Making All Voices Count has supported a number of initiatives in Pakistan at the intersection of technology, accountability and open governance over the past three years. […]
By Heather Gilberds and Blair Glencorse This blog was originally published by Making All Voices Count. Recently, we concluded a Making All Voices Count Practitioner Research and Learning grant, focusing on the dynamics, process and outcomes of building accountability with young people in Liberia. The research generated some useful insights – as we’ve written about previously – including the need to make governance changes meaningful for citizens; the importance of a collective, eco-systems-building approach; and the opportunities that exist around more creative, and less institutionalised, governance programmes. The research involved a survey of over 1,000 citizens in four of Liberia’s 15 counties, [...]
This blog was originally published by Making All Voices Count. This report shares the findings from an impact assessment of Accountability Lab, conducted between August 2016 and March 2017 as part of a research and learning grant from Making All Voices Count. Accountability Lab Liberia aims to build a new generation of active citizens and responsible leaders across the country. The team supports change-makers to develop and implement positive ideas for integrity in their communities by enabling people to generate the knowledge, skills and networks needed for accountability. It sees accountability as dynamic - “a continually evolving set of relationships, [...]
By: Blair Glencorse and Heather Gilberds. This blog post was originally published by Making All Voices Count. This week, as the Open Government Partnership holds its 2016 summit in Paris, there will be many reflections on how to improve the ways that governments interact with citizens, and how to ensure that citizen voices and priorities are incorporated in policy-making. Under President Sirleaf, the Government of Liberia has worked to open up government and put in place organisations and mechanisms to support accountability. As part of the work funded by our Making All Voices Count research and learning grant, the Accountability [...]
By: Faran Mahmood, a Cambridge graduate and management consultant. This article was originally published by The Express Tribune. The recent attention to accountability, thanks to Panama Papers, has exposed contentious political fault lines that have emerged in the electoral system. Though opposition parties have pitched a justified case for electoral reforms, the politics of getting it done have not changed. It is a howling storm of misrepresentation as parliament lacks the political will to translate such commitments into substantive political reforms. Therefore, people on one side of the spectrum are trying to fix the system while the other side stands [...]
By: Rafia Malik, Fayyaz Yaseen, and Syed Kauser Abbas. This blog post was originally published by Making All Voices Count. In 2015, Accountability Lab won one of the top spots in Making All Voices Count's Global Innovation Competition with their project that brings tech-savvy youth activists together with Pakistan's open data movement. A year on, the team discuss one of their biggest successes - unblocking funding for building colleges in Punjab - and why they think that we must invest in better public campaigns; in time to build government relationships; and in understanding that "success is as much about perseverance as innovation". Last year, through the [...]
Learning to Transform Governance in the Philippines By: Blair Glencorse, Accountability Lab Executive Director. Last week I was part of the latest Making All Voices Count (MAVC) learning event in Manila—which brought together about 60 of the initiative’s grantees, researchers, technologists and other stakeholders to reflect on the theme of “transformative governance”. The first point to make is that as a learning event—with a real emphasis on reflecting, sharing and improving what we do, it was the best workshop I’ve been to in a long time. The content, team and process kept me fully engaged from start to finish and I [...]
Making Our Voices Count: Youth Efforts to Close Feedback Loops on Service Delivery in Pakistan By: Fayyaz Yaseen, Syed Kausar Abbas, and Rafia Malik. Working Against the Grain with Young People The power dynamics that lead to mis-governance are deep set in Pakistan, and on first glance it might seem like there is very little that motivated young people can do to fix systematic patronage and graft. But at the Accountability Lab and the Sustainable Social Development Organization (SSDO), we have been working with a group of young volunteers in Rawalpindi recently on a project that shows just how far energy and a [...]
By: Narayan Adhikari, South Asia Representative, and Fayyaz Yaseen, Pakistan Ambassador, for the Accountability Lab. Last month, Narayan and Fayyaz took part in the finals of the Global Innovation Competition (GIC) 2015. In this blog, originally published by Making All Voices Count, they reflect on the GIC process, the people they met, and the lessons learned. Narayan Adhikari and Fayyaz Yaseen from Accountability Lab Hundreds of individuals and organisations from around the world applied to Making All Voices Count’s Global Innovation Competition, and we were thrilled to be one of the ten selected finalists to take part in the week long mentorship and pitching programme in [...]
The Accountability Lab has won the Making All Voices Count Grand Challenge for Development in partnership with the Engine Room for a proposal to produce a concrete resource to assist organizations in making appropriate technology choices. The project will also improve the implementation of ICT tools for accountability and transparency and addresses the weaknesses in the development and social expertise underpinning many ICT-supported initiatives. The project will assess, pilot and mentor ‘voice and accountability’ initiatives in various countries and follow up with an assessment of the utility and validity of the process from participants’ perspectives. Targeted dissemination will channel the [...]
