Transparency is key in holding governments accountable to their stated commitments
The Open Government Partnership — a global partnership of 74 countries and over 150 local governments — defines transparency as a state in which “government-held information (including on activities and decisions) is open, comprehensive, timely, freely available to the public, and meets basic open data standards (e.g. raw data, machine readability) where formats allow.” This definition may be expanded to private sector organizations receiving public funding or performing public functions.
When governments and companies disclose data and information on their environmental, climate and social impact in a way that is verifiable, timely and easy to access and understand, civil society and other stakeholders can identify where they may contribute or where improvements need to be made. Transparency is an important first step in building trust between governments and their societies, as well as between governments.
Importantly, transparency must be accompanied by accountable delivery on commitments for trust levels to be durable. Evidence also shows that transparency is most effective in leading to government accountability when the information made accessible supports political engagement, impacts voting behavior or otherwise shifts political incentives in favor of the public interest.
Broad progress in government transparency measures, but gaps remain
Over the past few decades, access to information laws, open data practices and other forms of institutionalizing transparency rules have proliferated around the world. These wider efforts are evident in the climate and environment space, such as through open data portals on subnational climate action and national climate finance transparency portals, as well as through multistakeholder initiatives such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.
The broader governance community has produced knowledge from decades of experience in transparency and open data efforts that should prove useful to practitioners and advocates focused on climate and nature governance. For instance, GovLab and Omidyar have derived lessons and recommendations from several case studies on the impact of open data, such as the need to be responsive to users, address specific policy problems, identify risks, build necessary capacities and be adaptive to evolve over time. Transparency efforts often become political, and other researchers have found that the data most useful for citizens seeking to challenge corruption or push for government accountability may not be collected or published.
The indicators in this shift are all directional, with an increasing trend indicating improvements in transparency and access to information. While there are no specified global targets or timeframes, effective civil society participation and public trust can only be built if these key measures of transparency show rapid improvement.
This system does not include enabler and barrier indicators, as we assume the outcome indicators in governance enable shifts in other systems.