Update: ideas for transparency in Ireland
How was your weekend? Mine was pretty amazing. I spent much of it in pub corners, kitchens, email chains and twitter DM chats being told stories that were a combination of heartening, enraging, enlightening, devastating, clandestine, baffling and jaded.
On the Friday I posted on Medium / Twitter / Facebook that I wanted to spend some time working out what work could be done in Ireland to increase transparency, accountability and good governance.
I posted looking for ideas. I am still working through the responses — but in the spirit of openness and collaboration I want to share what I heard, and how my thinking is evolving.
Here is a selection of some of the topics that people brought up:
- Tenders and contracting by the public sector, including semi-state bodies
- Hospital waiting lists; who gets moved up and how
- Tax revenues; in particular the need for Country by Country Reporting
- Who our senior public servants are
- What ministers and officials do after they have been in office
- Policy impact assessments and the research that informs policy decisions
- Whistleblowing and protection of disclosures
- Timely information on homehelp provision to allow families to plan
- Various pots of government funding that people feel are unfairly distributed
Those I heard from were activists, elected officials, academics, public servants, lobbyists and random friends and family members. In some cases people were in institutions where they saw things going on they didn’t approve of; others have had a terrible experience; while some sought access to information that could help them in their work or lives.
The range of ideas suggests to me that there is huge scope for us to see concrete benefits from greater transparency in Ireland. In these examples we can see the reasons that people pursue greater government transparency:
- Preventing and identifying corruption, financial mismanagement, and conflicts of interest (where people might make decisions that serve themselves in some way) so there can be accountability
- Allowing people — citizens, journalists, politicians — to understand, scrutinise and influence what government is doing in terms of its spending, policy making, the quality of public services etc.
- Enabling citizens and businesses to make better decisions and plans, by giving them more information about services, contracting etc.
But the question is how to turn these ideas into action. There are a few key questions in my mind:
- Whether to work on good governance/ transparency / accountability as a broad theme, or to focus on particular projects addressing some of the particular topics like those highlighted above
- Whether to look at outlining opportunities and highlighting challenges, or trying to actually develop (small scale) solutions and deliver examples of what is possible
- What to pursue in terms of a broader theory of how to affect change — which type of “lever” of change to try to pull — legislative, political salience, culture and narrative, intellectual / idea generation, community building…
These three are interrelated, and my thinking is in early stages, but my instinct at the moment is pushing me towards concrete projects, and thinking about shifting culture and expectations.
What do you think?
