Last month, I was privileged to help lead a workshop in Harare, Zimbabwe, for activists in the Publish What You Pay coalition, focusing on how data can get citizens a better deal from their oil and mining sector.
Through the "Open Data Extractors" project, campaigners from across the global coalition learn how new laws in the EU and the US are unlocking payment data from companies that dig for oil and minerals around the world.
When financial stories make the news, they usually come with a villain attached. People love the “Who” in the fight against corruption. Banks like Goldman Sachs become the Darth Vader of the financial crisis. Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson gets ousted when his offshore deals appear in the Panama Papers.
It’s much harder, however, to tell a story about systemic problems—the “What” and the “How.”
Over a thousand people who care about transparency in oil, gas and mining are gathered in Lima this week for the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Global Conference. Many of us are also involved with the Open Government Partnership.
This has me asking: are we doing enough to share between transparency initiatives?