A guest post from Duncan Edwards from the Making All Voices Count Research and Evidence Team.

Making All Voices Count is a governance programme which is exploring the role of technology in citizen voice, transparency and accountability. The relationships between citizens and state, whether in citizens making their demands known or claiming rights, is often mediated by intermediaries such as associations, civil society organisations, faith organisations and trade unions. Information is often part of the process in citizens’ efforts for gaining accountability and response from their governments.

The emergence of open data is opening up new opportunities for potentially huge numbers of citizens to be able to access, view and interrogate data relating to government performance and fiscal processes. It is important to understand how and why open data may be playing a role in accountability processes to try to maximise the potential of these new opportunities. For example, new forms of intermediaries and infomediaries are making data accessible and attempting to make it understandable and usable to different groups in society. But what is this open data intermediary role? Who is playing it? How do they perceive the role they’re playing?

The Making All Voices Count Research, Evidence and Learning component, led by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), will be releasing a call for research proposals in June 2015 where we will be looking to support research in a number of areas including trying to build a better understanding of how and why open data might be influencing change. You can read a sneak peak of the new Making All Voices Count Research and Evidence strategy here (published later this week) which explains the different research funding modalities and highlights priority research areas. Key areas relating to open data are likely to be questions relating to inclusion and exclusion, engagement in a time of technology, and different approaches to scaling transparency and accountability initiatives.

Although the Making All Voices Count Research Outreach Team will be meeting in the Philippines over the time of the IODC, we’ll be watching keenly for the conference outcomes, and hoping to see interesting ideas emerging for our upcoming research call.

You can find the full Making All Voices Count Research and Evidence Strategy here.

PS – Just a reminder, if you have novel ideas and proposals for innovation and scaling projects which are relevant to the Making All Voices Count programme you can submit them at any time at: http://www.makingallvoicescount.org/apply-for-funding/