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I have subscribed to GVO’s feeds for a long time.  They are a great resource for finding out what the world thinks about ideas or finding great voices in a given place.  They are now working with researchers to find out how transparency can be leveraged for social change.  This is fantastic as far as we’re concerned and we wish them luck in the research.  An excerpt here.

Last month The Economist published a useful overview of how governments, geeks, and activists are coming together to make politics more transparent, elected officials held more accountable, and citizens more involved in shaping debate and policy. To illustrate their point The Economist pointed readers to the Sunlight Foundation based in Washington DC, Britain’s data.gov.uk, New Zealand’s data.govt.nz and MashupAustralia, a competition organized by Australia’s “Government 2.0 Taskforce” to encourage the development of applications that make effective use of public data to improve governance.

It makes a great deal of sense for The Economist to focus their attention on the US, UK, New Zealand, and Australia; all four countries have relatively high rates of internet penetration and their federal governments have shown a commitment to publishing government data in machine readable format, which can then be analyzed and re-used on websites with interactive visualizations. But what is happening in other countries around the world where, for example, citizens might be more concerned about police bribery than campaign finance reform? Over a three-month period eight researchers and eight research reviewers from Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, South Asia, China, and Central & Eastern Europe will document around 40 case studies of technology projects that aim to promote transparency, accountability, and civic engagement. Every two weeks we will publish an overview of their last eight case studies with the goal of promoting conversation and coming to a deeper understanding of how technology can be used to improve governance in developing democracies.