Yamini Aiyar, Accountability Initiative

From May 17 -May 20, I attended the first Global Transparency Conference held at Rutgers University, Newark. The conference brought together an impressive set of over 130 papers exploring different aspects of the nature and impact of transparency policies from around the world.  All papers are available on the conference website. For all interested, this is by far the most comprehensive set of papers on different aspects of the transparency debate. 

To give you a sense of the range of papers – I presented a paper on my pet theme – the experience of conducting social audits in Andhra Pradesh. Others on my panel included a paper on fiscal transparency in local governments in China, accessible here and a paper on the implications of transparency standards on retirement polices in local government in the USA accessible here. We also had a local journalist cover our session. The link for this can be accessed here.I also chaired an interesting session featuring a series of case studies from around the world on budget transparency prepared by a group of scholars in partnership with the International Budget Partnership. Using the Open Budget Index, the panelists explored the range of factors that contribute to making budget data more transparent. We also had an interesting discussion on the role of IT in promoting the idea of open government and whether these initiatives understand the political implications (changing power dynamics and its implications) of greater access to information. Another interesting theme that emerged from the conference was the impact of transparency policies on ‘trust’ in the government. I’d never quite thought about it like this but can more transparency (knowing the in’s and out’s the good and bad – perhaps more often the bad of how government functions) impact the implicit trust relationship between citizens and the state?

The conference ended with some discussion on an agenda for further research in transparency. IT and the implications of IT policy was a recurring theme as was the need for greater empirical understanding of the impact of transparency policy on accountability.  All in all, it was 3 very well-spent days.