Blog Contributor:
Alan Hudson
Alan puts transparency and accountability at the heart of ONE’s work, both in relation to ONE’s core issues of health and agriculture, and issues including aid, budgets, extractive industries and stolen assets. Alan has worked for the UK’s Department for International Development, the Overseas Development Institute, the UK Parliament’s Select Committee on International Development and the University of Cambridge.
May 17th, 2012 5:24 PM UTC
By Alan Hudson
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Last month during the Open Government Partnership (OGP) conference in Brazil, ONE hosted a side event to explore the ways in which opening governance –- making it more transparent and accountable -– can lead to better health outcomes. Chaired by Lu Ecclestone from the UK’s development agency, DFID, the panel included John Ulanga from the Foundation for Civil Society, Tanzania; Claire Schouten from Tiri: Making Integrity Work; Diego de la Mora Maurer from Fundar in Mexico; and me.
Drawing on his experience in Tanzania, John Ulanga talked about a number of ways in which greater transparency and accountability in the health sector had led to improvements in performance. Public Expenditure Reviews had increased the proportion of funds actually making it to the point of service delivery, monitoring had thrown light on the abuse of subsidies for malaria drugs, and the simple wearing of name tags had improved citizens’ interactions with those at the front line of service delivery. However, as John emphasized, initiatives often remain as good ideas on the drawing board, with limited implementation by politicians reluctant to rock the boat.
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Apr 20th, 2012 9:37 AM UTC
By Alan Hudson
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Open Up! That’s the call that went out from the meeting of the Open Government Partnership in Brazil this week, where more than 1,100 representatives from governments and civil society came together to promote open, transparent and accountable governance.
The event began with opening speeches from a high-level panel including Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Quoting Abraham Lincoln in her opening remarks, Secretary Clinton defined “open government” as government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”
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Apr 16th, 2012 5:29 PM UTC
By Alan Hudson
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Update: To read ONE’s asks of the G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group, Mexico 2012, click here.
2012 is an exciting year full of opportunities for opening governance to accelerate progress on poverty reduction. ONE’s new Transparency and Accountability Team has a full agenda, spearheading the organization’s efforts to push for more open, transparent and accountable governance.
Our aim is to drive progress toward open development, a world in which people in developing countries have the information and resources that they need to hold their governments to account and to make well-informed decisions to improve their lives. As a stepping stone toward that, we are pushing for more transparent and accountable financing for development, so that resources (including but not limited to aid) are spent effectively to deliver improved results in health, agriculture, infrastructure and other issues that are key to the fight against poverty and building prosperity. We are not short on ambition!
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Apr 9th, 2012 3:07 PM UTC
By Alan Hudson
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Next week is an exciting and important week for ONE’s efforts to promote more open, transparent and accountable governance that can accelerate progress on poverty reduction. In Mexico, the G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group will meet. ONE will be there making the case (read the letter below) for greater budget transparency and better natural resource governance so that people can hold their governments accountable for the use of public resources.
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Dec 6th, 2011 1:24 PM UTC
By Alan Hudson
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I came away from Busan feeling a bit queasy. Not because of the week-long jet lag and lack of sleep, or because Busan has been desperately disappointing for aid effectiveness. It has not, although it remains to be seen whether it will be remembered as the last whimper of the aid effectiveness agenda or the first hurrah of a global partnership for effective development cooperation.
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Dec 2nd, 2011 9:11 AM UTC
By Alan Hudson
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 The Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness drew to a close on 1 December, with the Korean hosts able to celebrate the delivery of a new global partnership on effective development cooperation. Emerging powers including China and India have endorsed the document, a document that makes clear in its second paragraph that commitments that apply to traditional aid differ from those that apply to south-south cooperation, and that contains few clear and concrete commitments on making aid more effective.
For the glass half-full types, the conversation has been usefully broadened to consider issues that go far beyond aid and that involve new actors. Civil society had a seat at the table and the private sector was brought into the fold. For the glass half-empty types, the aid effectiveness gains that might have been achieved have been surrendered in the enthusiasm to broaden the conversation, or, perhaps, in the effort by some donors to avoid their aid effectiveness commitments.
ONE has been on the ground in Busan, pushing for greater transparency and accountability and a sharper focus on results. These issues – along with fragile states and engaging emerging powers – have been the primary issues discussed at Busan.
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Nov 8th, 2011 12:22 PM UTC
By Alan Hudson
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As negotiations heat up ahead of the Fourth High Level Forum on aid effectiveness (HLF-IV), many countries are keen to move beyond a narrow aid effectiveness agenda, bringing in a broader range of actors and issues in recognition of the changing development landscape. Emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil are becoming ever more important. The demand for Africa’s oil and mineral resources is growing, providing many African countries with new revenue streams. Traditional donors’ aid budgets are under pressure. And people are taking to the streets and the twitter-verse to demand more transparent and accountable governance, from north Africa to north America and beyond. However, broadening the conversation to include more actors and issues beyond aid, must not and need not be at the expense of clear, measurable and time-bound commitments on aid effectiveness.
At Busan, countries should make commitments to deliver and use aid in ways that promote transparent and accountable financing for development, and that focus clearly on results. This will put people and politics back in the picture, enabling citizens in both developing and developed countries to see what resources are available, how they are spent, and what results they achieve so that they can hold their governments to account.
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