1. Speech Maarten Brouwer
Open Data Development Camp 13 mei KIT Amsterdam
[intro]
Ladies and gentlemen. It is a great honour to be here and speak in front of such a special
audience. I must say, I have spoken at conferences before. But this must be the most creative
and dynamic set of people I have ever addressed. Your energy and ideas are of great
importance to the development sector. And what we have seen in the past few days has
surpassed all my expectations. I am more convinced than ever that ‘Open Data’ is the way
forward for us as DGIS of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and that it offers enormous
opportunities.
[Context: aid is criticized]
People in the Netherlands are critical about aid. It is interesting to ask ourselves why that is
so. Some people believe we achieve no results. Others believe aid is not provided efficiently.
Some even argue that aid has detrimental effects. Big words as waste of money, feeding
corruption and exploiting dependency are being used. Certainly there may be instances that
such criticism is justified. We would al welcome the thought that such negative connotations
could be avoided. I do not know of any public or private engagement that is free from the risk
of bad intentions, risk that materialise and sloppy management. But such reasoning is not
enough to counter the criticism on aid. The line of thought is too defensive, too protective of
suspected interests behind the giving of aid. The more criticism, the more defensive and
closed the world of aid may become. It is a natural reaction, but the wrong one.
[Lack of transparency leads to lack of coordination….]
Let’s look at that issue a bit closer. The Netherlands sometimes scores poorly on transparency
of our aid flows. One reason is the important role Dutch NGO’s play in delivering our aid,
amounting to a quarter of our aid. Such aid, provided lump sum, is flowing through a
multitude of organisations that are often unknown to the taxpayer. Another is the allocation of
funds to big multilateral organisations. Those are often regarded as machineries producing
meetings and documents, i.e. bureaucracies of gold standard but not delivering concrete
results. And for bilateral cooperation, a third reason can be found in the wealth of information
about promises, about funds made available without a clear understanding of benefits that are
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2. produced. Three channels for aid delivery that are very much under suspicion. A fourth, the
private for profit sector, has been under suspicion for a long time, but seems to have restored
its credibility. Four channels of delivery each with big problems in coordination. The
coordination between the channels is even more difficult. The solution should be with the
final recipients. They should be able to see how the inputs translate into real benefits.
[….and undermines budgetary processes]
When the minister of Finance of Rwanda calls our ambassador in Kigali to ask how much
money the Netherlands is giving to his country and how much we will give next year, the
ambassador is unable to give a decent answer. That is because the ambassador does not have
an overview of total Dutch ODA spent in that country. Each channel has its own rational, its
own organisational model and its own communication. An overview is simply not available.
So how should the Rwandan minister be able to provide the wanted overview of inputs and
benefits? As said, this is so by design, but we are increasingly realizing that this is a problem.
It is a problem for us, in terms of understanding, and reporting results of all Dutch ODA. For
the ambassador, in terms of having an overview of Dutch aid flows. But, most important of all
it is a problem for the Rwandan minister of Finance who needs to plan his budget for the
coming year.
[Open Data is part of Aid Effectiveness – Busan]
This is the sort of issue that is discussed at the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. These
have taken place in Accra in 2008 and will take place in Busan in December this year.
Developing Countries want to be much better informed of what aid they receive when and
where. So donors as well as NGOs need to be much more transparent and their aid better
coordinated. We believe that this is important. And that is why we expressed strong political
commitment to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) at its foundation three
years ago. And we plan to deliver along that commitment. We plan not just to unveil where
the money goes, but publish our data using the internationally agreed IATI standards. At the
same time, donors want to be much better informed about results. So partner countries, local
NGO’s, institutions need to get their systems up and running. They need to really become
owner of the development process, be proud of achievements and communicate them into the
public arena. Two parties, both putting their claims forward. And it is not all: both parties
also have a clear interest in improving quality of aid, of cooperation. Both parties need to find
new ways to connect with new players from a diversity of backgrounds. Development itself is
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3. an outcome of underlying processes of forced and unforced change. Co-creation can help to
facilitate such processes. Openness that will allow for co-creation needs to be encouraged.
[Making the DGIS commitment explicit….]
In October 2011 the Netherlands will deliver on phase one of its IATI commitment. After
UK, the Netherlands will than be the second donor to publish actual data. During this phase
mostly general data on activities will be made available such as the name of the activity,
general purpose, implementing agency, recipient country, sectoral characteristics etc. This
will entail all activites, some 3000 in all. Data will be updated every 3 months. In the second
phase, as from October, data that are currently not generically available such as progress
reports, evaluations, strategic plans, forward looking financial figures and results information
need to be made available for publication. A decision to enter into the second phase I
anticipated for February 2012.
[it is about linking the data to improve coordination and national planning]
And we are of course excited that so many Dutch NGOs are equally keen to publish their data
following the internationally agreed IATI standards. Because that opens up huge
opportunities. It will make it possible to link aid information systems, providing overviews of
where our aid goes where and when. And this is not just to enable the Minister of Finance
there about how much money he can expect from the Netherlands in the coming years so that
he can start planning.
[Examples of what we have seen in the past few days]
Unfortunately, I have not been able to attend as much of this Open Data Camp as I would
have liked. But I understand a number of issues have come up.
(1) Alexander Kohnstam of Partos, representing Dutch Development NGOs, started out
by saying that Open Data is about knowledge.
(2) AKVO then followed by stating that development work is invisible and that it needs to
go online. This requires a online platform to communicate the data, add context,
stories, and voices to our programmes. Their pilot using data from our Ministry shows
what such a platform could look like.
(3) As we heard that the IATI registry is being filled with data, the question was raised:
who will use these data? The answer came quickly from the representative from
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4. Kenya: WE ALREADY DO!, he said. And this was repeated when we talked to Sam
from Nai-lab (via Skype) who requested participants to provide more data.
(4) The World Bank emphasised the importance of feedback loops of citizens to service
providers following the concept of the World Development Report of 2004 of which I
am a great fan. We saw the Kibera community map and they made us realise that ICT
innovations including mobile phones makes it much easier to engage communities in
the design and monitoring of programmes. It provides poor communities with a voice!
And is that not what development is about? We need Apps for Development stores
and to better enable academics, ICT specialists and NGOS to help with further
development of these tools. The NAI-lab in Nairobi you saw is a very good example
of this
(5) There were many more interesting discussions. Including about IATI and that it
shouldn’t just be about aid, that links to national budgets are essential.
[Open data should be also about involving beneficiaries in project monitoring]
Opening up aid data using agreed standards will also make it possible to develop applications
that present project portfolios online in an attractive and accessible fashion. An example is the
application developed by AKVO presented yesterday. It enables implementing agencies to
add information on implementation progress of their own programmes and results. Most
interesting of all are the community feedback mechanisms that AKVO has developed. This
enables beneficiaries to comment on progress of projects and programmes and add visuals
using their mobile phones. This provides a whole new dimension to monitoring. This is not a
dream. We can make this a reality if we want to. But it implies that all donors and NGOs
should where possible follow this route. And it will improve the effectiveness of our aid so
much.
[Open Data and Transparency are not so much about accountability]
Transparency is not a goal in itself. We need to ask ourselves, what do we want to achieve
with increased transparency? Is it limited to improve the accountability of our aid? Or is it
aimed at better information for parliament and or for the public about what we spend and
what we achieve? Should it be focused on substantiating claims about the quality of our aid,
about coordination and participation?
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5. Transparency will be instrumental to all of these goals. I would personally wantb to stress the
latter. So much talk is about transparency as a form of accountability, that the potential to
unleash broad participation, to enable co-creation and to build shared values is often
overlooked. I strongly believe that in the end, these are the issues that will benefit most from
improved transparency. The AKVO pilot has shown us the potential of linking aid
information from different organizations and for improved coordination. We are not going to
open up our information system for the sake of it, just because we want ‘to be open’. We are
not doing this to account for money flows and the results we achieve. The results we achieve
are not so easy to present. Taking a more narrow accountability perspective is putting to
enemies at one table. ‘Transparency’ aiming to disclose anything, good or bad, success or
failure. And ‘Implementor’ aiming to show a good job done, successes achieved, money well
spent. That perspective will not hold and transparency will loose out. Therefore learning must
be an objective for promoting transparency, as must be co-creation, participation, linking and
engagement.
[Development and aid are about taking small steps]
There are no big solutions to solve the development problem. There is no magic bullet. And
the political constraints in many developing countries are real. But it is possible to make
progress through the accumulation of a set of small steps. It is possible to make small
incremental adjustments at a time to improve institutions and policies and strengthen service
delivery.
[Transparency should support a stronger focus on learning]
The role of our aid is to contribute to these change processes. In a recent book that is
generating quite a lot of interest in the development economics world at the moment, Banerjee
and Duflo (Poor Economics: a radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty) argue
that we need to accept the possibility of error. Where we need to improve is learn. We need to
strengthen our learning loops, based on good testing of our interventions. We need to monitor
and evaluate our interventions carefully, learn and then adapt them, based on the evidence that
these tests have generated. We need to be more open what works and what doesn’t so that we
can learn. Transparency and Open Data in my view is about being open on what we do, what
we achieve and what we learn. It is about an open search for solutions that work and the
conditions under which they work.
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6. [Open Data to involve the crowd in designing programmes and policies]
I have talked about the importance of Open Data and transparency to improve coordination. I
have talked about my most important point to involve the crowd in the testing of our
interventions. To involve the crowd in the design of our programmes, in the drafting of our
policies and in the making of our decisions. That is the direction in which we want to move. I
am talking about ‘Open Government’. We need a much stronger mobilization of knowledge
management to learn about what works best, when and where. Stronger networks are required
that enable mass collaboration to shape our efforts and improve them over time. And the
beneficiaries in developing countries should be strongly involved. If anything has come out
from this conference it is a demonstration of the power of involving beneficiaries.
Our next results report will be based in Open Data principles and collaboration with outsiders.
We, together with the NGOs and other partners we work with will make information on aid
and results available online and involve others including journalists in turning this into a
communication product. It is let’s hope this works. But we want to try.
Let me conclude by emphasing the need for more collaboration and sharing of experiences
and solutions in the field of Open Data. There is a felt need for stronger networks for people
working on open data and data applications for development. I hope this conference has
provided an important boost to that. We are excited to see an important organisation like the
World Bank being front runners in this area. And we are happy to see so much energy and
interest in our data from software developers in our partner countries. This should give us
enough confidence that we are doing the right thing. But we need to keep the momentum.
From our side we will continue to seek the dialogue with NGOs and others in this area.
Finally let me thank the people who worked hard to make this Open Data Camp a success. I
would like to thanks the Open For Change Team: Rolf Kleef, Anne-Marie Heemskerk, Pelle
Aardema, Annemiek Mion, Mariken Gaanderse, Plus all volunteers. Also a big thanks to the
Royal Tropic Institute for making this beautiful building available.
Thank you.
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