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Same Same But Different: Using Digital Platforms for Accountability in Education Sector When Corruption Is An Exception or A Norm

Social Movements
Education
Comparative Perspective
Corruption
Oleksandra Keudel
Kyiv School of Economics
Oleksandra Keudel
Kyiv School of Economics

Abstract

Corruption, along its other detrimental effects, limits access to education for underprivileged social groups, hollows out resources for education, and reduces its quality. Digital tools are increasingly used to induce transparency and accountability in the education sector to tackle corruption. This paper focuses on digital tools for transparency of school funds and performance. In particular, it explores the relationship between the type of corruption and the type of platforms that are constructed and employed depending on the context where corruption is an exception or an informal norm. The paper explores the function of transparency of school data on inducing vertical (electoral, social or market-based) or horizontal (performance-based and inter-institutional) accountability in education in two types of corruption context: where corruption is an exception (‘context A’) and where it is a norm (‘context B’) . Context A refers to polities with a functioning system of checks and balances that prevents systemic corruption over distribution of public goods, such as education. In the context B, corruption in the form of patronage and clientelism undermines political institutions and manifests through particularistic distribution of public goods. This contribution argues that where political systems can produce quality public goods (‘context A’), transparency of school data serves to inform individuals of policy priorities (by showing allocation of funds) and to facilitate public discussion of those priorities. Digital media thus become a vehicle to facilitate the input into a political system through means of vertical accountability. On the contrary, where political system does not provide reliable public goods due to malfunctioning mechanisms of accountability within the government (‘context B’), transparency is rather used to externally control implementation of (education) policy. Data portals with embedded social audit features can thus facilitate improvements on the output side of the political system by effectively substituting (malfunctioning) government agencies with citizens in the process of horizontal accountability. In other words, civic technology can help reduce corruption during policy implementation in context B by enabling citizen monitoring of service provision. In the context A, however, digital tools become a vehicle to collect user input, so that the very design of a policy or its process of implementation can be changed. The paper illustrates the argument by comparing the set-up, outcomes and impacts of digital initiatives relating to open school data in six cases. Four cases are comprehensive portals with data on school funding and performance, which include citizen feedback modules: Australia (‘My School’), Moldova (‘Scoala Mea’), Mexico (‘Mejora tu Escuela’), and the Philippines (‘CheckMySchool’). Two are cases of re-use of open government data to track school performance and funding: UK (‘Guardian GCSE schools guide’) and Paraguay (NGO-monitoring of school funds in Ciudad del Este). Based on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) scores, Australia and the UK are examples of the Context A (CPI>50); Moldova, Mexico, Paraguay, and Philippines – of the Context B (CPI<50).