The role of open data in fighting land corruption: evidence, opportunities and challenges

The rapid progress in digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) comes with both fresh opportunities and new challenges. Since the mid-2000s, the global land governance community has piloted a series of open data and transparency initiatives largely based on such digital innovations, aiming at increasing accountability and counteracting corruption in the land sector, both at the local and global level. By combining a desk-based review of the existing literature and data with a series of semi-structured interviews with a panel of sectoral experts, this study takes stock of more than a decade of interventions pioneering the use of open data to curb land corruption, and explores their impact, their achievements, the existing barriers and limitations, as well as potential ways to overcome them. While open data and transparency initiatives tackling land corruption – which is one of the key issues undermining the achievement of sustainable land governance – are reaching their maturity, their success and their ability to secure funding and investments in the near future still hangs in the balance, as it relies on the capacity to demonstrate, measure and track impact on the ground. This publication was commissioned and funded by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH – Anti-Corruption and Integrity Programme, on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development(BMZ). This study, awarded to the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development – University of Reading through a competitive tender process, was conducted by Dr Marcello De Maria and Niko Howa