{"id":71,"date":"2015-01-28T16:05:05","date_gmt":"2015-01-28T15:05:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatricemartini.it\/blog\/?p=71"},"modified":"2015-03-16T16:53:55","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T15:53:55","slug":"ftmtech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beatricemartini.it\/blog\/ftmtech\/","title":{"rendered":"On financial transparency and technology: notes from the Follow The Money workshop"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a>From BudgIT<\/a>\u2019s Abacha\u2019s Loot \u2013 Where are the returned funds?<\/a><\/i><\/small><\/p>\n

Financial transparency can make governments, companies, politics and citizens accountable for their actions and help us fighting corruption in our societies. But how can we design frameworks to create and strengthen a transparent ecosystem<\/b>? How can a multitude of actors with a diversity of professional backgrounds join their forces to learn from each other and build<\/b> such frameworks<\/b>?<\/p>\n

These were just some of the burning questions fueling the conversations of the over 100 people getting ready to join the Follow The Money workshop<\/a> taking place in Berlin on January 20-21. Organised by Transparency and Accountability Initiative<\/a>, the workshop aimed at gathering policy campaigners, NGO leaders, programmers, researchers, funders and activists from all around the world to encourage connections and collaborations between them, as part of a collective action within the Follow The Money network<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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I had the opportunity and honour to be invited by the workshop facilitators from Aspiration<\/a> and Fabriders<\/a> to join them in wrangling the gathering. In order to encourage openness and the sharing of information, the event observed the Chatham House Rule<\/a>: for this reason, this write-up will collect learnings which aim to be helpful as notes about what was discussed and inspiration for more reflections to come, but will not refer to identity or affiliation of the participants.<\/p>\n

Day 1: exploring our diversity, learning from each other and matchmaking<\/b><\/p>\n

Financial transparency is a wide field of activities, which can be the focus of organisations working in the field in very different ways. These can go from resource availability (tax, aid, extractives, illicit financial flows), to resource allocation (budgets, contracts) to results of the flow of public money.<\/p>\n

Having gathered a group of practitioners working on very different aspects within the domain, the workshop created the opportunity for a huge spectrum of opinions to meet each other in a space designed to welcome constructive and productive discussions (as well as legitimate disagreement, of course).<\/p>\n

For this reason, Day 1 kicked off with a spectrogram exercise<\/a>, to help participants learn about each other\u2019s differences, appreciate them, and encourage the group to start working on the ultimate goal of the 2-day gathering: exploring opportunities to align different points of view and experiences to join efforts and fuel positive change together. As also reported by Fabriders\u2019 Dirk Slater in his post about the workshop<\/a>, extreme and polarizing spectrogram statements such as \u201cAre our funders willing to be put under the same scrutiny as we are asking governments and corporations?\u201d or \u201cIs this just a movement for middle-class intellectuals?\u201d definitely set an excited and lively tone.<\/p>\n

After that and ready for more, participants split in groups focusing on knowledge sharing about the current state of work in various regions. Participants from Cameroon, Slovakia, Indonesia, USA, Ghana, Nepal, Israel, South Africa, Kenya, Europe, Latin America hosted stations framing the conversation around three core elements: what is working, challenges and needs, opportunities for collaboration.<\/p>\n