Can Data Analysis Strengthen Dialogue Between Civil Society and Governments?

Issue: EITI, Training

Country: Albania, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Eurasia

In 2013, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) adopted a new standard that would, among other things, help civil society organizations (CSOs) communicate and collaborate with government on extractive sector issues, especially in regions with weak dialogue among stakeholders.

One of those regions is Eurasia, which has a number of EITI implementing countries. The EITI international board determined that the situation for civil society in Azerbaijan, the first-ever EITI compliant country, was unacceptable, resulting in a recent downgrade of the country's EITI status from compliant to candidate. Albania passed national legislation in support of EITI, but CSOs are concerned about the actual level of transparency and accountability around extractives. Ukraine has not been able to prioritize EITI during the conflict with Russia that started more than a year ago. Mongolia's national currency, the tugrug, depreciated 17.2 percent in 2014 alone. This decline, coupled with optimistic expansionary policies and Mongolia's dependence on Chinese imports, has led to double-digit inflation for the past three years running, and consequent hardships for many. Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan have also faced problems related to the extractive industries.

Despite these challenges, the region has already published three reports based on the new EITI standard. Albania was among the first to complete its 2012 report last September. Kazakhstan presented a very comprehensive 2013 report, with lots of new information. And Azerbaijan has prepared a draft 2013 report. Other countries were tasked with completing their reports by the end of 2015. It is expected that these reports will yield an increasing amount of new data for CSOs, potentially serving to strengthen their dialogue with governments.

As Daniel Kaufmann, president of the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), mentioned at a regional EITI data analysis workshop in Istanbul, “Technical data is very important, since it allows CSOs to engage in discussions and debates.”

The workshop was the region's first based on NRGI's new methodology to help stakeholders evaluate EITI data and also other sources. Partners included the EITI international secretariat and representatives of Publish What You Pay, with presentations on EITI strategy, as well as regional advocacy opportunities.

As organizers of the training, NRGI staff worked to increase participants' knowledge of licenses and contracts, strengthen their data analysis skills, and also mitigate future gaps in EITI reports in countries where reports have not yet been published. In a session on analysis of license allocation processes, NRGI's senior governance officer Erica Westenberg explained how the Natural Resource Charter poses a helpful series of questions on natural resource governance as a way to use EITI data to assess government policies along the decision chain. In other presentations, NRGI's Eurasia director Galib Efendiev and I taught about 35 CSO activists, multi-stakeholder group members, and representatives of parliament and extractive companies from seven Eurasian countries to analyze data related to state-owned enterprises and government receipts from the extractive sector.

In the process, these participants formed groups to examine the reports and case studies and apply the new methodology. They also met in country groups to discuss action planning and regional advocacy, discovering a number of common problems and working toward solutions for all countries.

New report data disclosed under the new EITI Standard, paired with deep and accurate data analysis, will advance CSO-government-company dialogue and open doors for new discussions and debates. The next step will be the analysis of existing EITI reports and multi-stakeholder discussions around gaps.

Fidan Bagirova is NRGI's Eurasia senior officer.