Access to Information: ADB’s New Approach
by
Jeffrey Hiday
Director General
Department of External Relations
At the 39th Annual Meeting
4 May 2006
Hyderabad, India
Good afternoon. I am Jeff Hiday, in charge of external relations at the ADB, here with Bart Edés, head of our NGO center, whom I sure you all know quite well by now.
We are all here in Hyderabad because we care about poverty. Reducing poverty, I think we would agree, depends on effective development. And effective development requires good communication.
I’m here to talk about some steps ADB has taken to ensure more open communication.
You may be aware that one year ago, ADB’s Board of Directors agreed to replace two policies – an information policy and a disclosure policy – with one. The new public communications policy, or PCP, sets out strategies for both disclosure and external relations more generally. It took effect at the beginning of September last year.
As head of external relations at ADB, I am prepared to answer any questions you may have about ADB’s approach to external relations and outreach. But this presentation will focus on how you can access information from ADB – what your rights are under the policy, what can you expect to see online about ADB-supported projects and activities, and how you can get the information you need.
In other words, we’ll focus this afternoon on ADB’s new rules regarding information disclosure.
There are three key objectives for increased disclosure:
- The first is to support participatory development. If consultation and participation are to be meaningful, the people you are consulting need adequate information. The PCP spells out which documents we disclose, and how. It doesn’t tell ADB staff precisely when to consult or how much participation is necessary – but it does directly support participatory development.
- The second objective – transparency and accountability–reflects our obligation as a publicly financed institution to be publicly accountable. We now post our administrative budget, and other financial and administrative information, on the website for transparency reasons. We respond to requests for information we hold –from anyone, for any reason.
- Finally, we have a relatively new knowledge management framework, and the PCP supports it. Decision-makers here in India should be able to learn from the experience of development projects in Indonesia. We need to spread the word about lessons learned.
For ADB, the PCP is a quite radical departure. It might be worth spending a few moments to draw comparisons with the 1994 disclosure policy.
For a start – and you can find this in paragraph 28 of the policy – there is now a serious presumption of disclosure. This was true in theory with the 1994 policy. But it applied only to a short list of documents, mostly after decisions had been made.
There were no implementation arrangements, and no monitoring mechanisms. Staff were not trained, and we found they interpreted the policy differently. We still have some exceptions, of course, which I will describe shortly, but they are more narrowly defined.
Another change: Instead of waiting until we get requests, we are proactively making information available on the web. The PCP requires, for example, that staff discuss with governments the contents of various reports while they are being developed, so that public disclosure is not delayed.
There is also more information available. When developing the policy, we looked at all of the documents ADB requires to be produced during the operational cycle and determined whether they could, as a general rule, be disclosed, and when. The result is a very comprehensive list of operational documents in the policy’s strategy section.
You’ll find more emphasis today on people we consider primary stakeholders – those directly affected by projects. We require that mission leaders ensure information is given throughout the project cycle, and that mechanisms are in place to enable them to give feedback to the government and ADB.
And regarding the Board of Directors: Any document going to the Board must be disclosed unless it meets the exception criteria. Staff used to be able to designate a document “confidential” without justification. Now they would have to base such a decision on the PCP’s exceptions, and the President would have to approve that decision, and the Board notified.
The very beginning of the PCP says that when something must be made “publicly available,” it means it has to be posted on the website. We recognize that many people who need information about ADB-supported activities cannot access the web. The PCP calls for other dissemination methods. It uses the terms “available to affected people” – which means it must be in a form, manner, and language accessible to them – or “available to in-country stakeholders.”
Beyond the web, the main means we have of communicating with such people is through our field offices, or through direct contact in communities where projects are physically located.
While we try to be proactive in making our information public, we still invite requests for documents and information which have not been automatically disclosed. Write to us – the email address is disclosure@adb.org – or call or visit the office in your country.
We have strict timelines and procedures in place for responding to requests: We acknowledge receipt within five business days, and respond to the request, or fulfill it, within 30 calendar days. Whatever requests we get, we post on our website – including how long it takes us to respond.
You can also sign up at our website to receive notices whenever new documents of any sort are posted.
You’ll recall the key policy statement in the PCP is: “In the absence of a compelling need for confidentiality, ADB shall presume disclosure.” Let me review a few of the exceptions. These are in paragraph 126 of the policy.
A few examples: personal information about bank staff or Board members; analysis of country creditworthiness and credit ratings; confidential business information; information which if disclosed would be likely to endanger the safety of any individual; the source of a corruption allegation.
As I said, these are much more narrowly defined than in the 1994 policy. You may still think they are too all-encompassing. But we have found in implementing the policy that the incidence of withholding operational information has been significantly reduced.
Staff are proactively working with governments to identify those parts of the documents that meet the criteria, and are only removing the confidential information, while leaving the rest of the document intact. This process of redaction is perceived as onerous, so staff are motivated to simply disclose the entire document.
Also, the really big change is that the document owners cannot simply remove information without that information falling within one or more of these criteria.
Now, we have a fairly continuous life cycle for projects, and I’ll try to take you through some of the points during which we disclose information.
The earliest foundations of a project are laid in the strategy for a particular country. There are many assessments conducted for a country strategy and program, known as a CSP. These cover environment, gender, governance, poverty, economy, and the private sector.
Draft CSPs themselves are now made available both at an early stage of drafting and at a later stage, as a full draft, with the programmatic elements included.
The only specific translation requirement in the PCP is for CSPs, if English is not widely used in that country. We are in the process of developing a translation framework which covers other document types. We expect to post that on the web, and send it to you for comment next month.
The next step is project preparation. We post something called project information documents, or PIDs.
ADB has traditionally posted summary information on loans and technical assistance projects, or TAs, used to prepare loans. But this information – in the form of a “project profile” – was generated by a computer system used during project preparation, and not hand-touched. Staff did not always complete all the fields in the computer system, or keep the information up to date.
The project information documents, on the other hand, contain more information and can easily be searched on the web, by country or sector, example.
They are either written or edited by project mission leaders – not system generated. The information is much more complete and up-to-date. And mission leaders get email alerts every quarter to update their PIDs. We’ve now loaded over 300 PIDs for projects under processing and are working to post 150 more.
We’re also adding information to them, such as implementation progress, status of meeting the loan covenants, and progress toward meeting the development objectives.
While the reports and recommendations of the president that describe the proposed loan in detail are not required to be disclosed before Board approval, the PCP does allow for their disclosure. And it requires that the components that go into forming the RRP be disclosed at the earliest possible stages.
Before the PCP took effect, ADB was already very transparent in the safeguard areas – environment, involuntary resettlement, and indigenous peoples. What is new now is that we require the draft resettlement and indigenous peoples plans to be posted on our website before appraisal, in addition to being disclosed locally.
ADB usually prepares a project through a grant-financed TA, and recruits consultants to develop feasibility studies or other reports. In most cases a consultant report is produced. These were the most frequently requested types of documents under the 1994 policy, and ADB has determined under the PCP that they will be disclosed in their final form.
For public sector operations, there are no significant changes in the disclosure rules following project approval. As I mentioned earlier, RRPs and TA reports are disclosed after approval – at the latest – and drafts may be disclosed.
Legal agreements for public sector loans used to be disclosed only upon request, but we now post them on-line.
For private sector projects, an abbreviated form of the RRP (without the non-public business information) is now disclosed. We are the only MDB doing this.
We used to be weak in releasing information during loan implementation. Now we call for all documents normally produced to be disclosed.
I’ve already reviewed the disclosure pertaining to TA consultants’ reports and how the project information document will “grow” considerably during project implementation. Perhaps I can mention just a few other documents that may be produced during loan implementation.
Project Administration Memoranda, which we call PAMs, are developed by breaking down the RRP and adding the roles and responsibilities for executing agencies and implementing agencies. This is new – they didn’t used to be disclosed.
I also noted how ADB has traditionally been very transparent in disclosing social and environmental information during project design and preparation. We now do the same during implementation. When borrowers or project sponsors submit us monitoring reports on social or environmental issues, we post them on the web.
Any Board papers that approve a major change in project scope are now disclosed.
Likewise, for program loans that are disbursed in multiple tranches, ADB now generally discloses the report that goes to the Board to approve the disbursement. There have been two cases thus far where they have been withheld.
ADB continues to disclose project completion reports, and evaluation reports produced by the operations evaluation department.
We heard a lot from external stakeholders about the need to disclose more information on private sector operations. Many stakeholders asked us to subject private sector operations to the same disclosure rules. The PCP does cover both sovereign and non-sovereign lending. Here are the main areas where the disclosure rules differ:
The PID for public-sector projects is posted very early, as soon as a concept paper has been cleared. PIDs for private-sector projects are posted after Management determines that ADB will bring the proposal before the Board. This is no later than 30 days before Board consideration.
There is an additional requirement for private-sector clients – we make sure they have a plan for engaging with affected people throughout the project cycle.
In all cases, non-public business information that would harm the competitiveness of the private sector sponsor is removed from documents before disclosure.
Let me turn to Board operations. There are four main changes.
First, the Board meeting schedule is online for the forthcoming 21 days, and it is continuously updated. Some other MDBs only post a new calendar every month or so. Second, minutes are now are disclosed. Third, more chair’s summaries are produced and disclosed, including for all CSP and policy/strategy discussions. And fourth, more committee reports are now being posted.
ADB’s administrative budget, and work program and budget framework, are also disclosed now for the first time.
If a request for a document is denied, there are two ways to appeal the decision. One is the Public Disclosure Advisory Committee: If you believe your request has been unreasonably denied, you can make your case in writing to this committee, which is chaired by the bank’s managing director general. The second method would be to appeal to the bank’s Special Project Facilitator.
In the first eight months of the PCP, we’ve made good progress. We’ve trained all operational staff on the new disclosure rules, and set up the Information Disclosure Unit, or InfoUnit, to support staff and monitor for compliance.
An IT system has been put into place to help staff manage the disclosure of documents, and for us to monitor the process. Email alerts remind staff of deadlines.
Statistics about compliance will be included in the first PCP annual report, due out in the fourth quarter.
I realize many of you work with other organizations and project-affected communities that need to know about these issues. And I’d encourage you to please spread the word, and consider how you can help get information to those who need it most.
Our head of information disclosure, Cindy Malvicini, expects to travel to several places throughout India and conduct similar seminars as this one – perhaps in more detail! – on the PCP in early June. These will be held in New Delhi, Bhopal, Mandalore, Bangalore, and Calcutta. We would welcome your attendance at these sessions.
As I said at the beginning, our efforts are all about poverty reduction, which depends on effective development, which depends on open communication.
I hope you’ll agree we’re on the right track. Thank you.
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