A Pivotal Partnership that Created a Vibrant Community

We are back on Medium! In this reflective post marking our return — and the 20th anniversary of Development Gateway — three Open Gov Hub leaders from Global Integrity talk about the value of thematic co-working, and how it transcends the physical space in downtown D.C.

FUN FACT: Global Integrity (GI) and Development Gateway (DG) co-founded the Open Gov Hub in 2012.

Visit our blog page at: https://opengovhub.org/blog

Nathaniel Heller — Current Vice President & Managing Director, Geneva Global; Co-Founder, Global Integrity; DG Board Member:

The idea for what eventually became the Open Gov Hub began when I ran into a colleague in the open government community at a conference in Lima, Peru. We hadn’t seen each other in months despite being professional allies and collaborators… and yet he worked roughly five blocks away from where the Global Integrity office was (at the time) in Washington, DC. “This seems a little inefficient,” I reflected to myself, and the rest, as they say, was history. An OGH Happy Hour in 2013 From that little moment to a more formal lunch with roughly a dozen potentially interested groups at Global Integrity’s then dingy office space caddy-corner from today’s Open Gov Hub location on Vermont Avenue, a number of us began to coalesce behind some of the core design principles that have always been central to the hub: gather the best organizations working on open government and citizen engagement under one roof; help them improve their physical plant and operating infrastructure by sharing costs across the many organizations; and make the thing financially sustainable from day one without a dime of outside donor subsidy.

While much has changed about the hub since we first opened its doors, those core tenets still hold true. Critical to getting the Hub off the ground was Development Gateway, whose old office space on G Street between 18th and 19th was reconfigured from a traditional office setting to the open floor plan and collaborative environment that we know the hub for today.

Development Gateway’s leadership at the time, including Jean-Louis Sarbib and Stephen Davenport, took a huge leap of faith in allowing their office to be repurposed to host an entire crazy community they barely knew. But those leaders and DG had foresight. They understood that by linking up with peers in a collaborative fashion rather than viewing them narrowly as competitors for a limited pot of philanthropic funding, they could accelerate DG’s transformation into the world-leading “data for development” non-governmental organization that it is today. I’m quite confident that without having had the courage to fully embrace the hub concept and its community, DG wouldn’t have evolved into what it now is.

Alan Hudson, Global Integrity Executive Director:

I joined Global Integrity in April 2014. I was living in the UK at the time, but — with the Open Gov Hub having been one of the things that lured me away from Brighton, England — I was very happy to be in Washington D.C. on the very first day that the current Open Gov Hub (version 2.0) opened its doors. With Nathaniel still at the helm for Global Integrity throughout 2014 and Tina Crawley doing a great job of helping the community to make the new space its own, I settled into life at Global Integrity, moving to DC in September 2014.

I took over Nathaniel’s role at the start of 2015, and, along with developing a new strategy for Global Integrity, the most important thing I was involved in during that year was hiring Nada Zohdy as the new Director of the Open Gov Hub. Everybody on the interview panel was excited about the prospect of having Nada take on this leadership role and we were thrilled when she accepted our offer. The Open Gov Hub, and Global Integrity, have been very lucky to have Nada lead the community over the last five years. The commitment, creativity, and community-building skills that Nada has brought to the role have been truly exceptional.

Nada Zohdy, Open Gov Hub Director:

The Open Gov Hub has continued over the years to be a jointly managed partnership of Global Integrity and Development Gateway, with former DG CEO Jean-Louis Sarbib playing a very key Hub advisory role for many years and passing the baton to Josh Powell who has actively engaged more recently.

Since 2015, we’ve grown the Hub’s member network, programs and operations in a wide variety of ways. Our membership has more than doubled, now up to 50 member organizations and well over 300 people as active members who collectively focus on over 100 countries worldwide. In 2016, we developed the Hub’s first-ever strategy and we continue to implement an evolved version of it today. Our strategy structures our efforts to maximize resource sharing and collaboration across the network and helps to provide a clear shared vision and organizational structure, while maintaining room for ongoing adaptation and for supporting the strategies and priorities of individual member organizations as they also evolve.

And we’ve certainly kept Open Gov Hub a buzzing place! We have consistently averaged about 3 events per week, totaling over 150 per year, with over 10,000 visitors annually. The Hub team has grown too, and continues to strive to foster the Hub as a world-class meeting place, where on any given day you have the chance to meet someone new you might collaborate with, and learn something new to enhance the social impact of your work.

Over time, we’ve learned that collaboration can take many forms — shared staffing referrals and arrangements have become the single most common form of collaboration (and are a testament to how much organizations trust each one another to help them improve their number #1 resource — talent). But collaboration has also taken the form of joint events and programs, joint fundraising proposals, sharing/joint use of research and data, and more, with connections facilitated and supported by the Open Gov Hub team.

The emergence and expansion of our Global Network of Affiliate Open Gov Hubs in other countries is another significant highlight. This formally began in 2014 with the first affiliate in Nepal, and our partner Accountability Lab has played a leading role over the years expanding the network. In 2019, we secured this program’s first grant funding (from the Open Society Foundations) to formalize and expand the support we provide like-minded civic innovation hubs in other countries. The network now includes 13 hubs across 5 different continents! We look forward to deepening this work to scale up the impact of the Hub well beyond Washington, D.C.

Despite all the growth and successes, we of course face challenges as well, especially today in light of rising authoritarianism around the world (which we designed the Defending Democracy program in response to), and of course the COVID-19 pandemic. The fundamental way people connect and work — in person and virtually — is rapidly changing, and we are doing our best to adapt and evolve in response. After almost 5 months of Stay at Home orders, no single member organization has left the network, which is a testament to how much members value the Open Gov Hub beyond our physical coworking space.

Whatever challenges we face, we will continue to lead with our values front and center — openness, collaboration, learning, and innovation — because working together continues to be the best way to address collective social challenges, in our backyards and around the globe.

Global Integrity and Development Gateway are co-founders of the Open Gov Hub in Washington, D.C.

This blog was originally posted on the DG website, as a part of their 20th Anniversary celebration. Read more about how they grew over the past two decades in this blog series.

This rich study visit from March 21-25 provided an immense number of opportunities for the delegation to participate in dialogue and exchange with a wide variety of US and international organizations. Their program was filled with exchanging ideas, building skills, and learning from diverse counterparts.

Program Goal #1: Facilitate exposure to global open government good practices from various national and international organizations, and peer learning between participating mayors to improve their governing and citizen engagement practices.

The mayors from the 13 municipalities across Albania openly shared about their challenges and eagerly listened to ideas and suggestions from all those they met. The opportunity to also talk openly about this issues amongst themselves also proved beneficial to the mayors to see their commonalities in challenges.

One outcome from such conversations was the Albanian Association of Municipalities. (which co-organized this program with the Open Gov Hub) committing to helping the mayors speak with one, stronger collective voice in deliberations about decentralization with the Albanian national government as well as the US Embassy in Albania and other key stakeholders.

Another highly productive aspect of this program was the interaction with the United States government. In fact, this meeting was the first time ever in which US State Department representatives directly met with a group of Albanian mayors, to explore how to improve bilateral cooperation.

The mayors also held meetings with representatives from the following organizations who are leaders in the development, open government and global diplomacy:

Feedback Labs, Development Gateway, National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, Partnership for Transparency and the Embassy of the Republic of Kosovo.

Program Goal #2: Connect mayors to business leaders and others from the Albanian diaspora in the US to help attract diaspora investment and partnerships to support their municipal economic development projects.

While in DC, the mayors explored partnerships with the Albanian diaspora as well to build bridges of cooperation. This included Albanian-American business people who expressed their interest in economically investing back home; however their number one concern in doing so was the fear of their funds being wasted through corruption. This provided an additional incentive for the mayors to continue to tackle corruption in their own municipalities back home, due, in part, to the greater opportunity for investments.

The visit also included time spent at the Albanian Embassy with Albanian Ambassador to the US Floreta Faber and her team.

Program Goal #3: Help mayors learn from Washington, D.C. and neighboring cities/municipalities in Virginia and Maryland about how they offer public services efficiently and effectively to their communities, transparency and accountability practices, and explore international cooperation.

Some highlights of these local government meeting included a visit to their counterparts in Arlington County government. They head from Arlington’s Head of Transportation about Arlington’s evolution over the last 50 years from a typical post-WWII American suburban city to a leading model of smart growth that integrates multiple transportation modes for its citizens, reducing traffic and reliance on cars, and increasing quality of life and property values for residents, which has translated into a growing population for Arlington (which also means a growing tax base).

Program Goal #4: Pilot a new Introduction to Open Government training that the Open Gov Hub has just developed, based on the many visiting international delegations it has hosted for brief visits over the last few years.

Open Gov Hub conducted a training for the mayors in global open government good practices and offered a variety of case studies to inspire, kickstart and inform their own open government reforms (from citizen monitoring, to ensuring the delivery of textbooks in the Philippines, to open data portals used to help stimulate economic activity and entrepreneurship, and more). To complete the training, the mayors created their own Open Government Action Plans, setting reform priorities over the next 1 month, 6 months, and 1 year, with concrete steps for implementation.

Overall, this study visit established connections with a wide variety of partners for ongoing collaboration relating to future study visits, virtual exchanges, and knowledge sharing for this group of mayors who are committed to make opengov reforms locally.

Open Gov Hub plans to replicate this study visit for other international delegations. If you would like to get in touch with us about participating or helping organize such a visit, please do so at info@opengovhub.org.

Originally published at opengovhub.org.

Ambassador Floreta Faber, the Albanian Ambassador to the United States, opened the program with welcome remarks. She highlighted the many steps Albania has taken in recent years to promote open government and combat corruption, through their membership in the Open Government Partnership and beyond. Some of these efforts include a regular series of town halls across the country in which ministers and other high-level officials regularly connect with citizens and hear their grievances, and recent e-consular program that makes it easier for Albanians in the diaspora to obtain legal documents and a variety of other services online. She stressed that Albania’s current top priority is judicial reform, and encouraged all open government advocates to consider what lessons can be learned from Albania’s efforts, and how to support its ongoing progress toward more open, transparent and accountable governance.

Next, the Director of the Legal Department (Control of Standards, Implementation and Ethnics) of Albania’s Supreme Audit Institution (in Washington on a study visit delegation) Ermal Yzeiraj offered his perspective and examples of their successes and challenges in this work. In the last five years, Albania’s SAI has been very proactive in the fight against corruption, referring an impressive 266 cases to the courts (about one case per week). However judiciary itself, which should be an objective arbiter, is itself often politicized (hence the need for judicial reform), and so does not always take action on the evidence of ethics violations or corrupt behavior that the SAI provides. He offered a few specific examples of cases they have raised to the courts, such as one instance in which a municipal official used government funds to procure an expensive, high-end Range Rover vehicle, ostensibly to be used to transport water pumps. When scandals like this are uncovered, the SAI will also inform the media in order to inform the public. Yet in this difficult political environment, the SAI struggles to find allies and works to maintain its own reputation of impartiality and objectivity. He referred to a report by Transparency International assessing the integrity of Albania’s institutions, which ranked the SAI highest and concluded that many courts are subject to political influence.

Then Tonita Gillich shared remarks from her personal perspective, as Assistant Director and a financial crime compliance specialist at the Government Accountability Office (GAO — the United States’ own Supreme Audit Institution). She noted how GAO indirectly addresses corruption through developing tools that identify vulnerabilities to fraud and corruption in government. For example, she shared their Fraud Risk Framework Tool, which is used by staff in and out of GAO to prevent, detect, and assess fraud. Tools like this help promote a risk management mentality, which is key in preventing corruption. One striking example of fraud GAO uncovered was a case where a judge redirected over 6,000 Social Security disability claims court cases to his bench in which he ruled on them without any hearings and directed all affected individuals to a specific attorney in exchange for kickbacks. The attorney made over $8 million in the process, and these cases involved over $550 million in disability benefits from the Social Security Administration.

Gillich then discussed two critical ways in which SAIs can collaborate to enhance their ability to tackle fraud and corruption. The first is by having SAIs from different countries collaborate with each other, and the best platform to do this is the UN-mandated International Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI). She has participated in an INTOSAI working group that has developed a variety of anti-corruption tools, such as coordinated guidelines across countries to enable asset recovery for countries with kleptocratic leaders. Finally, Gillich explained how civil society organizations and SAIs can work together toward shared goals. For example, the Natural Resource Governance Institute presented their Resource Governance Index to a group of SAI representatives at an INTOSAI meeting, and this enabled the SAIs to integrate the resource governance index findings as they assess risks to fraud and corruption in natural resource management.

Matt Murray then provided comments and moderated the discussion based on his diverse experiences in anti-corruption, including his current work advising the Independent Joint Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee of Afghanistan. This institution is supported by international donors and authorized by the President and Parliament in Afghanistan to implement anti-corruption efforts there. Its focus is to raise both the “supply” and “demand” for combating corruption by informing the public to put pressure on government to mitigate corruption, while also helping modernize government processes to minimize vulnerabilities to it. Their main tool is a Vulnerability to Corruption Assessment, and this institution itself may evolve into becoming Afghanistan’s SAI. He asserted that fundamentally, SAIs should provide information required for citizens to demand quality public services from their governments.

In the discussion, Gillich explained how here in the US, the Inspector General tackles corruption cases more directly than GAO, unlike what seems to be the case in Albania. Panelists also discussed how civil society organizations can pick up the findings from SAIs and use those in their advocacy efforts, helping to ensure that recommendations are actually implemented. Yzeriaj also discussed the value of a simple visual dashboard that could track and illustrate each year the progress various ministries have or have not made in implementing recommendations from the SAI, to increase accountability in implementation.

All agreed on the importance of maintaining the independence and impartiality of SAIs in any country, and forging partnerships across other parts of government as well as civil society to ensure implementation of efforts to mitigate fraud, ethics violations and corruption.

Originally published at opengovhub.org.