manually input it into databases before it can be analysed. In short, open data is not always provided in a big data format. Governments, for their part, complain that the open data agenda is imposing a costly administrative burden and that the money might be better spent elsewhere. Does transparency pay? The costs might be less controversial if the evidence about the benefits was more certain: although it is often assumed that sunlight is the best disinfectant, there is little empirical evidence for or against this. Theoretically, transparency should help to improve accountability in two ways. First, it should increase the rate at which we detect any misconduct – or, indeed, incompetence and inefficiency. Second, transparency is expected to deter deliberate misconduct and encourage responsible behaviour, so that fewer cases of corruption occur (because individuals both in government and in business fear exposure and punishment, and hence modify their behaviour accordingly). However, it is difficult for researchers to disentangle these two effects, particularly when using data about corruption investigations or prosecutions as the outcome variable. If the rate of detection increases, the number of prosecutions of corruption will increase; it might thus appear that corruption has increased. However, if more cases of corruption are prevented this would mean fewer prosecutions of corruption. Thus, greater transparency might be successful in both detecting and preventing corruption, but this would not be easily discernible from the data. Much of the academic research has sought to evaluate the impact of transparency on governments, rather than companies. This work suggests that transparency only improves accountability where there is a supportive ‘ecosystem’ of checks and balances, including media freedom and active civil society organisations that help the public to analyse the disclosed data. That ecosystem is not in place in many Commonwealth countries. Hence the open government and open data agenda needs to be accompanied by more support for civil society, including training in how to interpret open data. Moreover, if irregularities are uncovered, the government needs to be ready to respond appropriately by initiating an investigation and, potentially, taking action if irregularities or misconduct are uncovered. Opening up government will not necessarily improve accountability if these other conditions are not present. A promising agenda Nevertheless, the promise of open data remains compelling. Some academics – primarily a team led by Mihaly Fazekas – have developed new ways of analysing public procurement contracts, for example, to identify areas of high corruption risk. Given that this is an area where vast amounts of public money are spent, and also a common site of corruption, efforts in this regard could help us to identify where public money is going astray. Another area where the interface between governments and the private sector is coming under scrutiny is the extractives sector, which has come under considerable pressure to improve transparency and, indeed, been compelled to do so by new legislation in the USA and the EU. In 2002 a group of global non-governmental organisations (NGOs) came together to launch the Publish What You Pay (PWYP) coalition. The group was concerned about the persistent ‘resource curse’ problem, whereby developing countries with large Op e n d a t a a n d t h e t r a n s p a r e n c y a g e n d a endowments of natural resources seem unable to convert those resources into economic growth or widespread improvements in living standards. The NGOs, in common with many development agencies and prominent thinkers, such as Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Collier, suspected that corruption was part of the problem. PWYP therefore sought to deter corruption by lobbying governments to ‘publish what they earn’ and companies to ‘publish what they pay’, in an effort to encourage honesty and improve public scrutiny. In the UK, the Blair government built on the PWYP philosophy to develop the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). This worked on the same principle of mutual disclosure followed by reconciliation of the two sets of figures, but put the onus on governments to sign up and then require companies operating in their countries to comply. This helped to overcome problems where companies argued that publishing what they paid would prejudice their relationships with government clients; the latter argument is still made in non-EITI countries. The initiative has proved surprisingly successful, with 31 governments now having undertaken the necessary reforms to achieve compliance. Many governments have come to regard the EITI as a way to boost their reputation with the international community of lenders and donors, helping them to gain debt relief or unlock aid. The more responsible global companies, meanwhile, claim that the initiative helps them to build legitimacy with local populations. With the EITI having achieved such success, some campaigners tried to further tighten the screws by seeking to enshrine disclosure rules for extractives companies in law. Thus, the Cardin-Lugar amendment of the US Dodd-Frank Act 2010, subsequently elaborated as section 1504, imposed transparency requirements on all listed oil, gas and mining companies, requiring them to disclose payments of taxes and other fees in excess of US$100,000 made to foreign governments. However, this apparent victory has yet to manifest as concrete rules. In July 2013 the DC District Court gave a summary judgment vacating this portion of the Dodd-Frank Act, with US District Judge John Bates stating that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had not adequately weighed other countries’ laws prohibiting disclosure of payments nor used its discretion in evaluating whether some information should be withheld from public release. In September 2014, with the SEC having failed to issue new rules, Oxfam America launched a suit against the SEC over the delay, but the law remains in limbo. In the meantime, however, the European Union has introduced similar changes as part of a review of its Accounting Directive; EU member states are now in the process of translating these into national laws. References Open Knowledge Foundation, 2014. Global Open Data Index webpage Open Knowledge Foundation. Available at: http://global.census.okfn.org/ Accessed 22 January 2015. Commonwealth Governance Handbook 2014/15 105 ELIZABETH DAVID-BARRETT is a lecturer in politics at the University of Sussex; prior to this she was a research fellow at the Said Business School, University of Oxford. Before returning to academia, she worked as a journalist and has written for several publications including The Economist and the Financial Times. She has also worked in political risk analysis and for London-based think tanks.
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