Dynamic accountability – building trust through nuanced transparency

We are proud to announce that one of our Members, Restless Development, won this year’s Bond Transparency Award!

Restless Development is a global agency for youth-led development which supports young people to demand and deliver a just and sustainable world for all. The organisation has been a Member of Accountable Now since 2015 and is highly involved in our People-Powered Accountability project (see our video on people power for social change).

In a recent blog post on Restless Development’s website, Perry Maddox – the COO of Restless Development and also one of Accountable Now’s Board Directors – explains ow the organisation is committed to taking transparency and dynamic accountability further.

Please find below a short extract and read the full article on Restless Development’s website.

“Dynamic accountability
Transparency can be a passive and rather low-impact exercise. Sure, openness is an important piece of the puzzle, but it risks being a one-way flow of information especially if that information languishes on a website or in a database unseen by those who might use it. The real goal is something we’ve been calling ‘dynamic accountability’. It means transparency becomes a two-way exchange of information, and that the act of being transparent brings in more voices into the leadership, governance and management of our agency, ultimately making our work better. (…)

Digital accountability

Inspired by an Accountable Now workshop on this theme, we have worked to use technology to bring more voices into our decision-making and programmes, from: live tweeting throughout our most senior meetings of global directors; to using our #WeAreRestless hashtag daily by both staff and volunteers to document the everyday internal workings of our agency; to leveraging social media platforms and SMS data to shape our response to the Nepal Earthquake and our nation-wide Ebola response in Sierra Leone. (…)”

You can get in touch with Perry on Twitter to share your thoughts on your approach to transparency.