A second guest post from Mike Mora of the Organization of American States.

Open data has been an active area of interest in Latin America and the Caribbean for a few years now – of course the Data Revolution and the Open Government Partnership (accounting for 17 of the 35 Latin-American countries) have been important factors behind its progress. In my previous blog entry for the #IODC15 (“not going out of business”, Open Data: the vital role of learning and collaboration), I talked about the need for government authorities to embrace the open data agenda through peer-to-peer government collaboration and leadership. I reflected in the work of the Organization of American States (OAS) for the advancement of eGovernment, public procurement, and open data through 3 particular networks (RedGealc, INGP and ILDA).

This blog entry is dedicated to elaborating on the particular aspects and experiences that have made the work of the Electronic Government Program of the OAS and its partners in building government leadership successful through these networks. We hope this sheds light and sparks fruitful discussion in this action track, as it seems highly possible to build on these experiences.

Aware of the imperative need to work in co-construction of public policies and citizen-centric services delivery, the OAS and partners such as IDRC and IDB target capacity and leadership building activities to a broad but complementary range of audiences: youth (our next generations), young professionals and experts, local governments, and top national authorities.

Audiences and activities to strengthen leadership in government by the OAS:

1. Training: Knowledge transfer is essential and more difficult to deliver to decentralized governments. The OAS through the virtual campus has trained over 16,000 public officials throughout the Americas. Graduates not only become more prepared to make government more transparent, effective, and participative, they also become multiplier agents.
2. Fellowships: New generations have always had a hard time fitting in. The OAS generate
   s spaces to expose those brilliant youngsters to current public administration trends and, by doing so, prepares them to become agents of change. That is the case with The OAS Fellowship on Open Government in the Americas launched in 2014. This program seeks to create a network of young leaders who can spark change in their countries and who contribute to promoting the principles of open government in their respective regions. A similar program was also implemented by the OAS for young professionals working as liaison officers on eGovernment between the national offices of eGoverment and the Inter-American Network of eGovernment (RedGealc). Two of these liaisons officers continue to support RedGealc from El Salvador and Peru to date.
3. eGovernment at the local level: Countries’ needs are wide-ranging, and national governments can take advantage and make every effort to work in partnership with their local governments peers to strengthen national capacities. eGovernment at the local level has shown to yield quick and good results in areas such as tax collection, planning, and civic engagement, to name a few. MuNet’s methodology, (Efficient and Transparent Municipalities – for its acronym in Spanish) sensitizes mayors while strengthening technical capacities. Cases such as the Municipality of Patzun in Guatemala have shown to have a remarkable positive impact for greater citizen participation. The mayors’ leadership has been a key ingredient for these achievements, and now many other municipalities – and mayors – are following suit.
4. Networks: From youngsters to local governments, OAS Networks also scaled up the profile of participants by engaging Directors of key national agencies. More specialized networks within the networks take the form of working groups, such as RedGealc’ open data working group. These groups have proven to be instrumental in the implementation of activities such as the Inter-American Open-Data initiative –ILDA or the support to the Regional Open Data Conferences (CONDATOS), or participation in the Open Data Working Group of the Open Government Partnership.
5. Ministerial Meetings: Bringing together Directors hosted in RedGealc and Ministers, ministerial meetings taking place every two years are the highest representation of leadership of government authorities dealing with issues of electronic government and the open data agenda. The ministerial meetings close our cycle of directly strengthening leadership in government on open data. After the ministerial meetings, other OAS hemispheric political bodies kick-in to agree on more complex resolutions and declarations; these are the General Assembly of the OAS (gathering Ministers of Foreign Affairs) and the Summits of the Americas (gathering Heads of the State). Check up on government leadership in open data at the III eGovernment Ministerial Meeting of the Americas held in Cartagena, Colombia in December of 2014.

There are a few elements and other ingredients that we have found to be strategic and effective in bringing government authorities up-to-speed:

Strategic aspects when strengthening leadership in government through networks:

• Working consistently with a homogeneous group of authorities and stakeholders. This allows us to maintain perspective and stablish more meaningful work plans. For example, the OAS has focused on working with the General Directors of national government institutions responsible of eGovernment, Public Procurement and Open Data, for 10 years now. We believe that the Directors are strategic and key actors in engaging upwards, in policy issues; engaging horizontally, with other public institutions and partners; and also engaging downwards, with their technical teams.

If the top institutional national authorities do not engage, it is going to be difficult to embrace progress across the board. When working with local governments, for example, if the mayor does not engage to adopt eGovernment, his/her technical teams will also hardly do it, or simply not as expected, thus having very limited impact. For the OAS, sensitizing of mayors is a priority of its methodology within the MuNet Program.

• Working on real issues; real needs and challenges.Conferences, workshops and other noble knowledge exchange activities are commonly underused, and sometimes improperly tailored. In our drive to impress audiences, we tend to forget that more than “sending public officials to mars and back”, our true goal should be offering knowledge to support their real-time challenges, instead of trying to impress them. Measuring well the type of activity and/or level of knowledge exchange and support is a key ingredient.
• Acknowledge excellence in public administration. Generating incentives can motivate and encourage government authorities. Excellence takes effort, time and tears. Acknowledging progress through the issuing of awards is a very good way to stimulate government officials to push their own limits; especially if recognition is not already culturally embedded within the country public administration. The OAS continues to recognize the efforts of those public officials and institutions bringing about real leadership and progress in the Americas. Year after year we have seen a fast-growing number of public officials from countries of the Americas entering the various OAS awards contests by implementing very innovating ways to accelerate progress in government. Awards categories range from innovation to leadership. In the end, awards given at a regional level have not only a personal or institutional beneficial effect, they also quietly set higher standards, as someone has to “raise the bar”.

Effective aspects when strengthening leadership in government through networks:

• Focal point: This means being a reference and a resource, even when there are changes on government and institutional leadership. We have observed that networks are a good way to re-engage countries when changes occur. Networks also serve to retain some institutional memory in those cases when good initiatives tend to get lost through government changes. Networks encourage continuity through peer-to-peer exchanges. Finally, centralized thematic knowledge facilitates learning. Think google: networks of government authorities want to be the “search engine” for its members. This means they avoid becoming obsolete – stay valid.
• Seek to simplify among the multiplicity of efforts: Month after month, you can find authorities more frequently complaining about their time constrains. Authorities –especially those with outstanding records – are trying to find the best ways to get 2 seconds out of 1, and to stretch budgets to attend the multiplicity of well-intended invitations and initiatives. Duplicating efforts needs to be avoided. Coordination – which also entails crowdfunding – will only strengthen the size and meaningfulness of initiatives to improve leadership capacities in government. Also, less influx of the very same thematic activities at different times by different sponsors will allow authorities to have a more clear understanding of the different eGovernment and open data ecosystem.
• Know your audience and diversify the portfolio of activities accordingly: Oftentimes we lose track of who-is-who in government. Keeping good track of this state of affairs allows networks to be a timely dialogue platform for government officials and to articulate with a little more precision their activities. Saving time and funds will largely depend on the effectiveness of knowing your clients to perfection.

Regardless of the good work and achievements described above, the region has a long and challenging road ahead. I would reiterate that the OAS looks forward to continue building multi-stakeholder partnerships for the strengthening of leadership in governments in the Americas for the advancement of open data, at all levels.

Share your thoughts in the comments below…