Establishing G8 Accountability: Still a Work in Progress
People around the world are demanding more openness from their leaders and their governments. They are calling for greater participation in public affairs and are searching for ways to make governments more effective, responsive, transparent, and accountable. There is growing recognition among governments of the importance of accountability and transparency as public policy tools that broaden access to, and increase the efficiency of, public resources and services both at home and abroad.
These trends are causing a growing number of countries to embrace accountability and transparency as important principles underpinning the Open Government Partnership. From the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness to the Busan principles, donors have stated that they consider accountability and transparency to be essential elements for ensuring that official development assistance (ODA) is spent wisely and effectively.
The G8 deserves credit for formally establishing an accountability mechanism, but in practice it is getting the concept of accountability only half right. Accountability and transparency go hand in hand. The G8’s persistent lack of transparency is troublesome and out of step with the expectations it places on other countries.
Summary of Recommendations
Continued U.S. leadership is essential to ensure that transparency – a fundamental principle underpinning the Open Government Initiative – is adopted as standard operating procedure by the G8 Accountability Working Group. Specifically, the United States should play a leading role in urging the G8 to take the following steps:
- Direct the Accountability Working Group (AWG) to collect input from international organizations, recipient governments and civil society to inform the preparation of the Accountability Report. International organizations should include, but not be limited to, the UN, its specialized agencies, the OECD Development Assistance Committee and the African Union. The AWG’s terms of reference for all future reports should include a requirement to make public a plan to collect input from the sources mentioned above.
- Mandate the AWG to initiate transparent practices by publicly identifying all G8 working groups, releasing their terms of reference, and the names and affiliation of all experts advising the AWG and its working groups as soon as they are selected. Meeting schedules for such groups and a detailed agenda should be publicly available at least 20 days before each meeting.
- Make public the AWG annual report 30 days before the G8 summit and release a schedule of future reports, with provisional topics, through 2015. Institute the same advance release and report schedule publication rules for future years.
