Technical Innovations Report

This paper considers the changing relationship between institutions and citizens. It contributes this to the rise of popular technology... ordinary people can now create, contribute to and access information resources easily.

This changing set of circumstances presents a unique opportunity for the international development community. We can now harness the power of a disintermediated public sphere in order to close the feedback loop between donors and recipients of aid. This will introduce a step-change in efficiency and agency.

To take full advantage of this opportunity, the international aid community must re-imagine itself as a publisher of “open data”: raw, reusable data sets published in standardised, interoperable and open formats.

Read the full report to find out that:

• The relationship between citizens and institutions is changing.
• Thanks to rapid innovations in communications technologies, citizens can now “be the change they want to see”.
• Institutions respond to this change best when they recognise their strength as data providers.
• Early examples of institutions adopting this strategy are encouraging.
• The international aid community now has a unique opportunity to take advantage of these trends.

Download the report here.