LV - Transparency and the Right to Information

     This post is a summary of two articles, the first one published at http://www.foresttransparency.info/, with the title above. The other, published  at  http://unpan.org/,  ( United Nations Public Administration Network ), with  the  title  of,     " Ethics, transparency and accountability."

        There is no commonly agreed definition of transparency, but there is a general consensus that it relates to the right to know and public access to information. In a broad sense, transparency is about how much access to internally-held information citizens are entitled to, the scope, accuracy and timeliness of this information, and what citizens can do if  "information holders" are not sufficiently forthcoming in providing such access. Excessive secrecy can undermine the quality of public decision-making and prevent citizens from checking the abuse of public power. This can have a corrosive effect on virtually all aspects of society and governance. Transparency, in terms of both information disclosure and dissemination is therefore very important as it better enables civil society to hold government to account, improve public efficiency and combat corruption.

         THE  BENEFITS  OF  TRANSPARENCY.

1 - Democracy, accountability and participation - the public is only able to truly participate in the democratic process when they have information about the activities and policies of government, and when people can see what benefits and services they are entitled to and whether they are receiving what should be expected. Access to relevant information can create a basis for exchange, allowing both official and the public to better decisions.

2 - Good governance - higher degree of clarity and openness about how decisions are taken can help to build the capacity of the poor to play a role in policy formulation, to influence decisions that affect their lives and to encourage policy-makers to exercise their power for the greater good.

3 - Increased efficiency and effectiveness - greater transparency is considered to be a key component of public policy and efficiency. Studies shown that in countries where information flows freely in both directions: the knowledge, when opens to public scrutiny can make government bodies work better. Effectiveness is improved, decision-makers need feedback on how policies are working in practice. Efficiency in the allocation of resources can also be improved, by ensuring that benefits of growth are redistributed.

4 - A weapon against corruption  -  as  noted  by  the  NGO  Transparency  International,   " information  is perhaps the most important weapon against corruption," since: guarantee access to information enables citizens, media and law enforcement agencies to use official records as a means to uncover cases of corruption and maladiministration, increasing the risk of detection of corrupt practices.

          Spreading democratization and globalization, among other factors, are altering the environment in which governments are operating. The explosion of new information and communication technologies is also allowing for a rapid, global diffusion of ideas and practices, enabling the public to demand higher standards of ethics, transparency and accountability in the public sector. These prerequisite values of good governance not only buttress responsive public policy and high level of public sector performance but also play a crucial role in preventing the onset of systemic corruption. There is now international recognition that corruption impedes economic development, undermines stability, erodes trust in public institutions and effects with  the lack or poor quality of essential public infrastructure and services. The division for public administration and development management supports setting international activities seek to preserve the integrity of honest public officials by putting into place an "ethics infrastructure" that not only provides guidance for good conduct but also administratively and legally punishes misconduct. The "ethics infrastructure" includes measures to enhance and preserve organizational integrity, access to information that promotes transparencyand accountability, and oversight by independent institutions and the public at large.

" The democratic process provides for political and social change without violence."

    Aung San Suu Kyi

"Educate  and  inform  the whole mass of the people, they  are  the  only  sure
reliance for the preservation of  liberty."          
Thomas Jefferson

" Transparency is for government and for big organizations, privacy is for individuals."

      Julian Assange

" The capacity of man for justice makes democracy possible, but the inclination
of man to injustice makes democracy necessary."
Reinhold Niebuhr

LIV - Brazil, Figuratively Speaking

         This post is a summary of two articles. The first one with the title above, published at http://www.guardian.co.uk/, on 14 June 2011. Written by Jean-Pierre Langellier. The second published at http://www.thedailybeast.com, on April 14, 2011. With the title of," One Sure Thing: Death to Taxes." Written by Mac Margolis. Maybe these articles help us to understand, why around two millions gone to the streets to protest in more than 400 cities. I think the awareness that the Brazilian people has done a lot for Brazil and its government is increasing, and that now it is time that the government and the politicians do more for Brazil and its people. What the protesters want become clear, they want their tax money wisely spend to promote justice, education, health, development and human rights. In short, a better country.

        As every editor knows, a writer should never inflict too many numbers on the reader. It can be downright bore. With this in mind, here is a little collection, gleaned recently from the Brazilian press, which may help to decipher a few local realities. Let is start with 30,000. That is the number of bills pending in Brazil`s congress, the legislative body in Brasilia, composed of 513 deputies and 81 senators. Among these dormant bills are 975 constitutional amendments awaiting ratification. There are also, 2,180 draft laws that have been vetoed by successive presidents. Technically, their fate should have been decided within 30 days of the veto. The federal delegates have mostly abandoned their prerogative of controlling the president`s accounts. No fewer than 12 budgets are still awaiting debate. The Brazilian congress has a singular talent for indecision. It is stifled by bureaucracy, and subject to clientelism. So the executive legislates, not the legislature. The constitution authorises the head of state to take "provisional measures." Itamar Franco, a former president concluded: " We are pathetic legislators." Brasilia has become one of the most expensive cities in the world, with São Paulo and Rio close behind. In Buenos Aires commuters can buy six subway tickets for the price of one in Brasilia. The list of goods and services costing more in Brazil than elsewhere includes clothes, shoes, medicines, toys and restaurants.  According to Forbes magazine, which tracks the geographic location of billionaires, São Paulo ranks before Los Angeles and Tokio. Sadly, there are more modest figures too, such as the percentage of illiterate adults. Illiteracy fell from 13.6% to 9.6% of the population between 2000 and 2010, but mainly among those under 20. Progress remains marginal among adults.

        Grousing about taxes is as old as Latin America itself. Resentment over the portuguese crown`s levy of 20% of the bounty from colonial gold mines fed a rebellion in Brazil. Two centuries later, little seems to have changed. While government in places like Brazil and Honduras have paid down their debts and deficits, they have often relied on tax hikes to do so rather than cutting spending. Now ordinary citizens and business leaders are striking back. In Brazil, a movement by middle-class taxpayers pushed Congress to strike down a $22 billion-a-year levy on banking transactions last December. The Brazilian rebels are now pressing to require vendors to reveal each of the cascade of levies that inflate the final price of goods and services. Each of these conflicts has its own peculiarities, but they all reflect the fatigue of citizens who see taxes as an excessive and growing burden. In 2006, Latin America`s overall tax burden of 18% of GDP is about 7 points below the global average from just over 12% of GDP in 1990. The tax bite is especially fierce in two of the largest economies. Argentines pay 30% of their earnings to federal, provincial and local taxes. Brazilians must work five months of the year just to honor their debts to the government, which takes 36% of the national wealth in taxes, against 25% in the mid-90s. The São Paulo chamber of commerce, which represent small and medium-size firms, created a "taximeter," that flashes the swelling national tax burden. Latin American companies pay 57% of their profits in taxes, which is higher than the world average of 52%, and far above Asia`s markets, where businesses pay 38%. Latin Americans might be more forgiving of such high taxes if the government are forced to feed returned the favor in public goods. But public investment lags behind that of Asia, and has fallen in the last decade to 5.1% of GDP, compared with 8% in Asia and Africa. "In country after country, roads are crumbling, railways are atrocious and ports are clogged," says Walter Molano, of BCP Securities, an investment bank. He add, "but instead of investing in infrastructure, governments have used their tax boom to increase public employment."

"Freedom is when the people can speak, democracy is when the government listen."

              Alastair Farrugia

LIII - The Trap of the middle class in Latin America

          This post is a summary of two reports. The first one, with the title above, published at http://www.ft.com/, on November 13, 2012. Written by Jonathan Wheatley. The other, with the title of, "New World Bank Report Find 50% increase in Middle Class in Latin America Over Last Decade." Published at http://www.worldbank.org/, on November 13, 2012.

        The World Bank publish a 200-page report on the rise of the middle class in the region. The economic boom has allowed tens of millions of people to migrate from their countries`s lower to middle incomes levels. But they also raise a big question: with incomes on the rise, why has so much else remained unchanged?

        At least 43% of all Latin America changed social classes between the mid-1990s and the end of the 2000s, and most of this movement was upward. Rising incomes are, of course, to be cheered. But the W.B. report also point to low levels of intergenerational mobility in the region: while people`s fortunes have improved, there are still enormous barriers to social mobility between generations. The children of poor parents still face daunting challenges making their way in the world. " We are measuring the extent of correlation between backgrounds of parents and achievements of their kids," says Augusto de la Torre, the W.B. chief economist for Latin America. " The correlation is very high in Latin America compared with other regions. Family background is much more important." Augusto describes this as a problem result of "self-sorting" behaviour. "Better-off families send their children to schools that less well-off families can not afford," he says "that is different from Asia, where public education is relied on by everybody." It is not just education. Better-off Latin Americans opt out of public health systems by buying private health insurance. They opt out of public security services by paying private guards. They even opt out of public electricity by buying their own generators." Gated communities are advertised that way," says de la Torre.The middle class tend to opt out, so the quality of public services becomes even worse." The situation is compounded by low levels of tax collection and, even where tax take is high, such as in Brazil, by low levels of spending on basic services. With few middle class costumers agitating for improvements, the quality of public goods, especially education, enters a vicious circle of decline. Such opting out is not an automatic consequence of a rising middle class. In the rest of the world, the W. B. found, countries where the middle class make up a large share of the population have better indicators of citizenship and a tendency to have stronger democratic institutions. How to bring about change? That is the big question. Augusto de la Torre says, " We need to study cases like Costa Rica, Uruguay and Chile. Public education in Chile is much better than in other countries in the region."

            The report found that some of the key factors favoring the upward mobility in Latin America were higher levels of education, higher employment in the formal sector, more women in the labor force, and smaller families. Around the world, a larger middle class mean better governance, deeper credit markets, and greater spending in social sectors such as public health and education. But this promise has not been fully realized for Latin America. The report concluded that the right set of reforms will results in the middle class becoming an increasingly powerful agent of change to expand prosperity to those left behind.

     Background - education, employability and social circumstances of a person.
     Make up - way in which something is formed or put together.

What Price Privacy

  This post is a summary of an article published at http://philosophynow.org/issues/66/, in 2008. Written by John Goff, creator of http://capcog.com/. The title is above.

         In recent years, worries about privacy have increased markedly. Many people have become aware that they are the objects of an increasingly intensive, process of commercial and political information gathering. Concerns about the surveillance of our movements, and about "data-mining", evoke an anxiety that our privacy is rapidly being eroded. It seems that privacy is now something that has to be justified rather than simply taken for granted. This job of justification falls in part to philosophy, to undertake the philosophical consideration of the meaning and significance of privacy. Privacy largely depends on our control over whether or not to disclose information about ourselves. The extent to which you wish to increase my transparency to you will depend on what you wish to know about me and why. However, you may also decide to spy on me without my knowing. An information predator, that is some person or agency who desires to obtain information about others, or to lower their privacy, will attempt to present information gathering as not involving a threat to privacy. This appears to have been one of the tactics behind the introduction of loyalty cards, for example. Given that there has been a large increase in information gathering, the question "why?" arises. This increase, we have been witnessed over the last 25 years or so has hardly been the result of an increase in simple curiosity about others. One possible answer is that this information has value to someone, and the value of this information is both economic and political. Personal information has economic and political value because it increase the predictability of the target individual or group. In a commercial context, it helps to reduce the incertainty about what that individual will buy or might consider buying. In others contexts, it might help to flag up individuals who could pose a political, criminal or social threat. Since that the valuable asset is information and you have made yourself more transparent, and thereby shifted the balance of power in favour of the information predator. But if such information is an asset, then whose asset is it? To whom ought this information belong? Suppose that every time that I leave my house my neighbour records the time I go and the time I return. Suppose also that my neighbour records the age, ethnicity, height, and so on of everyone who lives at my house. Suppose also that this neighbour sells this information, now imagine that some marketing agency wants to buy this information. Everyone might realises some profit from this information, except the source of this information. In other words, I am a source of value but do not share in the financial returns. Furthermore, not only do I not share in any returns, but also incur a loss of privacy. Should I be compensated for such a loss? Do not I have any claim on the profits accruing from this trade in my personal information? In so far as information is about us, we have an interest in it. In so far as we are a source of value, of whatever kind, we also have an interest in this value. A question then arises as to the nature of our claims on this value, and whether we can claim rights in relation to our personal information, including claims on any value, financial or otherwise, arising from it. I might make such claims on political, economic and ethical grounds. Privacy is a primary controlling factor in our relations with others. Whereas we can not control what others know about us and what is said about us, we can not control what be known about us. The effectiveness of personal data protection legislation such as European Union`s directive 95/46, should be assessed in the context of such an imperative. Furthermore, if there is an imperative to gather more and more information and to increasingly define individuals and groups, then individual claims to privacy begin to take on the form of a kind of dissent. A dissent which asserts not just a right to opacity, but also to a subjectivity that is neither defined by the information held about us nor accessible through it. The game of the predators of information is complex, but it has an overriding function: to define individuals according to information profiles so that they become increasingly predictable and malleable. The question of whether individual autonomy is thereby undermined, becomes a ethical question. Privacy, opacity, becomes a defence of subjectivity, of personal identity. What is their own is their being, presence, consciousness. A claim to privacy in which subjectivity prospers takes the form of dissent, life lived in opacity, beyond deliberate scrutiny. It is to aim to put ourselves beyond the information that is supposed to define us. Laying claim to the value bound up in one`s personal information may also be a form of dissent. Controlling information in this fashion, as an asset, may not only help us preserve our subjectivity, but also ground our power as citizens in the age of information, by us owning our own stake in its primary resource.