Public vs Accessible
Can you navigate in today’s life with only information from 2018?
A few days ago I was re-watching an old TED talk called — How open data is changing international aid — by Sanjay Pradhan¹. In this talk Sanjay, who at the time worked for the World Bank, speaks about guidelines to help relief efforts make the most impact, while also curbing corruption. I had watched this particular talk a few times before, but this time there was a phrase that stood out to me:
— “There is a big difference between a budget that’s public and a budget that’s accessible”² —
This phrase sparked something I’ve been thinking about for a while now, but that I was never able to put in such an articulate way. Public is not the same as accessible. How can the citizens of the world meaningfully express their opinion regarding what is being done by their governments, or the development agencies if we don’t really know what they are doing? In designing EnlightAID, the platform we will be launching in a few weeks, I reviewed many NGOs’ annual reports. More than anything, to get a sense of how they themselves structured their data and if they could be compared to one another. Honestly, I randomly took reports from several renowned organizations to understand them. What I found is precisely what Mr. Pradhan so eloquently expressed: public is not the same as accessible.
The reports that get published are different in length, process in which they measure impact, the level of detail in which they show their financial information, etc. I went back to their websites and looked for the latest reports I could find from 4 world renowned NGOs. The ones I found were all about 2018. Considering we are in april 2020 it implies a significant delay in reporting, there was no real-time information available. Even though it is important to have access to this historical data, we could question how relevant they are when making a choice today. One to support causes that are happening right now. Furthermore the reports I reviewed were different in length, ranging from 42 to 220 pages, the process in which they measure impact was not explained. All of them showed some financial information but the level of detail varied and none of them offered, for example, information on the companies they had paid money to, for services or goods. All of the reports looked beautiful and offered reassuring numbers. However after reading the four I could not properly compare the impact they have made in relation to their use of resources, simply because they measure completely different things in entirely different ways. This makes the information fundamentally inaccessible, even if it is public and out there for anyone with an internet connection to see. By reading them I was unable to determine in which area of impact my donations would be more effective. Or in which country, topic or organization my donation would be better used. Having public reports that cannot be easily compared to one another, that do not explain the criteria for decision making and measurements, and that are almost 2 years old! We are always at a disadvantage.
A few years back, an organization one of the members of our team had donated to, sent out their annual report and there was a figure I could never get out of my head. They showed in a neat graphic that out of the several million dollars they had raised that year they had spent 97% of those resources on Programs, and the remaining 3% had been divided into development and administrative costs. This neat and polished graphic left me only with questions. How are you defining what a program entails? Are costs of first class airline tickets and fancy hotels included within programs? Or are those administrative costs? I went back to that organization’s page to find their latest report, and for 2018, the newest available report, they showed the same kind of graphic only that year they had spent a little less on programs. My previous questions remained unanswered.
Opacity in the dataset
It is important to understand that “without free access to information, people in one part of the world have little chance of even knowing about — much less have a say in — decisions made far away that affect them”³. In the case of the reports I reviewed there is little to no explanation on how concepts like “program”, “benefits” or “impact” of the different initiatives are measured. Furthermore, location of activities and specific guidelines of programs were vague or non-existing, creating an information asymmetry that leaves the general public unable to have a say on how the decisions are being made. This asymmetry makes you wonder the validity of how that dataset is being defined, questioning how reliable it can be.
An interesting example of questionable datasets emerged from Chile last week, in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic the current Minister of Health, Jaime Mañalich explained that patients who had died of COVID-19 were being counted as recovered. “We have 898 patients who have stopped being contagious …these are the people who’s diagnosis is older than 14 days or who unfortunately have died”⁴. He continued by explaining that “international experts” have recommended to include the dead as recovered since they can no longer give the disease to other individuals. This sort of fundamentally wrong datasets create, at the very least, distrust among the public in government officials and can be conducive to flawed public policies that endanger the safety of citizens.
What can be done?
Development aid and philanthropy are largely still treated with a traditional approach in which “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 channeled these transfers were opaque, with little transparency of what they financed or what results they achieved. And third, the engagement in developing countries was with a narrow set of government elites with little interaction with the citizens, who are the ultimate beneficiaries of development assistance.”⁵
Nevertheless, societies and technology have gone through remarkable changes over the last decades. Data has become available in several sectors while citizens are demanding more transparency. As data becomes open and transparent, accountability increases and processes can improve. An interesting example is the CheckMySchool initiative in the Philippines, a real-time “participatory monitoring initiative for the education sector in the Philippines”⁶. A program launched in 2011 which enables parents and students to give real-time feedback whether teachers and textbooks are showing up in school. “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 in the Philippines took swift action”⁷.
Or take examples like Waze which implemented a crowdsourced mapping technology to help “riders and drivers get where they’re going… while working to beat traffic”⁸ By enabling users to contribute real-time data on accidents, their live navigation, construction sites, objects on the road, etc. Waze contributes to empower drivers to make informed decisions as they go. As technologies mature, and citizens become even more empowered I think open and comparable real-time data may very well be our only way to a sustainable future. As it will be these tools that will enable us to make better and timely decisions. Moreover, in the case of development aid, having datasets that can be easily compared will become critical to better understand the efficiency of the programs that are being executed.
Maybe I’m too much of an idealist millennial, because I personally burn for certain causes: equal rights, environmental protection, and above all, access to education. But I do not trust the current establishment. What I want is the equivalent to Waze which is showing me, live, which lanes are open for me to drive my hypothetical vehicle to sustainability. To equal access to education. To equality. I want it now and I want it live. What about you?
[1][2] How open data is changing international aid
[3] The right to Know. STIGLITZ, Josep E.
[5] How open data is changing international aid
[6] CheckMySchool
[7] How open data is changing international aid
[8] Waze. About Us
