Post-MDGs agenda must focus on empowering people through information about their rights to hold governments to account
The current global framework for development, the millennium development goals (MDGs), has focused international and country efforts on poverty eradication and, over time, has also aligned donor aid policies. This has supported domestic efforts to reduce poverty, with clear progress being made on the delivery of basic social services including health and education at a global level.
But beyond 2015, accelerated progress on poverty elimination and sustainable development requires more than effective delivery of services.
At Development Initiatives we see enabling the effective use of information as key to the debate on resource allocation and ultimately poverty eradication, and in 2013 we will be making the case for why it needs to be central to the debate.
Based on our experience and available evidence, we believe the post-2015 settlement must harness the power of technology and information to empower citizens with choice and control over the decisions that impact their lives. We will be using the opportunities afforded by the G8, the high level panel convened by the UN secretary general – which is talking in terms of ending poverty in our time, a hugely welcome and ambitious deadline – and other forums to raise the profile of this issue.
New technologies are making it easier for governments, business and civil society to collect data, share information, target resources, provide feedback and measure progress. Information can help to build trust between governments and citizens, allowing people to exercise their rights, hold decision makers to account, reduce corruption and make more informed choices in their daily lives.
Improving access to information, then, must go hand-in-hand with increasing the income of the poorest in order to promote sustainable poverty eradication. Our own programme experience has shown us the transformative power of information, and of the contribution that increased access to information can make to reducing poverty. In Afghanistan, Integrity Watch worked with shuras (community groups) to train citizens to access information on reconstruction projects, to try and improve the delivery of projects. The ability to do this at community level made possible the delivery of critical infrastructure to 60,000 Afghans, preventing corruption and misuse of funds.
Meanwhile, in a randomised control trial in Uganda, users of clinics were given access to data and qualitative information on local healthcare funding. The result was a huge improvement in health services: waiting times and healthcare staff absenteeism decreased, clinics became cleaner, fewer drugs were stolen and there was a 33% decrease in under-five child mortality, and saving 550 lives in a region with a mere 55,000 households. The trial found that the effects of access to information were more powerful in homogenous communities but, more significantly, were increased with the mediation and involvement of civil society organisations.
With full access to information, those in poverty become empowered to exercise their rights and hold governments to account, donors have evidence to make informed decisions about spending priorities to meet needs, and taxpayers in donor countries can hold them to account. Such information helps us to better understand where the world’s poor actually are. Transparency strengthens accountability, and means more value for money at the same time as achieving better outcomes for the poor. In such tough economic times it is vital that we get the highest value possible out of every dollar available for poverty eradication and this means scrutinising all domestic and international resources beyond just aid to include private sector flows and international government resources as well.
The UK government has a key role to play. Justine Greening, secretary of state for international development, recently announced the launch of the Aid Transparency Challenge which highlights the government’s commitment to openness and transparency, but we need the government to use its key leadership role in the post-2015 process to ensure that an access to information goal is included in the post-2015 framework.
A global campaign on transparency and accountability is currently taking shape and we look forward to working closely with our partners over the coming months to champion the access to information agenda through the Open Government Partnership, the G8 and the post-2015 development goals. If you’d like to join us or discuss this agenda further please get in touch. You can download our discussion paper, Choice and empowerment: turning information into action on poverty, here.
Judith Randel is an executive director of Development Initiatives, an independent organisation working towards poverty eradication.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development-professionals-network/2013/jan/18/mdgs-poverty-eradication-information-access?CMP=twt_gu