Capability: Integrity & accountability data literacy

The following indicator is under consideration for this pilot edition of the Barometer: To what extent are there dedicated capacity-building programs to improve data literacy among anti-corruption and accountability organizations, including media, civil society, government ethics offices, and independent institutions?

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Question sub-components

Show/hide supporting questions

Existence

• There is evidence of dedicated programs or other forms of training to improve the literacy and capacity to use this kind of thematic data.
  • No
  • Partially

    Supporting questions: Please briefly explain and provide supporting evidence.

  • Yes

    Supporting questions: Please provide supporting evidence.

Elements

• There is evidence of programs or other forms of training to improve the literacy and capacity of public officials to use this kind of thematic data. (No, Partially, Yes) Answer 'partially' if you find evidence of training that addresses literacy and capacity related to other kinds of data and that is sufficiently transferable for the skills to be applicable for this kind of thematic data as well.

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please briefly explain and provide supporting evidence.

  If Partially or Yes: Do these efforts focus largely on a particular type of data? If so, what type?

  If Partially or Yes: Is there evidence of literacy efforts being designed to address inequities related to gender or membership in a marginalized community?

• There is evidence of programs or other forms of training to improve the literacy and capacity of members of civil society organizations to use this kind of thematic data. (No, Partially, Yes) Answer 'partially' if you find evidence of training that addresses literacy and capacity related to other kinds of data and that is sufficiently transferable for the skills to be applicable for this kind of thematic data as well.

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please briefly explain and provide supporting evidence.

  If Partially or Yes: Do these efforts focus largely on a particular type of data? If so, what type?

  If Partially or Yes: Is there evidence of literacy efforts being designed to address inequities related to gender or membership in a marginalized community?

• There is evidence of programs or other forms of training to improve the literacy and capacity of members of the media to use this kind of thematic data. (No, Partially, Yes) Answer 'partially' if you find evidence of training that addresses literacy and capacity related to other kinds of data and that is sufficiently transferable for the skills to be applicable for this kind of thematic data as well.

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please briefly explain and provide supporting evidence.

  If Partially or Yes: Do these efforts focus largely on a particular type of data? If so, what type?

  If Partially or Yes: Is there evidence of literacy efforts being designed to address inequities related to gender or membership in a marginalized community?

• There is evidence of programs or other forms of training to improve the literacy and capacity of youth to use this kind of thematic data. (No, Partially, Yes) Answer 'partially' if you find evidence of training that addresses literacy and capacity related to other kinds of data and that is sufficiently transferable for the skills to be applicable for this kind of thematic data as well.

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please briefly explain and provide supporting evidence.

  If Partially or Yes: Do these efforts focus largely on a particular type of data? If so, what type?

  If Partially or Yes: Is there evidence of literacy efforts being designed to address inequities related to gender or membership in a marginalized community?

• There is evidence of programs or other forms of training to improve the literacy and capacity of researchers, academic and other, to use this kind of thematic data. (No, Partially, Yes) Answer 'partially' if you find evidence of training that addresses literacy and capacity related to other kinds of data and that is sufficiently transferable for the skills to be applicable for this kind of thematic data as well.

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please briefly explain and provide supporting evidence.

  If Partially or Yes: Do these efforts focus largely on a particular type of data? If so, what type?

  If Partially or Yes: Is there evidence of literacy efforts being designed to address inequities related to gender or membership in a marginalized community?

• There is evidence of programs or other forms of training to improve the literacy and capacity of members of the public to use this kind of thematic data. (No, Partially, Yes) Answer 'partially' if you find evidence of training that addresses literacy and capacity related to other kinds of data and that is sufficiently transferable for the skills to be applicable for this kind of thematic data as well.

  Supporting questions (conditional)

  If Partially or Yes: Please briefly explain and provide supporting evidence.

  If Partially or Yes: Do these efforts focus largely on a particular type of data? If so, what type?

  If Partially or Yes: Is there evidence of literacy efforts being designed to address inequities related to gender or membership in a marginalized community?

Extent

• How comprehensive or representative is the training assessed for this question?
  • The training assessed is available to one or more communities, but there are many other communities without such training.

    Supporting questions: Which community or communities does this training cover?

  • The training assessed is available to one or more communities and is representative of the kind of training that can be found for all, or most, communities.

Definitions

Definitions and Identification

Simply generating and publishing integrity and accountability data isn't sufficient to make it useful and usable—for data to be both useful and usable, there need to be people who are equipped with the knowledge and tools to use it.

Literacy programs and other forms of capacity-building may be run by, and addressed to, various communities, professions, localities, and populations.

This indicator examines the extent to which there exist dedicated efforts to improve knowledge and skills around integrity and accountability data.

Examples include:

• Transparency International EU's 2018 DIGIWHIST Workshop on Big Data and Procurement;
• Land Portal's 2019 Workshop on Land Data and Information in East Africa.

Research Guidance

Start by searching the websites and event listings of organizations that you know engage with data issues, government offices dedicated to data or statistics, and educational institutions at different levels. Assess if they offer capacity-building programs around data use and then if those programs explicitly draw from data tied to anti-corruption and government accountability. As an alternate approach, you might search the internet more broadly for workshops, hackathons, talks, and other capacity-building programs; in this case, try using keywords related to political integrity matters, procurement, company information, etc.

Starting points

• Search:

  • Websites and social media of civil society organizations that handle integrity and accountability data for formal webinars or training programs in using the data; informal invitations to collaborate through "citizen science" type programs; hackathons or programming "boot camps" that feature integrity and accountability datasets.
  • Government statistics offices and data portals.
  • Course catalogs of colleges and universities, as well as local community education systems, for classes that involve understanding and using integrity and accountability data.
  • Public broadcast programs with educational components.
  • Professional journalism organizations and civil society organizations focused on data issues for "data journalism" training that focuses on or uses data concerning anti-corruption or government accountability.

• Consult:

  • Officers of civil society organizations who use integrity and accountability data.
  • Researchers and teachers in the fields of political science, government, law, business, computer science, data science, critical data studies, and education.
  • Journalists who use integrity and accountability data in their reporting, about both what they know of training that is currently available and where they received their own training.

National and sub-national considerations

In some countries literacy programs and capacity-building efforts are unevenly distributed, either because they have been established by individual states, regions, or cities, or because they are associated with particular centers of education or civic activity.

To assess countries where training efforts are unevenly distributed, researchers should select the strongest examples of practice, and then indicate how widespread of a practice these examples are.

Indicator Justification

SDG 16 calls for governments around the world to "promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development; provide access to justice for all; and build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels," with targets 16.3, 16.4, 16.5, 16.6, 16.7, and 16.10 focusing on specific matters of integrity and accountability. Similarly, the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) commits countries to combat corruption in both the public and private sectors.

Data about political finance, procurement, company information, land ownership, and similar matters can be useful tools for combating corruption and ensuring accountability—tools, moreover, that when made publicly available can be used by a range of actors, including journalists, civil society organizations, government ethics offices, and independent institutions. However, generating such data isn't in and of itself sufficient—for actors to meaningfully use data, they must also have sufficient data capabilities and skills.