Opening Learning

On a journey to learn. Reflections from the Open Government team.

[openinglearning]

[openinglearning]

Extractive Industries Data Dive explores extractives data with other data sets that include socio-economic indicators, fiscal revenues, data on conflict and the recent public perception survey on mining and oil/gas.

[openinglearning]

#WACMN Regional Forum begins in Accra. Representatives from coalitions in Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Liberia are represented at meeting. Practitioners will be exchanging knowledge and experiences about contract monitoring work, including progress, results, challenges and lessons learned. Also representative from Uganda, Zambia and Rwanda from East Africa, and Burkina Faso from Francophone Africa join meeting to engage in knowledge exchange across the region.

[openinglearning]

Learning about Public Private Dialogue (www.facebook.com/publicprivatedialogue )

[openinglearning]

[openinglearning]

Visit Highlights to AJI_Jakarta to learn about MATAMASSA

Tweets from Norma Garza ‏@normsgarza  Mar 15:

#AJIJakarta working w/ other press organizations 2 compile code of conduct 4 #journalists in #reporting 2014 #election #Indonesia #TALearn

Great 2 learn about  @AJI_Jakarta @tech4change #MATAMASSA platform for  #monitoring #2014Election in #Indonesia by #journalists & #citizen

There are about 500 #media outlets & 10,000 #journalists in #Jakarta only 800 have joined @AJI_Jakarta but still most expect support on #FOI

@AJI_Jakarta @tech4changes @tech4asia #MATAMASSA promotes citizen participation, awareness & democratization on election via mobile SMS &app

@AJI_JAKARTA @tech4changes #MATAMASSA platform for #monitoring #reporting #2014Election #Indonesia by #journalists & #citizens #iLab #ICT

#MATAMASSA means "eyes of the mass" - invites citizens to participate in election by monitoring & reporting violations on election rules

Citizen reports election violation,report is verified then published Reports w/ recommend. sent 2 monitoring body 2 take action #MATAMASSA

Buy-in from commission of elections recognizes #MATAMASSA as reporting mechanism #TALearn

[openinglearning]

 Norma Garza ‏@normsgarza  Mar 15

@AJI_Jakarta Chairman walks us through  #MATAMASSA http://www.matamassa.org  #TALearn

Visiting Aliansi Jurnalis Independen Jakarta, an alliance of independent journalists to learn about  Matamassa, a tool for election monitoring.  

#MATAMASSA means "eyes of the mass" - invites citizens to participate in election by monitoring & reporting violations on election rules

Matamassa was developed in collaboration with iLab and the Southeast Asia Technology and Transparency Initiative

[openinglearning]

This is a recount of what happened at the TALearn Annual Workshop in Jakarta Indonesia from March 12-15,2014, which was hosted by the Transparency and Accountability Initiative 

TALEARN is a global community of practice. It aims to link those who want to deepen the understanding of transparency and accountability-related work, and who want to really apply that learning to the actions of their own organisations and the field more widely. It does that by creating spaces for collective learning and action about critical questions and challenges, practices and innovations, and the individual and collective impact of our work...

[openinglearning]

Knowledge and Learning for What? - Open Contracting experience

World Bank Institute's Governance of Extractive Industries experience and learning from our work on contract transparency led to creation of the Open Contracting Program.

Open Contracting works at two levels – at the global level, OC aims to facilitate the creation of global principles and data disclosure standards that governments and regulatory bodies can use to help redefine contracting norms in favor of greater transparency and accountability; and at the country level, Open Contracting seeks to reinforce good practice on the ground and enhance disclosure and effective monitoring, with a focus on citizen engagement, largely through multi-stakeholder coalitions with representatives from across government, the private sector and civil society.

Our learning journey began with coalition building for contract monitoring.  A need to share results and broker knowledge lead to capturing and sharing stories, experiences and results through a variety of mechanisms.  These include: 

•Learning series

•Case studies

•Knowledge competitions

•Book Sprint

•CoPs

•Social Reporting

•ONA

Internal Learning:

•Learning history

•Learning journeys

•Learning by doing approach

In parallel we piloted and tested projects including the use of innovative approaches.

We also realized the need to expand and work not just at the country level but broaden our scope globally.  This was the beginning of the Open Contracting Partnership and work on establishing OC as the new norm through global principles, a data standard and global advocacy.

All the learning and knowledge that was being captured both at the country and global levels needed to be packaged, measured and also generate ownership by the different stakeholders involved to allow for further learning and uptake.  

The Open Contracting has focused on documenting stories and generated qualitative data. However, since 2013 it focused on also obtaining quantitative data that can help complement the existing stories and is applying M&E approaches such as Outcome Harvesting (OH) which has helped to unpack the change process and how our interventions are causing results on the ground.  Based on an initial use of OH, the open contracting team is now finalizing an M&E system that pulls from Outcome Mapping, OH and Most Significant Change among other approaches. This new M&E system will be piloted in different countries and will focus on building stakeholder ownership and emphasize the learning aspect and not just a tool for reporting or upward accountability.

[openinglearning]

Norma Garza participates in #TALearn Panel on Knowledge for what? and shares how the Open Contracting team has from the very beginning embedded learning into its daily work.  Our approach has empasized learning not just for our implementing partners and clients but also for us internally as a team.

Learning and management are intrinsically linked.  How can we have effective project or program management if we are not constantly learning and applying new knowledge?

[openinglearning]

Reflections on TALEARN annual workshop day 1

So today we hosted the first day of the TALEARN annual workshop. TALEARN is a community of practice comprised of individuals from diverse organizations (including donors, researchers, INGOs and CSOs from across the globe who are working to promote transparency and accountability (T/A)

[openinglearning]

Reactions on twitter on Twaweza experience http://www.twaweza.org/

[openinglearning]

TALearn Day 1 - March 11

#TALearn Annual Workshop in Jakarta looked at shared challenges & how we can advance collective change #TAI

Common challenges between stakeholders include questions on how do we measure impact? what counts as evidence of impact?

We need to get out of this "impact frenzy" and focus on telling the story about how we got there

[openinglearning]

TALearn Annual Workshop: Facing Shared Challenges, Advancing Collective Change

Jakarta, Indonesia March 12-15, 2014

[openinglearning]

Communities of Practice like #GOXI provide a space for members to exchange knowledge, experiences and lessons on what works and what doesn't when facing complex governance challenges, like those present in the extractive industries sector. Online tools such as www.goxi.org facilitate connections and interactions between GOXI members (GOXIans) and spark learning and collaboration.  Also important to this collaboration is bringing these interactions offline by providing physical spaces for members to meet face to face (many times for the first time) to network, learn about the work that others are doing, build connections and potentially generate synergies for collaboration.

[openinglearning]

Checkbook NYC, which went online in 2010, empowers the public to keep an eye on New York City’s spending with detailed, up-to-date information about revenues, expenditures, contracts, payroll, and budget in an easy-to-use, dashboard format. The subcontractor reporting system, rolled out in 2012, requires all vendors with contracts over a certain dollar amount to report their subcontractors online.

http://checkbooknyc.tumblr.com/#sthash.DaLvPYQF.dpuf

[openinglearning]

There is a commitment to collaborative development and open source of CheckbookNYC: http://www.checkbooknyc.com Example of this is their collaboration with Socrata, a cloud software company, that aims at democratizing access to government data (see more at http://checkbooknyc.tumblr.com/)