Open Government Data for Tackling Corruption – A Perspective

1. Open Government Data for Tackling Corruption – A Perspective NidhiRajashree, BiplavSrivastava IBM Research – India Semantic Cities Workshop @ AAAI, Toronto, Canada July 2012

2. Outline • Corruption • Good or Bad • Factors • Case Study • Open Data for Corruption • Difference from economic growth focus • Call for Action

3. Corruption “the misuse of public office for personal gains” “as an act of bribery involving a public servant and a transfer of tangible resources” “Corruption = Monopoly + Discretion – Accountability” • “An act x performed by an agent A is an act of institutional corruption if and only if: • x has an effect, E1, of undermining, or contributing to the undermining of, some institutional process and/or purpose of some institution, I, and/or an effect, Ec, of contributing to the despoiling of the moral character of some role occupant ofI, agent B, qua role occupant of I; • At least one of (a) or (b) is true: • A is a role occupant of I, and in performing x, A intended or foresaw E1 and/or Ec, or A should have foreseen E1and/or Ec; • There is a role occupant of I, agent B, and B could have avoided Ec, if B had chosen to do so.[19] • Note that (2)(a) tells us that A is a corruptor and is, therefore, either (straightforwardly) morally responsible for the corrupt action, or A is not morally responsible for A's corrupt character and the corrupt action is an expression of A's corrupt character.” • Source: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/corruption/

4. Corruption Perception Index (2011) * Source: http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/

5. Shades of Corruption • Bribery • payment made in money or kind and can be initiated either by the public servant or the beneficiary. It can be extortionary, collusive or anticipatory • Favoritism & Nepotism • a mechanism of power abuse implying privatization and highly biased distribution of state resources, no matter how these resources have been accumulated in the first place. • Embezzlement • theft of government property and resources by people who are entrusted upon to take care of it.

6. Factor conducive for Corruption • Lack of awareness • Lack of proper Service-Level Agreements • Lax supervision and monitoring of staff performance • Discretion • Absence of appropriate grievance redressal mechanisms • Obsolete policies

7. Tackling Corruption • Lack of awareness • can be removed by clearly specifying the guidelines and information about the services. • Lack of proper SLAs • can be taken care by a time bound service can be easily tracked by the citizens if the information is freely available hence empowering them to seek penalty when the SLA is missed. • Lack of accountability, supervision • can be improved through institutional diagnostics such as periodic or social auditing which can be facilitated by well documented information at disposal. • Discretion • can also be kept under check if these subjective decisions are well documented and hence available for review. • Grievance mechanisms and obsolete policies need to be directly addressed

8. India: (Mahatma Gandhi) National Rural Employment Guarantee Program • Indian job guarantee scheme, enacted by legislation on August 25, 2005. • NREGA is an Indian job guarantee scheme, enacted as law in 2005. • Designed as a safety net to reduce migration by rural poor households in the lean period. • A hundred days of guaranteed unskilled manual labour provided when demanded at minimum wage • works focused on water conservation, land development & drought proofing • Finances • Statutory minimum wage of Rs 120 (US$2.39) per day at2009 prices. • The Central government outlay for scheme is 40,000 crore (US$7.98 billion) in FY 2010–11 • Mired in complaints of corruption • References • http://nrega.nic.in • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi_National_Rural_Employment_Guarantee_Act

9. NREGA Key Processes Application for job card Selection of works Prone to corruption Approval of shelf of projects Verification Issue of job card Informing village PRI Demand for employment Acknowledgement of demand Prone to corruption Preparation of estimates And approvals Work allocation ICT based transparency ICT based transparency Maintenance of muster roll Payment of wages Prone to corruption Adapted from deck: [PPT] NREGA Implementation [Presentation to NAC]nrega.nic.in/presentations/implement_NREGA.ppt

10. Open Government Data

11. Open Gov. Data for Economic Growth is Well Known (Initiatives Across the World) From Google Maps  Local or regional governmental authorities  Local or regional private initiatives  Nationwide governmental authorities  Nationwide private initiatives  Multilateral / Transnational initiatives • Open Government Data policies would increase direct business activity by up to €40 billion per year (0.3% of EU's GDP) and overall benefit could be up to €200 billion per year (1.7% of GDP) • Open data could generate £6 billion of added value to the UK economy * Source: World Map of Open Government Data Initiatives, Google Maps, the underlying world map is released under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 3.0 Austria) by Semantic Web Company (www.semantic-web.at) (accessed October 3, 2011)

12. Open Government Data Helps Sustain Economic Growth • By Reducing Corruption and Increasing Competitiveness • Open govt data leads to transparency • With transparency, it is easy to establish accountability • Both together help tackle corruption • Corruption : “Monopoly + Discretion – Accountability” (Klitgaard, Robert E. Controlling corruption. Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1988)

13. Call for Action • Governments should • come out with data sharing/ disclosure policies, and • Example: USA - US Executive Order 13556, Controlled Unclassified Information, At http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-pressoffice/2010/11/04/executive-order-controlled-unclassifiedinformation • Example: India - National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) at http://dst.gov.in/NDSAP.pdf • implement them! • Industry and standardization bodies can help • by documenting best practices, • building necessary tools • using open standards, and • reporting case studies.