[bestbits] The elephant in the room?

[Becky Lentz]

Dear BB and JNC colleagues,

Reading BB list posts over the past two days re the tension/debate about
accountability feels toxic/uncivil (at least to this reader anyway),
unless that recurring conversation can actually Œgo somewhere¹ beyond
periodic disagreements about what is/isn¹t civil society and what
transparency and representation ought to mean, or doesn't mean, to various
participants. What is remarkable, imho, is how BB has managed to find ways
to work together when it is strategically useful to do so despite all of
the obstacles to collaboration that clearly exist: the elephant in the
room. Yet, while that doesn¹t seem problematic to some, it does to others
if they are seeking to change the very values/principles that drive the
work itself. 

For what it¹s worth (knowing that those with longer histories doing this
kind of work most likely have encountered such tools as well as critiques
of them), here are some links that might be considered by BB¹s executive
committee, and for that matter, the JNC¹s leaders, if either is
potentially interested in taking its own model of collaboration to another
level in the IG/digital rights field and beyond. In fact, the IG/digital
rights field could take on actually providing other fields with a model of
how to navigate these tensions, if addressing Œthe elephant in the room¹
were also considered an equally important Œpart of the work¹ alongside the
very necessary research/advocacy/organizing work already going on.

The tools in this resource uphold four accountability principles.
Implemented at various key institutional and research processes, they aim
to improve accountability relations between organisations and their
stakeholders: http://www.oneworldtrust.org/apro/about and
http://www.oneworldtrust.org/apro/about/using_the_tools.

This may also be of interest 'Does it matter Who Funds You?¹
http://www.oneworldtrust.org/blog/?p=579

Becky Lentz
McGill University