Technology, advocacy and policy share a common limitation: None of them alone can make social change happen. In the quest for more open government, advocates must seek change in all three fields at once. While digital tools are never a complete solution, conceived and deployed deliberately, tech can change both the pace of public reform and the balance of power between officials who can withhold information and citizens and NGOs who lack the leverage to demand it.
In the country of Georgia, where the climate for open government has improved since the recent political transition, four citizen groups are promoting a new level of transparency by uniting their freedom of information efforts in a single web site. OpenData.ge, launched as a four-way partnership in spring 2014 and is designed to multiply each partner’s impact and show citizens and leaders how information can combat corruption and inefficiency. The story of the site’s evolution offers valuable lessons about the role of technology in NGO strategy and the power of NGOs to influence policy using technology.
The Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI) first created the site in 2010, to publicize its government information requests and allow citizens and journalists to track the replies it got-or did not get-from each agency. At the time, “public discourse was fully monopolized by the ruling political power. Political opposition in the country was not strong,” says Vako Natsvlishvili at the Open Society Georgia Foundation (OSGF), which supported both the initial tool and the revision.
Tako Iakobidze of IDFI says that the site’s very existence also sent an important message. “Raising public awareness is essential,” says the analyst, who currently oversees the project for IDFI, “so that broader society knows about the tool of public information.”
Natsvlishvili says OpenData.ge “played one of the most important roles in ensuring accountability of public institutions.” For instance, groups including IDFI and Transparency International have used information posted in the system to drive new scrutiny and new guidelines for salary and bonuses to public officials, an issue that continues to drive policy change in Georgia.
