How open data is changing international aid Sanjay Pradhan

I grew up in Bihar India’s poorest state

and I remember when I was 6 years old I

remember coming home one day to find a

cart full of the most delicious sweets

at our doorstep my brothers and I dug in

and that’s when my father came home he

was livid and I still remember how we

cried when that cart with our half-eaten

sweets was pulled away from us later I

understood why my father got so upset

those sweets were a bribe from a

contractor who was trying to get my

father to award him a government

contract my father was responsible for

building roads in Bihar and he had

developed a firm stance against

corruption even though he was harassed

and threatened his was a lonely struggle

because Bihar was also India’s most

corrupt state where public officials

were enriching themselves than serving

the poor who had no means to express

their anguish if their children had no

food or no schooling and I experienced

this most viscerally when I traveled to

remote villages to study poverty and as

I went village to village I remember one

day when I was famished and exhausted

and I was almost collapsing in a

scorching heat under a tree and just at

that time one of the poorest men in that

village invited me into his heart and

graciously fed me only I later realized

that what he fed me was food for his

entire family for two days this profound

gift of generosity challenged and

changed the very purpose of my life I

resolved to give back later I joined the

world bank which sought to fight such

poverty by transferring aid from rich to

poor countries my initial work focused

on Uganda where I focused on negotiating

reforms with the finance ministry of

Uganda so they could access our loans

but after we disburse the loans I

remember a trip in Uganda where I found

newly built schools without textbooks or

teachers new health clinics without

drugs and the poor once again without

any voice or recourse it was bihar all

over again Bihar represents the

challenge of development abject poverty

surrounded by corruption globally 1.3

billion people live on less than a

dollar twenty-five a day and the work I

did in Uganda represents the traditional

approach to these problems that has been

practiced since nineteen forty four when

winners of world war 2 500 founding

fathers and one lonely founding mother

gathered in New Hampshire USA to

establish the Bretton Woods institutions

including the world bank and that

traditional approach to development had

three key elements first transfer of

resources from rich countries in the

north to poorer countries in the south

accompanied by reform prescriptions

second the development institutions that

channel these transfers were opaque with

little transparency of what they

financed

what results they achieved and third the

engagement in developing countries was

with a narrow set of government Elise

with little interaction with the

citizens who are the ultimate

beneficiaries of development assistance

today each of these elements is opening

up due to dramatic changes in the global

environment open knowledge open aid open

governance and together they represent

three key shifts that are transforming

development and that also hold greater

hope for the problems I witnessed in

Uganda and in Bihar the first key shift

is open knowledge you know developing

countries today will not simply accept

solutions that are handed down to them

by the US Europe or the World Bank they

get their inspiration there hope their

practical know-how from successful

emerging economies in the south they

want to know how China lifted 500

million people out of poverty in 30

years how Mexico’s oportunidades program

improved schooling and nutrition for

millions of children this is the new

ecosystem of open knowledge flows not

just traveling north to south but south

to south and even south to north with

Mexico’s oportunidades today inspiring

New York City and just as these north to

south transfers are opening up so too

are the development institutions that

channeled these transfers this is the

second shift open aid recently the world

bank opened its vault of data for public

use releasing 8,000 economic and social

indicators for 200 countries over 50

years and it launched a global

competition to crowdsource innovative

apps using this data

development institutions today are also

opening for public scrutiny the projects

they financed take geo-mapping in this

map from Kenya the red dots show where

all the schools financed by donors are

located and the darker the shade of

green the more the number of

out-of-school children so this simple

mashup reveals that donors have not

financed any schools in the areas with

the most out of school children

provoking new questions is development

assistance targeting those who most need

our help in this manner the World Bank

has now geo mapped 30,000 project

activities in hundred and forty three

countries and donors are using a common

platform to map all their projects this

is a tremendous leap forward in

transparency and accountability of aid

and this leads me to the third and in my

view the most significant shift in

development open governance governments

today are opening up just as citizens

are demanding voice and accountability

from the Arab Spring to the Una’s are a

movement in India using mobile phones

and social media not just for political

accountability but also for development

accountability our governments

delivering services to the citizens so

for instance several governments in

Africa and Eastern Europe are opening

their budgets to the public but you know

there is a big difference between a

budget that’s public and a budget that’s

accessible this is a public budget

and as you can see it’s not really

accessible or understandable to an

ordinary citizen that is trying to

understand how the government is

spending its resources to tackle this

problem governments are using new tools

to visualize the budget so it’s more

understandable to the public in this map

from Moldova the green color shows those

districts that have low spending on

schools but good educational outcomes

and the red color shows the opposite

tools like this help turn a shelf full

of inscrutable documents into a publicly

understandable visual and what’s

exciting is that with this openness

there are today new opportunities for

citizens to give feedback and engage

with government so in the Philippines

today parents and students can give

real-time feedback on a website check my

school dot org or using SMS where the

teachers and textbooks are showing up in

school the same problems I witnessed in

Uganda and in Bihar and the government

is responsive so for instance when it

was reported on this website that 800

students were at risk because school

repairs had stalled due to corruption

the Department of Education and the

Philippines took swift action and you

know what’s exciting is that this

innovation is now spreading south to

south from the Philippines to Indonesia

Kenya Moldova and beyond in Dar es

Salaam Tanzania even an impoverished

community was able to use these tools to

voice its aspirations this is what the

map of tan dolly looked like in August

2011 but within a few weeks University

students were able to use mobile phones

and an open-source platform

to dramatically map the entire community

infrastructure and what is very exciting

is that citizens were then able to give

feedback as to which health or water

points were not working aggregated in

the red bubbles that you see which

together provides a graphic visual of

the collective voices of the poor today

even bihar is turning around and opening

up under a committed leadership that is

making government transparent accessible

and responsive to the poor but you know

in many parts of the world governments

are not interested in opening up or in

serving the poor and it is a real

challenge for those who want to change

the system these are the lonely warriors

like my father and many many others and

the key frontier of development work is

to help these lonely warriors join hands

so they can together overcome the odds

so for instance today in Ghana

courageous reformers from civil society

Parliament and government have forged a

coalition for transparent contracts in

the oil sector and galvanized by this

reformers in parliament are now

investigating dubious contracts these

examples give new hope new possibility

to the problems I witnessed in Uganda or

that my father confronted in Bihar two

years ago on April 8 2010 I called my

father it was very late at night and at

age 18 he was typing a 70-page public

interest litigation against corruption

in a road project

though he was no lawyer he argued the

case in court himself the next day he

won the ruling but later that very

evening he fell and he died he fought

till the end increasingly passionate

that to combat corruption and poverty

not only did government officials need

to be honest but citizens needed to join

together to make their voices heard

these became the two bookends of his

life and the journey he travelled in

between mirrored the changing

development landscape today I’m inspired

by these changes and I’m excited that at

the World Bank we are embracing these

new directions a significant departure

from my work in Uganda 20 years ago we

need to radically open up development so

knowledge flows in multiple directions

inspiring practitioners so aid becomes

transparent accountable and effective so

governments open up and citizens

citizens are engaged and empowered with

reformers and government we need to

accelerate these shifts if we do we will

find that the collective voices of the

tour will be heard in bihar in uganda

and beyond we will find the textbooks

and teachers will show in schools for

their children we will find that these

children to have a real chance of

breaking their way out of poverty thank

you

you