The Open Development Ecosystem Uganda Open Development Meeting Hotel Africana, Kampala 11 th September 2012

Decide on priority data to collect Statistics department collects data Analyse and draw conclusions Publish & disseminate results Apply results to policies & plans What we have always known – a hierarchical uni-directional system

With respect to data & development the model was  Decide development priority & data in some government ministry  Assign the collection and preliminary analysis data a statistics office  Engage consultants (responding to pre-determined Terms of Reference) or semi-autonomous institutions and University departments tin deeper analysis  Draw conclusions, and make recommendations;  Publish the outcomes in some (authoritative) official document/s;  And on a few occasions, conduct a workshop or symposium to “disseminate” the final product.

But approach  Ignored different interests, needs and inputs of a range of stakeholders  Assumed that selected priorities were always right and worked in the best interests of citizens  Created opportunities for “hiding” some aspects of information  De-prioritised the interactive nature of development  Limited transparency & accountability

Even when transparency (openness) agenda grew.....  The focus was on “bits and pieces” of openness  Open government  Aid transparency  Extractive industries transparency  Civil society transparency  Open data  Transparency of private flows

The open development concept helps us to  Conceptualise development in a series of “stakeholder interrelationships”  See the mutuality of “vertical” and “horizontal” links  Agree on the “values” before putting in place systems  Incorporate citizen empowerment  Continuously assess “value added” (accountability)

Works in the same way as “An ecosystem” A natural system consisting of all plants, animals and microorganisms, which function with all the physical factors of the environment

interconnected components?

Not about Complex data

Or computer systems

Or..... Advanced communications systems

Or..... Media images

It is more about Community development

Or.... Better still

But this must recognise a level of mutualism

.... And some of it is delicate mutualism

More recently though it has been changed by......technology Technology!!!

The Open development ecosystem  The open development “system” is a combination of, and interaction between many different parts and stakeholders  a key challenge is linking up these parts towards a common objective

A stakeholder-based open development ecosystem