13 research outputs found
Corruption, transparency and a role for ICT?
Civil society’s struggle against corruption has as a major element, (alongside the enforcement of the law and structural reform of public institutions), the introduction of transparency in place of the obscurity and secrecy in which corrupt practices thrive. Various levels of corruption can be distinguished from each other. They include the wholesale corruption of politicians, governments, higher administration and the business sector, in which society is made a prey for the personal enrichment of the powerful few. At the other extreme there is the petty corruption of public officials, which may almost be seen as a substitute for proper payment for employment in the public service. This acts as an extra tax or set of fees for services, falling disproportionately on the poorer members of society and disadvantaging them in competition for scarce resources and inadequately funded services. Transparency has many elements: open government, with access to official forums, and institutions that respond to the citizen; freedom of information laws; protection of public interest disclosure (whistleblowing); a free press practising investigative journalism; and a lively civil society sector campaigning for openness of all these kinds. The poor are frequently portrayed as helpless in the face of corruption. Nevertheless, campaigning organisations in developing countries see transparency as an important component of a process of empowering the poor to shake off the burden of illegal financial demands. Various mechanisms including the use of ICTs to introduce greater transparency are being explored. ICTs are democratic media with ease of access, comparative ease of use, great data capacity and the immediacy of swift updating. The poor are, however, also the information poor with limited access to ICT. Means to overcome the difficulties of using ICTs for the benefit of the poor, introduce increased transparency into their dealings with public institutions, and thus weaken the hold of corruption, are being explored in a group of projects in developing countries in a programme managed by OneWorld International
It's not cricket: laws of the game, or guidance on ethical reflection for information professionals in Western Europe
The game of cricket is played according to a set of laws, but even more important
than these is a consciousness of unwritten principles of conduct that is expected to
inspire the cricketer. It is argued that the maturity of ethical guidance available to
information professionals can be assessed by examining the same two elements. Some
examples of codes of ethical conduct for information professionals from Western
European countries are examined for suggestions as to whether they either seek to
prescribe lines of conduct, or to encourage ethical reflection and well-considered
decisions by individual professionals. An approach to developing systems of guidance
on professional ethics based on codes of ethics, but incorporating case study material
and the codes of other relevant associations, is suggested
The poverty of librarianship: national library services of anglophone Africa in the post-independence era
The poverty of librarianship: national library services of anglophone Africa in the post-independence er
The political economy of information: Malawi under Kamuzu Banda, 1964-1994
Among information professionals generally there is a kind of bright optimism about the power and
potential of information. This says, in effect, 'only provide information sufficiently and that will be
enough'. Students will study better, citizens will live in a more secure and happy way, businessmen will
maximise the effect of their investments, and governments will plan and administer in a rational fashion.
The optimism goes further, to the point of arguing that as libraries hold information, they are sources of
the power that information can unleash. Bacon's dictum that 'Knowledge itself is power', is taken in a
very literal sense by the promoters of libraries: as if there were few, or even no, serious obstacles to the
operation of this principle.1 When forced to explain why libraries are not more obviously effective
sources of power, lack of funds and indifference by government are most commonly cited. It is as if a
little more money and a little more attention from those in authority would change everything.
In fact, if the contention that information is power were reversed to say 'Power is information' it might
better reflect reality. From this perspective, only what is generated by power relations has the status of
information, and only through the exercise of power is the effect of information achieved. This draws
attention to the underlying political economy of information: the ways in which power defines
information, delimits it, governs its availability, pre-structures is effects. For the purposes of this essay,
information is defined in a very broad way as: facts and ideas communicated. The term political
economy is used in its more modern sense as: the study of the interrelation of economics, government
and policy.2 Because the political economy of information can be seen in particularly stark outline in the
context of developing countries, this essay concerns itself with Malawi under Kamuzu Banda
Social intelligence for developing countries: the role of grey literature
The necessity for social intelligence, broadly defined, to inform decision-making in developing
countries is apparent as globalization places increasing demands on governments, nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), parastatals, and business corporations. Yet the existing
information systems of developing countries suffer from a range of problems which afflict all
three main elements: documentary services (libraries and information centres), statistical
services, and management information systems (including records management and
computerized systems). Grey literature is vital to each of these three systems, either as the
partially-processed product of the internal information generating capacity of the country itself,
or in the external scanning process. Information professionals have tended to concentrate on the
technical problems of acquiring, listing, indexing, retrieving and alerting potential users to
documents. this largely ignores questions about the capacity and propensity of the targeted users
to absorb information, however well it might be organized by information systems. An
examination of the decision making process in a selected country (Malawi) and a case study of
planning for technology transfer (from Kenya) are used to illustrate these problems and the role
of intelligence. A range of structural and nonstructural constraints on the absorption of
information is identified. The conclusion is that the problems of existing information systems can
only be relieved by information professionals further processing and refining the information
content of grey literature so as to present it to the decision-makers in the form of intelligence
reports
Understanding cultures, and IFLA's freedom of access to information and freedom of expression (FAIFE) core activity
The sheer difficulty of entering into the minds of people from different cultures is
frequently undervalued, when it is exactly the differences between modes of
perception, belief, communication and behaviour that are significant. The need in
information and library services for multicultural communities is often described as if
it is solely for members of minority communities to be able to obtain materials in their
own languages and cultural traditions. The assumption is that existing services
provide all that is necessary for them to begin to understand the host community. A
more considered view would stress the need for access to richly informative resources
so that all members of a multicultural society can move towards a deeper
understanding of each other. IFLA’s FAIFE initiative may seem to be simply a
campaign against the suppression and censorship of information and communication.
In fact its implications go much deeper and have a close relationship with Kay
Raseroka’s IFLA Presidential theme for 2003-5 ‘Libraries for Lifelong Literacy’.
True free access to information is skilled and discriminating access that enables the
searcher to locate, identify and interpret information. This is access unhindered by
prejudices, misconceptions and inadequate competences. FAIFE’s role in facilitating
removal of restrictions, combating suppression of information, fostering rights of
access and supporting the development of information competences in all
communities and in the information professionals who serve them, is potentially a
major contributor to the enhancement of fair and harmonious relations in multicultural
communities
Historical source materials and their use
The collection represents twelve years' preoccupation with the questions
of finding sources, understanding them and using them. It takes history
in a broad sense to embrace sub-disciplines like history of economics,
history of libraries, and the historical approach to economics itself. [Continues.
Finding the grey in the blue : transparency and disclosure in teaching
Police services have traditionally valued the ability to work without ongoing public
scrutiny of their investigations and operations. They can very reasonably cite the need
to avoid alerting criminals to police activities that might result in their arrest and
charging with offences, the need to protect police and witness safety, and the frequent
need to act swiftly and decisively without obtaining special approval from relevant
authorities or endorsement from public opinion. This necessary lack of disclosure
concerning many police operations has often extended into a general lack of
transparency regarding police activities and expenditures, to the extent that, in many
countries, the police services are regarded as unaccountable and unconcerned with
how public opinion perceives them. In such a climate, police corruption and arbitrary
exercise of police power flourishes. This paper addresses the creation of a policing
environment radically different from this through the introduction of transparency into
policing in the UK and the consequent revelation of layers of grey documentation and
data. The paper makes use of official documentation and case studies of selected
British police forces to show how the culture of policing is being changed. The
principles of open government, scrutiny, and disclosure with a view to establishing
accountability, are in the process of becoming institutionalised in the UK right across
government, local government, other ‘public authorities’ and the business and nongovernmental
organisation (NGO) sectors. The UK Human Rights Act 1998 sets the
context, and a legal framework for this transparency is provided by the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 and, to some extent, the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998.
The press and civil society are consistently using these mechanisms to call those with
political and economic power to account. It has become apparent, even in sectors
formerly as concerned with avoiding openness as the police service, that pro-active
disclosure is the best way to meet public expectations. Police services now respond as
a matter of course to freedom of information requests, organise a range of meetings
to provide information and answer questions (from local officers’ meetings with
community groups through to major budget consultative meetings with citizens’
panels), and participate in public and semi-public enquiries into aspects of the success
or failure of police programmes and operations. The case studies in this paper will
explore the opinions of key players in this process and draw attention to the grey
information that is becoming available as a consequence
The chain of information provision in the villages of Malawi: a rapid rural appraisal
The chain of information provision in the villages of Malawi: a rapid rural appraisa