Having come across the recent UNDP study on the role of social media for enhancing
public transparency and accountability in Eastern Europe (download here),
one cannot help feeling optimistic about the potential to raise the level of civic
empowerment and to fight corruption in the post-Soviet countries.
Looks like the Transparency Works event jointly
organized by the Sunlight Foundation and Transparency International comes at
the right time in the right place. The first ever in Lithuania transparency camp-like
event will take place on 29 – 30 March in Vilnius.
Why Lithuania, the country which is considered to be among anti-corruption
champions in the post-Soviet region but at the same time is only an average
performer on the global scale (ranked 50th with the score of 4.8 at the Corruption
Perception Index by Transparency International)?
The abovementioned UNDP study came up with a number of interesting and
somewhat rationalizing figures.
Figure 1. The more people have access to Internet in a particular country, the less
corrupt that country is perceived to be.
Lithuania is among the leading countries in the world in terms of the Internet
usage. It is leading in deploying fiber-optic Internet access (FTTH) technologies
with the fastest rate in Europe and sixth on the global ranking. Around 70% of
the households have Internet connection. Evidently, the high levels of Internet
penetration did not massively help with Corruption Perception. There is clear potential to
better use the information and communication technologies to increase the public
transparency and encourage e-participation in the country.
Figure 2. The higher the country’s e-government index, the less corrupt that country is
perceived to be.
Lithuania is ranked 29th in the UN e-government survey 2012 – one position lower
than in 2010. The main aspect pulling the score down is the fact that only a small number
of citizens use e-services. While one can argue about whether demand or supply should
come first, an open government that is willing to increase public transparency
ideally should do more to pro-actively promote e-services.
Figure 3. The better the advocacy capacity of NGOs are in the country, the less corrupt
that country is perceived to be.
The ability to distinguish between objective data and speculative information
on mainstream commercial TV, radio and newspapers can significantly improve
the corruption perception index. Therefore, the information collected by the civil
society should be available to the wider population.
So, what do these figures suggest? There is not a lot of room to improve the Internet
penetration in Lithuania and the region. However, a lot can be done with educating
the government and the society about the benefits of e-participation. While the
ideas of open government data (OGD) and e-democracy have gained momentum in
most developed countries, the expansion of the movement to the post-Soviet
space has been slow and fragmented.
Why is it important that e-democracy becomes topical in the region? Freely
accessible data is becoming a must for transparent and accountable states and
their institutions. Data presentation online is inherent to its publicity. It is important
to identify the local communities that can constantly come up with ideas on how
to achieve greater government transparency and increase civic participation in
public decision-making. Such multi-stakeholder communities could more than ever
contribute to a further democratization of the post-Soviet region.
The Transparency Works event will for the first time in Lithuania bring together
international IT developers, think tanks and civil society actors, online marketing
specialists, journalists, government officials, students, academics and others to
share their experience and knowledge about how to use new technology to make
the government really work for the people and contribute to greater transparency,
accountability and citizen engagement in the region and beyond.
While a lot of events of this kind tend to be the place to hack and meet your
fellow OGD geeks, the Transparency Works event will attempt to have the full
palette of stakeholders present. Hopefully, this will serve as a qualitative attempt to
spread the word about e-democracy and lay a fertile ground for open government
data ideas to grow in Lithuania and the post-Soviet region.
The deadline for the registration for the Transparency Works event is 26th March at
www.transparencyworks.lt/register/
Correlation does not mean causation. In practice, these graphs – and correlations – are next to meaningless.