The Open Development Technology Alliance (ODTA) is a knowledge platform aiming to give voice to citizens and improve accountability by offering ways to provide feedback on public services. It provides knowledge products, links experts with projects and facilitates the development of and dissemination of information and communications technology (ICT) tools. This will help to make governments more accountable for the public services they provide.
 
We provide direct support to World Bank operations to ensure that the lessons learned, communities engaged, and experience from tools deployed can be used to inform others around the world with similar needs.
 
Partners
The ODTA platform is an initiative anchored by the World Bank. We are also leveraging a number of partnerships with private sector partners, governments and civil society organizations, ranging from Development Gateway, Civic Commons and IBM to governments of South Korea and Singapore.
 
How We Work
We are finding new ways to use knowledge, people, and tools to enhance accountability and improve the delivery and quality of public services through using mobile phones, interactive-mapping, and social media—what we call technology-enabled citizen engagement.
 
Knowledge
In partnership with the Transparency and Accountability Initiative, we gather expertise to produce original research on technology for open development. We invite public feedback through an open review process on all of our research, including:
• Open Government Data and Social Accountability
• Informational Capabilities: The Missing Link for the Impact of ICT on Development
• Technologies for Transparency and Accountability: Implications for ICT Policy and Implementation
• The Role of Crowdsourcing for Better Governance in Fragile State Contexts
 
People
We are convening networks of global experts and leading technologists available to consult on projects. Communities of Practice:
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Tools
We seek out tools that promote transparency and civic engagement. Our partners are facilitating the creation of ICT tools from idea to pilot, and sharing them for use in the field. We are designing a software development toolkit to make citizen-targeted software applications more useful and accessible. This will help promote both bottom up ideation and prototyping with networks of developers and make applications available to World Bank clients.
Explore and recommend tools »
 
Areas of Focus
We focus on four areas of open development:
 
• Citizen feedback for public service delivery. Connecting citizens and service providers in a collaborative partnership by establishing ICT-enabled mechanisms that enable citizens to provide direct feedback on public services received and support suppliers of these services to publicize and respond to this information.
• Participatory decision-making. Harnessing ICTs to help local governments or public service delivery agents involve citizens in key decision-making activities such as budgeting, prioritization, and allocation of service delivery.
• Participatory monitoring. Facilitating citizens and/or independent third parties such as civil society organizations to use ICTs to conduct monitoring of local public services (e.g., supervise projects, validate services, etc.) in order to increase transparency and support accountability.
• Open data / open government. Making freely available datasets regarding government and/or organizational activities, such as financial data, openly accessibly to the general public via ICT-enabled platforms.
 
Activities
We have initiated a number of activities to develop sustainable models of engagement with external partners. Learn more at our Initiatives page. Some recent activities include:
 
• Dar Es Salaam Community Urban Mapping
• Mobile-Enhanced Participatory Budgeting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Water Hackathon
• Kenya Open Data Initiative
• Moldova Open Data
• Citizen Participation and Feedback in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil