries and citizens in partner countries become information providers. But other voices should be part of the discourse as well: project officers, partner country administrators, researchers and experts on specific issues.
• To ensure that information flow is not one-way, open development requires that more people receive information beyond project silos, donor meetings and research institutes: information needs to reach citizens in all countries, hackers, watch-dog organisations.
• For more information by a wider circle of stakeholders to shape the development discourse we need different formats and different channels of information. Different formats include easy to process, structured and standardized data, stored in easy to find data catalogues, visualisations and video clips. Different channels that are already used and could be used more are community radio and video, social media and mobile applications to ensure that the conversation is truly open to all stakeholders. This does not mean that traditional channels of information are no longer used – reports and project briefs will stay with us.

All these conditions need to be met to ensure an open information flow in development. Improved information flow includes a more cooperative development. There is no more information monopoly, but different stakeholders with different forms of information can contribute to the overall picture, give their own interpretation of the reality and suggest innovative solutions to the complex issue of development. Improved information flow is a value in itself, because it helps those who take decisions in development to be better informed about the current impact of development, to receive feedback about what works and what doesn't. However, I would suggest, open information flow is the easy part. The real challenge of open development is open decision making. The hard part is for beneficiary interests to have at least as much weight as donor policies, administrative preferences in recipient countries, privileges of local elites and national interests in donor countries. Like open information flow, open decision making has different elements:

• The process has to be open and transparent. The first condition for open decision making is, that it is actually clear who takes decisions and how the processes work.
• As a second step, the existing processes need to become more inclusive. There has to be an institutional framework in each development process (e.g. budget planning at national level, project identification in development cooperation, policy making in partner countries) that give voice and weight to the interests of the poor and excluded. The interests of the poor need not only to be heard, but their interests much be taken into account in decision making. Their interests much shape the decisions taken. Elements of this framework are a legal framework that institutionalises inclusive decision making processes, mechanisms for redress, rule of law at national level, protection of activists challenging existing elites and inequality, organisational support for representatives of civil society that what to become active in decision-making processes and freedom of the press.
• Finally, open decisions making also requires capacity building for non-state actors to engage in negotiation of policy decisions.

If this, or something along these lines, is open development, how do we get there? What is needed in concrete terms for a government donor, for NGOs in the North and the South, for partner country governments to make this open development happen?

Can we outline concrete steps for each of these stakeholders to do their bit for more open development? Tim Berners-Lee suggest the concept of five-star-open data to indicate the degree to which data is as open as possible. A one-star data set meets the minimum requirement for open data and a five star-open data is the best you can ask for. Can we come up with a similar schema for open development? Could such a schema help us to move ahead with open development – and if only to stimulate the debate and develop a more precise understanding about what we really mean by open development. Here are some first ideas on how a “five-star open development schema” could look like. In this schema all five elements need to be combined for really open development, but each individual element would constitute a step in the right direction.

1. An open development organisation provides comprehensive information about its work, including financial flows, evaluation reports, citizens reports, statistical data and any other information it collects, that is not sensitive with regards to privacy or security.
2. An open development organisations provides information in an open and easily accessible way and in a variety of formats, including open data, with open licences and using a diversity of channels to meet all stakeholders' information needs
3. An open development organisation makes its own decision making processes transparent.
4. An open development organisation promotes the capacity of poor and marginalised people to take part in decision making processes regarding development and ensures an enabling environment.
5. An open development organisation institutionalises an inclusive internal decision making process, where poor and excluded people can have a substantive impact on the decisions taken.

Of course, these five steps will look different for governmental donor agencies, for civil society representatives in the South and for NGOs in the North. Do these five steps capture what we mean by open development? Are there other important aspects to take into account? Is technology an inherent part of open development or just a means?

Tomorrow the Open Knowledge Festival will start. Join this discussion and lets make sure “open development is not just a hype but helps to make development more inclusive, better informed and more effective.