A new website [2], launched in December 2009
What is Public Online Monitoring
Public Online Monitoring is an approach to bring development projects into the public realm. Public Online Monitoring improves access to project information and to facilitate communication among project stakeholders using an online platform.
OpenAid [2] is a German NGO based in Hannover created in order to make Public Online Monitoring reality.
Public Online Monitoring has four key elements:
1) Detailed information about individual development projects, online, easy to find and easy to understand. This element is the realm of the International Aid Transparency Initiative [3] (IATI), of the AidDATA [4] project and of donors. OpenAid lobbies for more transparent aid information in German aid agencies.
2) Sector specific online guidance for civil society stakeholders on issues critical to monitoring (e.g. common sector specific forms of corruption).This guidance should support non-experts to ask critical questions and encourage stakeholders to monitor projects in their home area.
3) An online forum for stakeholders to meet, to exchange information, to voice concerns, to defend interests, to discuss policy. Such a forum can should involve local project management, donors, local government and politicians, local media representatives, local NGOs and citizens. It can also involve interested citizens from other countries, development experts and taxpayers in donor countries.
4) Linking up the online forum to people without access to the internet through an involvement of local radio stations and newspapers, creative use of mobile phones and through local NGO activities.
