Interactive Tech Tools for Greater Transparency

This year-long initiative seeks to provide NGOs in the new member states of the EU (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Bulgaria) with web tools and strategies that will better enable them to promote transparency and good governance norms in their respective countries.

The core project activities include a training seminar in Prague, drawing together representatives from various NGOs in the region; pilot projects to test the strategies discussed at the seminar; the creation of e-learning resources; and a closing evaluation meeting in Riga to access the lessons learned over the course of the year.
For the program of the Prague workshop, held in May, and a list of the participating organizations, click here.

This project website will serve to display various new media resources (including instructional videos), monitor the pilot projects, and, most importantly, create a "marketplace of ideas" that will match participating NGOs with tech suppliers. Participating organizations are currently submitting their project ideas and statements of tech needs, all of which will be displayed on the project website.

We will then announce a contest open to anyone to come and solve one of those "needs" in the most creative/effective way using new media. We will promote the contest among tech startups and bloggers throughout the region.

Whether there are three big prizes to award at the end, or it's a multitude of smaller awards (or even payments for the work that is to be done) will be determined later on, depending on the interest from developers/the number of "statements of need".

We hope that valuable connections between the NGO and tech communities can be one lasting side-effect of this process, in addition, of course, to the pilot projects that should demonstrate how new media can increase the impact of organizations working in relevant fields.

This project is being run by Transitions Online (www.tol.org), a Prague-based media development organization, in cooperation with the Centre for Public Policy PROVIDUS (http://www.providus.lv), an independent, non-partisan policy institute working in the areas of criminal justice, education policy and anti-corruption policy in Riga, Latvia.

Generous support has been provided by:

• The European Commission
• The Trust for Civil Society in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE Trust)
• The U.S. Embassy in Prague