Open Government Data for Tackling Corruption A Perspective

Nidhi Rajashree, Biplav Srivastava IBM Research India

Semantic Cities Workshop @ AAAI, Toronto, Canada July 2012

Outline
Corruption
Good or Bad Factors Case Study

Open Data for Corruption

Difference from economic growth focus Call for Action

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: 1. 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; 2. At least one of (a) or (b) is true: a) 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; b) 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/

Corruption Perception Index (2011)

Source: http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/

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.

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

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

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 201011

Mired in complaints of corruption

References
http://nrega.nic.in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi_National_Rural_Employment_Guarantee_Act 8

NREGA Key Processes

Application for job card
Prone to corruption

Selection of works Verification Approval of shelf of projects Informing village PRI Acknowledgement of demand Preparation of estimates And approvals
ICT based transparency

Issue of job card

Demand for employment

Prone to corruption

Work allocation

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

Open Government Data

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 11 Company (www.semantic-web.at) (accessed October 3, 2011)

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)

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.