Access to government-held information is democratically essential. What good is the freedom to express when expressions might be greatly ill-informed?
For this reason, freedom of information law is peddled around the globe by transnational and national institutions alike, as a must-have for any self-proclaimed democracy.
This push often comes in the form of political aid or funding conditions.
For example, Pakistan eventually agreed to adopt a Freedom of Information Ordinance in September 2002, as part of an anti-corruption program promised in return for US$1.4 billion in aid from the International Monetary Fund.
The implementation of such anti-corruption conditionality raises certain questions. For instance, to what extent does the adoption of freedom of information law simply become a box-ticking exercise, devoid of any real meaning, under these circumstances?
However, I’d like to avoid such questions in this entry and make a comment on the politics involved in funding conditionality and state transparency.
Politics can often prevent donors from attaching certain conditions to funding. A donor might not have a interest in pressuring certain recipients into adopting unpleasant transparency and anti-corruption reforms
Donor conditionality is very rarely applied as a tool to fight corruption in Central Asia and the Middle East, for example.
The 2003 Global Corruption Report by Transparency International notes:
…the United States provided Uzbekistan with US$160 million in aid in 2002. For its part, the European Union announced a doubling of aid to Uzbekistan and the Asian Development Bank plans to lend US $300 million over three years to reduce the country’s economic isolation, matching a similar load from the World Bank. It is unclear whether anti-corruption conditions will be attached to the loans.
Moreover, the same report says donor conditionality is rarely applied as a tool to fight corruption in the Middle East and North Africa:
…donors committed more than US $10 billion in aid to Egypt for 2002-2004 but, as in the past, transparency did not feature among the conditions attached to the package. By contrast, the United States put intense pressure on the Palestinian Authority to effect deep reforms in its administration and security forces, including measures to fight corruption…
Of course, Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa are oil rich regions and pivotal in the so-called ‘War on Terror’ led by the United States, the single superpower.
‘So what? That’s politics and realist international relations’, you might say and you may be right.
Nevertheless, I bring up the topic of politics in the conditions of funding as a reminder that there is nothing inevitable about freedom of information law, despite its supposed universality.
Access to government-held information will prevail only when power, internal and/or external, is behind transparency, anti-corruption and open government.
1 response so far ↓
ortizbaltimore // July 3, 2008 at 11:54 pm |
http://www.examiner.com/a-1470721~Make_transparency_city_s_policy.html
Editorial
Make transparency city’s policy
The Baltimore Examiner Newspaper
2008-07-03
BALTIMORE -
Trying to find a city contract in Baltimore City is like trying to find one in a black hole. You need the contract number or some other specific information, like the date it was approved. Forget about asking how much money, for example, a particular city contractor has received in the last 10 years from taxpayers. And since no records are digital, you must show up in person to ask.
Want to listen to a City Council hearing? Go to Goodwill and try to find a Walkman, because the only way to do so is via cassette tape. We’re not kidding. It is 1980-something in Baltimore City.
So City Councilwoman Belinda Conaway’s (D-7) proposal to make available all city disbursements online in an easily searchable database is something revolutionary only in Baltimore. Other jurisdictions are way ahead. The state just passed legislation with overwhelming bipartisan support to put all state spending above $25,000 online on a searchable Web site starting in January, and other counties are following suit, including Howard, whose version will come online in 2010. The federal government makes its spending available online at http://www.usaspending.gov, thanks to legislation co-sponsored by Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.).
Some people have asked Conaway if the legislation is aimed at hurting Mayor Sheila Dixon, under investigation for allegedly taking bribes from an ex-lover who received tax breaks while she was City Council president. It’s not. It’s about ensuring that “taxpayers know they are being represented well by their elected officials,” as Conaway said.
Conaway should ask Del. Warren Miller (R-Howard), who sponsored the state legislation, and Howard County Councilman Greg Fox (R-5), who sponsored Howard County’s legislation, for help in drafting the bill and outlining how to pay for it and to set up the technology to make it happen.
Ensuring taxpayers have easy access to city spending will make it easier for residents to understand and participate in local government, deter fraud and help our elected officials to save money. As Del. Miller noted in an opinion piece earlier this year, “After Texas passed a transparency law in 2007, state Comptroller Susan Combs estimated a savings of $2.3 million in her office alone. Much of the savings came from combining multiple contracts for the same services and from eliminating contracts for products the office no longer needed but was unaware it was purchasing. The vast size of state government often means the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. The greater oversight created by transparency laws effectively eliminates this problem.” The same is true of city government.
City Council members should wholeheartedly endorse her legislation at the July 22 meeting and pass it at the earliest possible date.
Examiner