Hi Maria. Can you hear me? Hi Maria. Can you hear me okay? My name is Susan Abbott and I'm with Counterpart International and today we are very delighted to welcome you to our session for the Global Democracy Coalition Forum on Can Social Accountability Rebuild Democracy from the Ground Up? I'm very pleased to be doing this today very much in the spirit of collaboration and partnership. Our session kind of came together in a very serendipitous way. We are joined today with a wonderful lineup of panelists and respondents and I'll turn to each of them to quickly introduce themselves and where they're working and then we will launch right in to our discussion. Our session today is co-organized by Counterpart and the Accountability Research Center at American University and also wanted to give a big thanks to Nick Benekwista at the Center for International Media Assistance who's one of our respondents for also helping to put this together. So without further ado, I'm going to just let you know that we're going to ask you to please put your questions and comments in the chat box. We hope to have a really fruitful chat. Feel free to introduce yourselves. We're going to go through our kind of run of show or our program and key discussion questions, and then work towards a Q&A at the very end, and also to collect from folks any ideas that they might have for a year of action that we can, you know, talk more about as we proceed along. Without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Naomi and then the other speakers just to quickly introduce themselves. Thanks so much Susan. I'm Naomi Hussain. I work at the Accountability Research Center that is co-organized this with Susan. It's great to see so many of you here and some people I know and some names that I know, so I'm really thrilled. Looking forward. Great, Christian. Hi, I'm Christian Aranda. I work at the Counterpart International, a senior governance advisor, and I work mostly in the Middle East, North Africa and West Africa on local governance and accountability issues. Thanks. Excited for this discussion. Great. Ahi. Hi everyone. My name is Ahi Dakul. I work with Accountability Lab Nigeria as the program I'm learning manager and excited to be here. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Andrew. Hello, my name is Andrew Lavalie. I work in Inveralium and I'm the executive director of the Institute for Governance Reform. We just established eight years ago out of a need to bridge the gap between the knowledge and policy. Social accountability is quite an experiment that we have been doing. We happen to be one of the grantees of the GPSA. I'm happy to be here to share experience. Thank you. And we have Maria. Hi, thank you, Susan. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining. I am Maria Barron. I'm from Argentina and I head an organization called Directorial is this like evil and for a week or so more. I am the co-chair of the steering committee of OGP together with the government of Korea. Thank you. Great. And we have two respondents, Nick. Yeah, thanks, Susan. Hi, everyone. I'm Nick Benakrista and I'm the senior director at the Center for International Media Assistance, which is a small research and learning unit focused on media development issues. And SEMA is situated at the National Endowment for Democracy, which is a congressionally funded NGO that supports journalists and human rights activists and other proponents of and supporters of democracy around the world. Thanks. Wonderful. And finally, Craig Hammer. Craig. Thanks, Susan. Hi, everybody. My name's Craig Hammer. I'm a program manager in the development data group at the World Bank, and it's great to see some familiar faces and names here. So I'm looking forward to today. Sure. So without further ado, just wanted to say that today's panel will address what kinds of social accountability efforts can lead to democratic practice and accountability. We'll have a chance to hear from all of these wonderful panelists and respondents to hear more about what they're seeing in terms of the work on the ground and how social accountability is rebuilding democracy. We want to hear from the panelists and also from all of you. So feel free to put any comments. I'm frozen. I'm frozen. You can't hear me now. No, you're back now. Okay, thank you. We want to hear from everyone in the chat and we'll have some time at the end as well to hear about examples of the work that you're doing in terms of how social accountability is contributing to democracy strengthening. We take a broad view of social accountability as a collective or organized citizens efforts to hold governments or transition transnational corporations and organizations to increase transparency about what they do and find in terms of how we can hold them accountable. So for people joining, please do put your questions and comments in the chat. And if you have specific recommendations or things that you would like to see happen in this social accountability space we would love to hear from you. So to our panelists. On the one hand, we're hearing about democracy being on the decline and that we're in an era of closing civic space or changing civic space. On the other hand, we hear about a number of citizen led efforts that are promoting change. Can you share some examples of what you're seeing in terms of citizen led efforts that contribute to transparency and accountability on the ground. What citizen led efforts can you cite that are contributing to democracy. Each panelist will have five minutes, and we'll just go in order starting with nailing. And I think we have a lot of opportunities and you know there's several very esteemed social accountability experts on this call. I'm looking at you Florence and Tom Aston so I, you know, I'm a bit nervous about how we use the terminology that you would be forgiving us. But one reason I really wanted to have to for a counterpart and accountability research center to host this discussion with. I think about social accountability as report cards and citizen scorecards and citizen monitoring and that kind of initiative. And we think about those as all about making public services better about more responsive to people's feedback and delivering better services. And I think it's really important getting citizens what they need is in my mind at least very much a part of democracy. Democracy is not just about civil and political rights is also about social and economic rights, you know, or democracy should be about all of those things I think we have often thought about it in that way. But I think also when it comes to accountability is the act of holding governments and also the private sector let's leave that aside for now, but the act of holding governments accountable is itself an active democracy. And when you know in our work in the accountability research center, our main emphasis really is that we want to learn with the activists and the reformers who are on the ground trying to make change on account trying to make governments more transparent and accountable and learning, talking to these people learning with these people I think what we learn is that the experience of being involved in trying to hold government accountable trying to monitor what's going on trying to make more transparent what is actually happening in terms of policy and prevention. That very experience is very empowering. People find that it demystifies government to some extent, you know, before you've had any experience of engaging with government really don't know what you expect is demystifying it's a way of finding out who the people are you need to engage with to get some change. So, learning very much. This is very important to us accountable research and to learning how to come together to engage in useful and constructive ways with government officials and so that so that those demands become unimorable so just doing social accountability, regardless, in fact of whether it actually makes better public services is itself a way of enriching invigorating democracy from bottom up. I think that one of the things that we're learning, you know, one of the examples that we see is that it's not enough for citizens to be able to make those claims to demand change. It also, it also is necessary for governments to be able to respond effectively they need to have the capacities they need to have the willingness to desire to respond to what citizens one. And so I think it's really important that even if civics, even if civic space is closing at the national level, there are good reasons I think to believe that social accountability is working to build democracy actually locally. But it's not enough I think for people to have a voice not enough for people to shout know for sure that all of the protests that we've seen in the last two, three years, in particular have really not led to accountability they just really got people in some ways more frustrated I think the only thing. So governments need to be able to respond and they want many of them we see want to respond they want to create space for citizens and that's true. Whether or not they they are governments that have been freely and fairly elected through a multi party electoral system. Most governments want to be able to do better, because that is where they get the legitimacy from with their citizens. I think we see a lot. I think one of the best examples in our work is from our partners in the Philippines government watch, which has been mobilizing networks of volunteers to monitor the pandemic policy responses, you know, whether it's vaccines or social protection and those and those those teams of volunteers came together on the experience of having monitored other public services in the past. And now what they're doing is they're turning all of this capacity all of this networking into what they're calling making elections and accountability platform, creating spaces for citizens to discuss and evaluate really at the grassroots level, what the government has been doing in terms of protect protecting citizens during the pandemic. So I feel, I feel quite optimistic that almost definitely, it is true that social accountability can can build democracy from the bottom up. But it's not something that we sitting in cities like Washington DC and London and other places actually often noticed. So this is one of the reasons I wanted to have this discussion with this interesting group of people. Thank you. Over to you, Christian. Thank you, Suzanne. Yeah, I think what I want to say kind of builds nicely on what Naomi just just said I mean the question is about movements that we citizen led efforts that contribute to transparency and accountability and I think there are many, many, some are very well known are not quite as well known that are taking place all across the world and, and in the regions that I know best, Middle East and North Africa and Burkina Faso and Niger, and West African general that we've seen many of those start. If we look back, for example, at the Tunisian Revolution, it all started really about demanding accountability, dignity, basic dignity, the fact that a street vendor put himself on fire to demand a right to being seen as a person in the high of government really a local authorities. I think this is a very strong act of demanding accountability and this is this started a democratic revolution in the country we've seen similar movements in Burkina Faso with the Balistoyan which literally means the citizen broom which I love the image of citizens just kind of cleaning up the corruption and demanding more, more responsiveness or the Yonah more movement in in Senegal. Those all start there is a demand for greater democracy, but really it's often phrase termed in terms of a demand for more responsiveness a demand for being more accountable to citizens and treating citizens with with the basic dignity that they deserve so I think from that perspective, the democracy building and building accountability are really very much intertwined and mutually dependent. We may be more on the grassroots level in terms of the type of a force that we've been able to see with counterpart we have been now working in Niger for a very long time. And I think we, we have, we have helped facilitate and emerge a grassroots movement that is really taking root right now in the country that went from small citizen monitoring committees that were just created really to start overseeing the performance of, not even the performance of the movement actually it was making sure that action plans that were decided as a result of statistical dialogues that they were implemented and those little by little took a bigger role. And they started to organize themselves to be intermediaries between government and and citizens, they wanted to reach out down to the villages we supported them in that. We saw the other municipalities create or help create similar committees and then the committees were created at the regional level then at the national level and very soon now the situation is we have a national network of those committees that work together and collaborate. We played a role in this so it wasn't purely emerging from the grassroots but I, for the, the greatest party was really citizen led and, and it is something that's there to stay, because it was so. So, I think we see those those movements everywhere and they always have some underlying democratic demand behind them. And sometimes they lead to revolutions and sometimes they're more discrete and just work on in the background and in building some of those foundations for more accountability and democracy. Thanks. Thank you so much. Now going over to he in Nigeria, tell us about your views on these same issues. Thank you very much, Susan. Well, accountability, transparency, participation, inclusion, they've all become like guiding features or principles of democracy. Even though Nigeria's democracy is already like a train wreck with all manners of hiding voters a party clamp down on fundamental human rights of citizens, a weekend relationship between those who govern and the government. So to rest to restore a sense of stability, they've been a lot of citizens led efforts on ground. I think at a brother level, I like to highlight the answers protest. And that was the movement led by young Nigerians in all six geopolitical zones to, to end the police intimidation oppression and brutality. And that effort was kind of successful because at least the government yielded to some of the demands which I think they were able to hold the government accountable. At the community level for us at accountability lab, we are, we have been implementing a citizens led projects which we call the civic action teams, which is basically a feedback dialogue and community voice platform to ensure accountability in development in the development process, and also to increase meaningful participation and strengthening the voice of young people, women and persons with disability in governance. And truly we've been doing that to community members to community frontline associates. That's what we call them and we've experienced a level of change that I think has contributed largely to what we experienced. The whole democratic process in Nigeria. We, for one, we've been seeing community members come together to influence the enactment of disability members and elected representatives strengthened during periodic town hall elections where community challenges are being discussed and solutions are being preferred by elected representatives, and then community members are now becoming more interested and more aware of governance related issues and are beginning to ask critical questions on budgetary allocations on expenditure, and so marginalized voices in the community are gradually being included in decision making processes. Another citizens led efforts I can reference to is a project called tracker, I think is implemented by one of the, one of the CSOs in Nigeria called budget, what is usually easy is the citizens led efforts also, which community implementation of government projects in their communities to ensure service delivery. Citizens, what happens usually that citizens post ongoing projects in their communities on a platform and they provide updates on them and the members of the community use that as an advocacy tool to hold leaders and all government agencies accountable. So democracy is people centered and basically most of the, most of the citizens led efforts on ground are inversely contributing to democracy. Thank you. Thank you so much. Over to you, Andrew. Thank you very much. I think all of the presentations fit nicely with what they thought I'm going to share. At the Institute for Governance Reform, we know we're very small policy research and advocacy outfits based here. So, in line with what other people have said, you see democracy thrives in the context of trust and trust that critical trust between duty bearers and right holders when that trust is missing. And so often we see anarchy, contestation not necessarily relate a translating into improve lives of citizens. And what we do in social accountability is to see how do we, you know, build trust bonds and reciprocity between citizens and duty bearers. So at the center of all of that is is the feedback loop between citizens and duty bearers. So in Sierra Leone, mindful of the fact that social accountability is normally context-driven. What we normally do at IGR, we invest in understanding the context, understanding the political economy issues, and that informs our activities. So I'll just share just four of those things that normally drive our thinking in designing our social accountability intervention. One we realize that Sierra Leone is a weak state. It's a country that from war is a country that is that is poor. And in that context where citizens are very poor and the state is equally poor. It is not proper to mount huge expectation on this that the state cannot meet. So definitely the country will have a possibility of sliding back through interventions of NGOs. Again, like in many African countries, Sierra Leone is again, ethnically divided so you can draw the map of Sierra Leone. The northern region, which is almost half of the country becoming red, that is opposition areas, and then the south and eastern region becoming green, which is the ruling party areas. So if we have societies that are ethnically divided, there is always a tendency for populism, for political parties to drive populist agenda identity-based politics, which is not only typical of Sierra Leone, but it's common across Africa. The third thing we always take note of is citizens are far removed from decision making. A number of people who work within rural communities do not care how many people are in the president's delegation to New York, or what is the minister of finance announced in the budget in parliament.  And the fourth one is which has been normally the difficulties. What are the incentives for change in all of this complex political mind field? How do you drive change in all of this? So for us, there are a number of examples that we can share. We've done the citizens manifesto, where we mobilized 700 groups across Sierra Leone. It's about quite the biggest coalition in the last elections to bring citizens agenda on the elections agenda. We did the ending bribery for traffic offenses, which was a research done where we just identified patterns of payment of bribes to police officers, and we published that and we engage authorities in how do we stop bribery for traffic offenses. But what I will share with you in couple of minutes is the work we're doing with the global partnership for social accountability, which is a service delivery index. In CPSC, we've done what we call the SDI focusing on health and education outcomes. So bear in mind those, the conditions, the context I've just painted. One of the things we've been thinking about, we thought about how the issue of education, local authorities, citizens in general, how can they own the initiative of delivering essential services. The way we went about that is ensuring that we had a buying of the ministry in designing the tools for what the indicators should be. The second one is too often, you know, people take parliament out of social accountability. Because I see in many social accountability literatures, there's an emphasis on decentralized service providers and policymakers, and normally the NDAs in capitals. But we decided to factor in parliament because out of the idea that parliament is killing that we, you know, if there's a partnership between citizens and government, there will be a greater demand for service delivery on the ground. So we, and again, given the fact that parliamentary turnover in Sierra Leone is about 82%, so the incentive we introduced in the project was that, you know, citizens, parliamentarians are losing their seats because service delivery is poor. So they bought into that, and we did the service delivery index for MP constituencies and look at councils. So the research actually looked at the delivery of services in all 132 MP constituencies and look at councils, selecting five schools randomly in every constituencies, and two health centers in every constituency. So on the basis of that rank the schools and the health centers. Incredible. I know time is running out. But one of the things we did after the result was out for the first time, the result was what launched in parliament, just because we ensured that there is there was buying of members of parliament. And it's not, we did not promote a terrain of contestation, but we try to promote cooperation between, between us and them. So they bought in, and this week, the service delivery which is the first civil society report to be debated in parliament will be debated in parliament. The Minister of Health and Education actually co-authored the board of the document, which gives gave us authority to share the results at the community level. We've just completed a road show in the, the, the district that are the poorest, because the two Ministers of Education and Health agreed that starts to reveal in citizen state engagement in districts that are hard to reach that are the poorest. So things like teacher deployment, things like how nurses are being allocated to, to, to, to clinics, the test of drugs. We are all discussed in a more educated atmosphere. And that was the void of Ramco, because all of them, we are part of the project and they realize that the best way to go is to accept the change. I will end with a quote from one of the chiefs. There's a particular chief in Sierra Leone chiefs are very powerful here. So a chief normally runs is a traditional leader of geographic area. So there's a chief in, in the streets in Chidum that could say that's one of the poorest places to live on the planet. And this chief said, after we presented the service delivery index, we told them we are giving bad news to your community. But at the end of the day, if you work together, that is citizens and duty bearers, there's a possibility for you to convert this liability into an asset. And then the chief said, bingo, the next time you're here, this results will change in both health and education. Thank you very much. Sorry for taking much of your time. No, it's wonderful. Thank you very much, Andrew, rounding out our kind of opening statements. We have Maria on the line here from Argentina over to Maria. Thank you, Susan and thanks for all the interesting projects that you commented before me. I wanted to, to comment on a project but first, before that, at least in the context that I'm living at, which is Latin America, the whole hemisphere from Mexico down to the south. There are groups and organizations that only by keeping themselves alive. It's a miracle during 2021. So just maybe they don't have the specific initiatives that are so creative and successful that we can tell, but only by existing there are being harassed and surveilled by the different governments, especially in the north, or in the northern triangle and some of the parts of Central America. So just to acknowledge that the existence of some groups and organizations it's a miracle in itself. But today I wanted to share an initiative that has been a for some years now happening in Argentina and since I am from Argentina always make the case of not only in sharing examples from my own country but this one I think it's really really relevant and we don't have the time to share others. So I'm going to go ahead and and share that one with you and it's called. I'm not sure if you heard of this part of the initiative but of the corruption scandal. I'm sure you have this initiative is called clean form or in Spanish it's called feature limpia, which is a response to corruption candle scandal. I said I'm sure you've heard, which is the notebook scandal, which is just to share a brief summary of what happened. It's a chauffeur of a vice minister in the previous government in Argentina that during five years, or four years. With a notebook, he recorded everything that he did while being the chauffeur of this vice minister so all the meetings that he attended all the addresses all the people that he carried in the car besides the minister, and all that is recorded in writing in six notebooks. And so in those notebooks that he he gave those six notebooks to a friend. You know, and in a cardboard box and that friend took it to the to a friend that's a lawyer and that or a journalist and that journalist shared it with the district attorney in Argentina and so in those the data that is in those notebooks resulted in 42 people detained. Half, more or less half public officials and other half business men, a man, not business women as well. And so this just to share and you can Google it notebook scandal or a scandal load the Los Cuadernos in Spanish, but it was covered by all the, all the media and so this initiative as a response to that or as one of the responses to that big big scandal because it it meant like for a year all these business people and and a very high level ministers and public officials going to the courts and that covered by all the media it was very high or really covered by the media. And so this person, another person called Gaston Marra citizen a normal citizen by by the feet we call it in Spanish the API. And he decided that he wanted at that it was a good initiative to create a bills that could prevent people that were sentenced. And for corruptions and counts, it to a for being in lawmakers so this he he put it in the form of a bill and so the idea is that people that have been sentenced to corruption and counts cannot be candidates. And so he initiated very timidly at the beginning, and, and I'm very strongly now this initiative, getting, you know, some journalists, some champions at the end, mostly at the local level, or as we say, it's very subnational, because it's Argentinian as a federal system so you have all the provinces and then you have like all the municipalities. He did it at the provincial level, not the federal one. And so he found many champions many journalists that wanted to help and of course many organizations like mine that wanted to join this as he calls citizen movement. And when I told him, for example, that I was going to talk about this today he said, please don't mention my name which I already did. Because he wants to to everyone to understand that this is a citizen movement and it's not led by anyone although every citizen movement has a couple of leaders at least. And this movement, as he calls it, doesn't have a registration it's not an NGO or a foundation. And the only thing that they have is the social networks. So Twitter, mostly and Facebook, and also all the petitions through change. So what he did, where we are right now is three laws have been passed at the subnational level. So in those provinces, none of the people that already have corruption corruption sentences can present themselves as candidates. And we believe that before the year, year ends, we will have a fourth one. But I think if we can, and I really briefed the whole interesting initiative, but if I have to say, two or three things of the criteria that they or that we all agreed in this sort of initiative before movement. And the first one is, it's non political. So there's been thousands, thousands, thousands, literally off zoom conversations, public private, but if there was a politician, we needed to have politicians from mostly all of the parties, or not politicians that you knew that we're going to sort of bring sort of the whole initiative to sort of more, more partisan lens. So it's very clear that it's a citizen thing, not a political thing that the second one, like I said before, they want to call it citizen movement because after this, and there's other initiatives which I'm going to. Right in sort of an internal conversation and there's another, there's other needs that the sort of group sees and I'm going to tell you now and then the third is there's no money. So no one has funding for this. So they only use what they have so everyone has other jobs I work for an organization he has the person that leads this has a radio program, and he's a lawyer, and everyone has other sort of media. And just to finish with this, and we can exchange after this, it's really, really interesting because it's ongoing and maybe next year, we talk about this and there's other sort of unexpected results or expected ones. And I would, I would like to say sort of the next steps or the things that have been sort of at the core of the internal debate of this movement the first one is, and the idea that we need with more whistleblowers to bring sort of like, of this chauffeur which was sort of a chance that, you know, although dots got joined in some for some reason and so we need more whistleblowers but then, of course, if we need more whistleblowers we need the protection of them. And so we're creating sort of a group that can create a or advocate for the protection of whistleblowers in different ways that the second one is there are already several multi stakeholder champions so there are, I would say I mean, a cohort of MPs at the sub national level that already championed this by themselves and that's the interesting interesting thing of the movements I think, which is, then you lose control or you lose contact and they can advocate for this or other issues. And then we need to wrap up just quickly here. This is a wonderful example and I think. Thank you for inspiring for sure. But maybe kind of now to you Maria and the rest of the panel, can you maybe comment a little bit on how do organizations who seek to build social accountability better make use of what we've learned in terms of what works and what doesn't so you've already given kind of really good cues on that Maria but could some other panelists kind of weigh in here on lessons learned or perhaps some of the evaluation specialist and researchers that we have joining us maybe you have thoughts that you could put into the chat. But you know what are our lessons learned what's working what's not working. Starting with you Naomi please. I want to very much want to hear from the other participants here so I don't want to go on for ages but I think that one of the things we have learned is that if if the learning agenda, the research agenda is set, you know, far away from the actual action. So if we're doing the activism on the people who get to set that learning agenda who say what's important and why it's important. Then it's the learning is very limited the learning is very detached from the reality and it's not very applicable it's not actionable in the way that it might be if we're learning with actual frontline actors. That's very provocative and simple so very good one that we could perhaps come back to Christian, what are your lessons learned. There are very many lessons of course but you know I think we go back to what is tried and true and that we know what because we see that it works and, and this is really emphasizing partnership, emphasizing collaboration. And speaking for counterpart which is an outside organization. Of course we are we intervene from the outside in local, local processes and local context is keeping to a facilitating role that we don't drive the agenda but that will really facilitate the agenda and really try to the greatest extent as possible to really be about really let development, not, not development pushed from the outside. Maybe one thing that I would say, and I think now we touch on this a little earlier in the first little intervention. I think it's, it's also really about approaches I mean we with there's so many tools out there. That can be used and sometimes used with great effect and sometimes not so much and sometimes it's an outside consultant that comes in and does everything for the local community and that is not sustainability I think what is more important is, what is the approach the working approach we have with, with the communities and I would really second that this issue of the learning agenda and we that's the learning we need to generate the knowledge and we benefits uses and benefits from that knowledge is also really critical. And I'm glad that Naomi mentioned that because that's something that we tend not to think about, especially as implementers, because we, we have a, we are accountable as well to the donor, and we need to learn and we need to have data, and we think of them in terms of our reporting as opposed to really how they can help empower local communities so that that's I will stop here. Thank you. Ahi, what are your lessons learned. Okay, I'll just like to highlight three points. Well, from our work, one of the things we've learned is in one size fits all approach doesn't work at all. When it comes to social accountability at the community level, you have to always the context always matters and you have to put that into concentration. And then another thing we have realized is that how you engage with stakeholders, the citizens, community members elected representatives, how you manage and engage with them is largely depend on how successful any organization that's trying to build social accountability don't out. So the management and engagement of the key stakeholders are very, are very important. And then lastly, here, the speaker before me already highlighted it. A lot of organizations like to compete that doesn't work, but I think leveraging or in partnership and collaboration of other organizations doing similar interventions always goes along with so collaboration works and competing doesn't work. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. Any lessons learned from your work in Sierra Leone. Yes, some of the points already hinted. Yes, so thank you very much for the last comment just made, but I would just talk to you a little bit on the political economy issue. So when the headmaster, I mean, last week told us, you know, went to this community and gave them, we introduced cash books. So for them to record school fees subsidies going to the community government of Sierra Leone provides $1 per term for a child. It might be very small for you, but for those communities is very big. So if you have 300 kids you have $300 per term. How to account for those funds? So at the heart of building education systems is actually building, you know, management of education finances at the community level. So we have these school supervisors that actually pilfer they go to those headmasters and they take the funds, which affect the management of those places. So the headmasters were saying, how can I complain? Because the school supervisor is my boss, I'll be transferred. So it's really the context that really matters that I really mentioned. So I think what is very important is the leveraging. So we've seen that to be very important because for them, for those schools that we champion, for those hospitals, who's champion at the national level, because it doesn't matter how much you educate communities. There are many problems that community all by themselves cannot solve. They cannot employ teachers. They cannot employ nurses. So you need strong organizations to work with weaker groups, as you mentioned, to have this broad coalition. So what they've been doing like just last night, a headmaster called me to say my roof was destroyed by storm and the roof was supplied to me by a disaster management agency. And the chief is not allowing us to use the roof to the zinc to roof the school. So we are letting the anti-corruption commission to take action on that. So it's really to me, it's about understanding context and trying to understand the incentives. We will never have got our report debated in parliament if we never understood what members of parliament had wanted to see in our reports. And on top of that, how can they embracing social accountability can align to their political interest as well. Thank you so much. Maria, just quickly, anything you want to add to this point? I just wanted to underline some of the words that Christian and Andrew were saying about partnerships and about how to strengthen the role of the organizations or groups that are working in a specific district or context. Because many times the regional or the international organizations or groups step in and in a way without wanting many times or usually what they do is sort of weaken them or their role. And we found at least in my experience this year that there's a really strategic roles for all of the different origins of organizations if there's a sort of space and a communication that allows for partnership. I think the local conversation all the way up to the international one, I think really can accommodate for the best objective for each of the different organizations or groups that are there. And also one other thing is to work in a sort of multi-stakeholder fashion in a way. Thank you. Thank you so much. We're going to open up our final question to everyone in the group and I'll kind of keep mindful of the time because I want to make sure we go to Nick and Craig for some responses. Our final question is to the panel and to everyone on the line. Is it unrealistic to expect social accountability to help rebuild democracy? Is social accountability work inherently at odds with democracy building? Maybe if the panel could kind of give some examples here or just quickly, if you could just give a yes or no in terms of is social accountability work inherently at odds with democracy building? Quick yes or no and your reason why in one sentence? What if we ask everyone to stick it in the chat and then we get to save it for later? That would be if people want to do that, that would be lovely. And Tom, feel free to ask your question here. You have a wonderful question. Heard little about international so far. Maybe if you could explain what your question is a little bit while people are thinking of their answers. I'll type my question into the chat here. The question we are posing to the panel and to everyone on the line. Is it unrealistic to expect social accountability to help rebuild democracy? Yes or no? With a quick one sentence reason why? Naomi, is it realistic? No, but it takes time. Why is that? Why no in one sentence? You can't just fix, you can't fix these problems with an app or with a little bit of information. You need to build citizens capacities, citizens collective capacities and figure out how to engage with the state in a way that works. All of these things take time. Great question. No, but it's optimistic. I think it's very clear to me that you cannot have democracy without accountability and you cannot have accountability with that democracy. But that one doesn't necessarily lead to the other. And that that's kind of the key lesson that we've seen. I mentioned Tunisia briefly in my introduction. If we see, look at what happened in Tunisia where you had a process of democracy, democracy building that was not responding to the needs of citizens, where citizens saw a mess in parliament, people actually fighting with each other. Then you had a pseudo coup that took place and now nobody really knows where this is going. So and that's a perfect case of democracy happening without accountability and at the same time accountability with that democracy can only go so far. So yes, we can hope by building democracy, we can build a little bit on the foundations by through accountability we can build a little bit of foundations of democracy, but we also need to be realistic in terms of how far we can go and how much we can achieve. Thank you. And to ask. Can I just ask you, I don't know if the other participants are clear that we're asking you also what do you think is it is an unrealistic link to make between socialist and democracy. That's just everyone on this call not trust the panel. Tom, did you want to join in. So I was just trying to clarify the question, but I actually didn't understand my question. So I can clarify that one if that's helpful. I was just writing in the chat. Oh, absolutely. I, I, I do think it is possible but it's part of many things. You know, that would be my answer to it. But in terms of the international point. I'm just asking the question in relation to how important or not do you think those connections or linkages may be, because that's an argument that's commonly made, but it, it isn't really I think what's come out from the speakers, and I wonder if that's, because they weren't necessarily important factors, or I misheard possibly. They weren't important factors, but they just weren't mentioned. So I'd be just curious to hear on that. Any reactions from the panel or the audience on Tom's question. Maybe we can come back to that. Andrew and he I'm very curious to hear your, your reaction to the question of, is it unrealistic to expect social accountability to help rebuild democracy is social accountability work inherently at odds with democracy building and here for me it's interesting because as Andrew knows I've just come from Sierra Leone and spent a lot of time talking to local councils. It's a very vivid picture of civil society.  And the question really is quite an interesting one in terms of, you know, does civil society in this sense of social accountability work contribute to democracy building is helping to make the work of these local councils more democratic more open and transparent and helping them with their work what is, what is your take on this question from your work from your perspectives, quick yes or no and reason why. I think social accountability definitely helps build democracy. So, Susan, you're quite right from what is happening in Sierra Leone. I mean, for those of you on the panel and audience, you can just check the citizens manifesto which we did in 2018. And therefore social accountability to build democracy. There should be some convergence between social accountability and political accountability. And if we leave them distinct. So you will see social accountability doing some form of promotion of service delivery without actually attacking the underlying constraints. And then there will be a binding constraint to service delivery auto to on the performance of the states, which is really in need in democratic reforms. So what we did in this in the citizens manifesto we just brought together 720 groups to agree on seven things that to one political parties to do. We included it this as a citizen's elections agenda, and they adopted it. Some wrote it down in their manifestos the major parties actually have knowledge that in their manifestos, because we brought together the big coalition of interreligious the university to come together to say, we want you to allocate symbols to women, we want you to allocate X percentage of symbols by symbols here we mean like party tickets to to the young people. We want an ethical leadership so we want you to declare your assets. Before you can become in president and whoever wins elections. This is the first 100 days actions wanted to see in the first 100 days. We did not achieve all of them, but we achieved some. And by 2023 we believe the more we sustain such effort, the more we begin to see social accountability actually deep in democracy. What we did in that election is to measure the uptake of citizens the policy uptake of citizens. How many citizens are actually voting on ethnic lines, compared to those who vote on policy on policy lines. So that's that's one of the things that are we such showed that through those campaigns. And I think Richard Glenn is that other writers have shown that where you promote information dissemination campaigns over time, it may lead to behavior change, which really is at the heart of social accountability interventions. Thank you Andrew. Last comment here from he just very quickly what is your take on the same question and literally yes or no and one, one very short sentence. Okay, I think social accountability supports democracy so I aligned my thoughts with that of Andrew. One of the most important is that we need to improve and expand citizens engagement through inclusion, because democracy is for the people and by the people and this includes citizens being part of politics and governance to demand and build accountability and social and social accountability provides that kind of support that the democratic democracy needs. Okay, and Maria, did you have your hand up. Yes, yes, but it was just a question for Tom because I didn't understand what he meant by international international groups international governments or. Yeah. I suggest we maybe kind of pause on that for just a seconds because we're running up against the clock and I want to make sure we give a little bit of space to Craig hammer and Nick Bennequista to offer some quick reflections and responses to what we've heard today and anything that you think was maybe missing from the discussion or anything that you'd like to build on or add to what the panel has put forward. Yeah, go with you first Nick, please. Craig, please after you. Thank you. All right. I'll be very brief look it's been really wonderful for me to hear about these excellent projects going on around the world. And it is a really it's very invigorating to hear the successes that you've had particularly in an environment in which our conversations about democracy tend to be quite dispiriting. So, I want to say, I have a lot to say I'll try to be very brief one thing. We're on the eve of the summit for democracy, and we haven't in this conversation made the link quite yet with social, you know, with the rhetoric that we see there. So let me say one thing on that. The notion the world of democracy is often divided between rhetoric and practice. So I think a lot of the work that you guys do is actually very linked to democracy promotion the National Democrat democracy used to, you know, hosted Maria as a fellow, not too long ago, and many of your projects I think would make great candidates for funding from the National Democrat democracy open society foundation and many of the donors who populate the democracy promotion world. The question is, do you want to engage in the rhetoric of democracy promotion and those two things aren't always the same, you know, and you look at what we're going to how we're going to be discussing democracy at the summit for democracy how they will be discussing it I should say now we, and you know it's defending against authoritarianism. It's corruption, but it's not the kind of corruption you're talking about we're talking about kleptocracy, you know, high level collusion between oligarchs and politicians to rig the system to stay in power and get rich and human rights. And with regard to defending against authoritarianism, I think, you know, if you if you understand democracy in that kind of Huntington s clash of cultures, you know what are we doing to preserve it against the baddies in the world. You know you have a choice as to whether to engage in that or not and you may not, you may choose not to I get that that is a good choice for some. I think there is some potential to look at among the projects that you guys have and the movements, and to ask questions about whether citizens being engaged in these kinds of activities. It inoculates them against disinformation polarization and misinformation, and the vulnerability is that we see being exploited by populace and authoritarians. You know, it, have you built some resilience and I think that term resilience, you know, is creeping into the conversation, but the notion of social accountability. It doesn't really feature much in our kind of high level discussions about democracy, but you could insert yourself alternatively, you could try to paint a different picture. There's this very frequently kind of dark, you know, we have to respond to the dangers and fears of authoritarianism and you guys can maybe tell a different story about, well there's still a lot to build upon democracy isn't dead yet it's still alive and well. Those are two ways you might engage in this debate and from my perspective you would be welcome to have those kinds of voices featured more prominently and I'm always happy to help people to articulate those kinds of arguments and visions. Secondly, media and social accountability and media I focus on media development. And I just want to say a couple of quick words about contra corriente, which is a wonderful news outlet that just received a democracy award, based in Honduras. And for me it illustrates actually this great point about the possibilities for linking social accountability to political accountability, and how I think we need to have more of a conversation about media and the work that you do with social movements and grassroots citizen action. Contra Corriente was born of the indignados movement, a journalist covering the indignados movement and movement against everyday forms of corruption, met with an activist who is frustrated that they weren't the story wasn't being told effectively, and also seeing a flood on social media of complaints about corruption in people's daily lives but not really being able to make sense of that flood of information, or verify it, and giving a kind of ammunition to the corrupt, because these accusations were not always verified and they didn't have the realistic procedures to ensure that the accusations were accurate, and they lost some opportunities. And so contra corriente was born between one an activist and a journalist, they formed this great outlet, they were a huge part of the Pandora papers, but they're also a platform where they help young activists to be to be more articulate voices about the challenges facing on duras. And on the flip side of things, you know, they've, they've brought they've brokered together these two communities who really need each other, and the journalists need the activists as well. In talking about accountability impunity in the killings of journalists and endures is terrible. They've created a special prosecutor's office in endures but it's the police who are supposed to be investigating these abuses these are the same people who are perpetrating in some cases violence against the journalists, and it's laughable it's not it's this is never going to have an effect on impunity the way it's structured. And it strikes me that in media development when we're struggling with these account political accountability for our journalists. There's a lot to be learned from you, and from the communities that you work with about marshaling these grand coalitions to bring real and meaningful accountability to these kinds of problems. And so I think there's a we can help each other, the media community and civil society can be strange bedfellows at times, but there's a lot of common cause. And I would love to carry on that conversation with you guys and I'm sorry if I exceeded my five minutes but it's been a provocative and fun conversation thanks Susan. Thank you very much Nick and very from my perspective also very well received I also come from the media development world and the conversations that we're having in this discussion. So joining these up, perhaps in a future event with the global forum for media development and SEMA would be really interesting, and I think quite helpful. But without further ado over to you Craig for your responses and reactions and you know any key takeaways for you. All right, Susan thanks. And so I think just very, very quickly to two main points first I should probably say I'm sorry that I'm not Jeff tingle who should be here. And I am absolutely the poor cousin. So that out of the way, Jeff is the program manager for the global partnership for sustainable for social accountability, which Andrew had mentioned before the GPS say I'll talk about that in a second but let me zoom out. I mean I think the good news here I mean, in addition to what we've heard today which I think is extremely heartening examples of the kind of work which is really becoming the delta for for this these opportunities to try to seize onto mechanisms that can promote and enable better governance is that there is, there is broader recognition now the role of importance and social accountability I think if you go 15 years ago. And the level of acknowledgement or understanding about what social accountability is and why it's important and how it can really help become part of, you know, a package of, of enablers for better decision making better governance more responsive It wasn't quite where it is today, and I think that's a good sign. I think the fact that you have for like, like, like the form is coming tomorrow and you have initiatives and organizations like the OGP TAI the work that you're doing is a massive step in the right direction and it is something it's caused I think for celebration and enthusiasm that this is this is something which is which is more than an ad hoc phenomenon or more than more than, you know, just just talking points. I think that, you know, the challenge is, is what we're talking about how do you tell the line between, you know, hyper local engagement customization on the basis of context, the political economy considerations and scale and if you're looking to really mainstream this in larger governance transformation processes to have three mechanisms that enable that. And, and there, that's the fine line to toe. And it's one I think that still needs some work I think this is what Andrew was when he we're talking about what they only touched on was really getting to what the political economy considerations of effective social accountability look like from context to context and then how you can really parse lessons from that and then turn it into something which is more systemic in terms of engagement. The challenge there is is what would really help and I think is still something which is coming together as a stronger set of like an empirical foundation, I think you need a stronger empirical basis for some of this work. Because that is what that's what moves the conversation from from nice to have to must have, and I think the importance here is, is there's a there's still a gap there knowledge, an empirical gap that needs to be filled in order to really help facilitate this uptake. Along the lines of what I think we all really want to see the challenge there is, you know, again, moving back 10 years ago is the skeptics were the ones who were kind of controlling the dialogue if you look up things like they were massive, you know, publications and engagements and reports on things like this participation matter. And, and there needs to be the good news I think there's been a lot of progress since then I mean Carmen Milan and wrote a great book a couple years ago from political won't political will there's a lot more also understanding about where this work is coming in. The fact that we've got John DeVento on this call at all I think signals that there's a lot of really a lot of enthusiasm for this. But obviously I think there needs to be there needs to be a bit more here, because as much as it is important through things like the GPS a and other initiatives. It has yet to reach that level of being a normative component of governments transformations that that I think for those of us on this call would agree it clearly needs to be. But it's just not there yet. There's still much much beyond that I do want to make one plug though the GPS a as an open window for grants right now it closes next week. So for those of you interested in potential support or collaboration under the auspices of the global partnership for sustainable for social accountability. Please, please have a look at the GPS a website and make the most of the resources that are that are made available. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Craig. Before closing just wanted to give the floor to anyone on the line. I don't know Denise or Blair you've put in some really nice comments do you want to just say a few words and put out your suggestions or your comments. I think he has talked very well on behalf of the accountability lab thank you everyone for a really, really interesting discussion I did pop a link in a chat to a recent reports that might be might be useful. I suppose my, my closing question would would be, what's the future of social accountability I don't know if we have time to get to it but what do our panelists think are the next, the next steps what is the next phase. What are the tools that they think will will be the right kinds of a social accountability tools going forward citizen assemblies for example or all the rage at the moment. Is that an answer or are there other things that that they see emerging at this point. Love it. That's a great question to end on quick round. Robin of responses starting perhaps with Naomi and going forward. What is the future of social accountability. I think moving from projects into movements. And I think we also have to have a follow up conversation with people about this, and I wanted to hear more from quite a few people on this, in this webinar that we haven't had time to hear from Denise Florence and Fred line for Friday. You know there's a lot of people here I want to hear more from. So we must have a follow up. Absolutely. I think you know we Naomi and I and others are very keen to keep this going and kind of revive the conversation a bit and join up some groups that should be in this conversation but maybe you're not always part of this discussion so we're very keen to continue on in some way shape or form and I weren't, we have all of your email so we can be in touch with you, but great suggestion on moving from project moving project moving from projects to social movements. Andrew, what's the future of social accountability. I agree that we have to move from projects to movement. But we have to start again with understanding where every nation is at in building democracy we are all at different levels. So understanding high intensity democracy and low intensity democracy. I think those, those very important have to be acknowledged. I remember when the bridge was broken, we had a broken bridge right in the middle of the town, and the Chinese said they're going to fix it. Maybe Western donors will say where we need three codes, three quotations before it's fixed. And government normally jump at such opportunity so it's important to see how how are democracies also responding to building democracies in weak states. Wonderful way to end this definitely Christian. What's the future of social accountability from your perspective. I think I have much to add to be frank, I think from project to movement kind of said it all, and frankly, if that can happen I think we, we are limited as practitioners in the confines of project and we're trying to get out of those confines and it's just really really hard. But I think we can do a better job. Thank you. Any thoughts here on from your perspective what would you like to see what's the future of social accountability for you. I think one key thing will be investing significantly and financially in political engagement and also providing concrete opportunities for young people to engage in the process. I know I know barriers to entries, especially within the context of Nigeria. Thank you. Thank you. And Maria to wrap things up what is the future of social accountability. It's such a big question I don't have an answer but maybe pieces of it. Yes, I think one. The next issue to include in the debate. When we discuss this is the issue of the protection of champions whether it's journalist or whatever and there are many organizations that are working in that. I think successfully we've worked with many of them towards El Salvador and there's many. I think if we can broaden that so that we can all do part of what they're already doing I think we would be in a better shape, at least in protecting the people that are doing their part of their context. And then another thing, maybe a bit too philosophical at this point, but to discuss maybe further is sort of the sense of how can we give these future movements today projects tomorrow movements, the sense of permanency, the sense of not intermittent that they will continue in some shape or form, and that, and that in itself is a definition is an advocacy tool for an in the issue that we work for the government, for example, so, so just that to to build the idea that these efforts and muscles are here to stay. Thank you Maria, and thank you to everyone who's joined us on the line and to our panelists and respondents Craig and Nick. This has been a wonderful discussion and I know very quick on very intense and deep issues. I'm taking it forward. If, if you all have ideas it sounds like there's a lot coming from the chat and Naomi your initial suggestion moving from moving from projects to movements. Sounds like it's the makings of a new conference or workshop that we could perhaps think about doing in the next year. We will be in short course writing up our 200 word summary and our recommendations which will share with the organizers of the global democracy coalition so look for those. And without further ado, we will end today's webinar on social accountability. Thank you Naomi for doing this with me and being such a wonderful co convener. Thank you everyone it's been great. Please send us some emails. Thank you. Shifting power. Well done john thank you for getting that in there. Please be in touch send us an email everyone if you have any last minute thoughts before this evening because we have to send this to your words tonight. So any last thoughts anyone didn't feel you add in enough time please send us an email. Thank you for putting my email in here.  Okay. Bye. Naomi and do you want to stay on or should I call you. Yeah, this is good.


Hi, I'm Sergeant Charles Johnson from Shambal, Iowa here with 2nd Battalion 3rd Marines at Camp Hanson, Okinawa, Japan.  The purpose of the 60mm mortar section is to provide that organic indirect fire support for the company. This allows our riflemen to close with the enemy so they can hit their objectives. We'll have FOs who are out in front of the lines. They're selecting those targets. I'll call back to myself the fire direction center. I'll take the information that they give me and I'll make gun data that I pass down to the gun line. Off here to my left we have the gunner squad leader. His job is the over-responsibility of the gun and also manipulate the site and orientate the gun towards its targets. Off to the right of the gun is the assistant gunner. His job is to make sure that the ammo is prepped correctly and to load and drop the rounds. And then to the rear we have our ammo man which preps the rounds and hands it off to the A Gunner so he can fire the weapon. Once the rounds have hit the target the F.O. will let me know the fire for effect.


Sky Note is an intelligent music learning app based on artificial intelligence and sound and motion real-time analysis. It is designed with a wide range of student levels in mind from beginners to professional players. Eyeing is to empower students with tools to detect and correct errors, build awareness of their technique and allow them to practice efficiently alone or in a class setting.


Welcome to JSA TV, the Newsroom for Tech and Telecom Professionals, and JSA Radio, the Voice for Tech and Telecom on iHeart Radio. I'm Jamie Skado-Kataya of JSA. And here standing at West 7th Center, the data center, first purpose built data center of Los Angeles, right here downtown LA with my good friend, Mr. Arman Kalili, the CEO and founder of Evocative. Arman, welcome to JSA TV. Hi, Jamie. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Thank you for having us here in your beautiful facility. And we should also mention you are a true thought leader in the Colo field, a serial entrepreneur, the founder of multiple network infrastructure companies such as Central Colo and United Layer, the largest privately held Colo provider in San Francisco, Sirius, one of the first ISPs in Silicon Valley, and Music Bank, the very first music subscription company. So amazing accomplishments there. You're certainly an established entrepreneur here in the Colo space. And so tell us, what led you to start Evocative? Sure.  That means they're seriously not employable. That's exactly what serial entrepreneurs mean. Yeah, I mean, I've pretty much started my career straight out of college, started at first ISP and what next thing leads to another, and we become the largest independent ISP. And then I started, you know, secure email company. And after that, music company and Colocation company and joined a private equity firm. And then after that, started a Colo company, bought a DDoS mitigation company, sold it. And during this whole period, you know, and I got married and I had kids. So thanks. By far, probably best, you know, accomplishment so far. And stayed home for about a year, helping my wife with our first born, Leon. And after about a year, it was time to go. She kicked you out. I'm not sure who kicked who out, but I read the signals quite well. And that's why I started Evocative. I love that story. That's the truth, and I'm sticking to it. I'm married to a serial entrepreneur. I get it. I totally understand. I'm like, retirement is what, six months now, what's next cooking in that mind of yours? I know. It's the, it's, it's quite the, I'm not sure it was a technical word, but I think doctors refer that ADHD. Very true. And for sure, Evocative is a growth story. So tell us, what is behind Evocative's growth? What's driving that? Initially, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't a hundred percent sure I wanted to kind of get back into the field, because obviously things have quite changed the past two decades. And did some research, spoke to a few friends in the industry, and came to the conclusion that what still is missing in the sector is that independent, service-oriented, and customer-focused provider, with key emphasis on the word service, because we are in the services industry, regardless of the product or services that you provide, whether it is Kolo, Cloud, Hosting, whatever it is, it's about service, it's about taking care of your client. With that premise in mind, Evocative got started. And as a matter of fact, we are almost a year into it, we are 12 months into it. And today we just made our fourth acquisition. So we'll get to hear about it on Tuesday, we get the press releases out. So Evocative really is about the story of an independent service provider that is out there taking care of his clients, growing rapidly through both acquisition and organic growth, with the core emphasis on customer-first. Customer-first, absolutely. And definitely when you're driven by this customer-centric core philosophy, it only leads to growth, it's critical, really. So how long have you worked with the West 7 Center team, as well as the rising realty partners who own the building? So we actually, it's funny enough, I used to co-locate in this building in year 2000. So about 18 years ago. So we had known about 1200 West 7 for a long time. And after rising bought this real estate, we knew some of the key C-level people. And we started the dialogue and really liked what we were hearing about what the plan for the building was, specifically what the plan for the data center section is, and what rising wanted to do with the site. So it was more first philosophically in culture where we were aligned, and when the opportunity presented itself, we certainly were very excited to partner with Rising to do this. Unbelievable. And so tell us about your overall data center solution here at Evocative. So we have facilities in Emeryville, California, San Jose, Los Angeles, LA1 and LA2. And we just opened up Reston in January, Virginia. And the acquisition, which I cannot talk about, we just acquired Cyberverse, that is a LA-based company with facilities at 600 West 7. So you're breaking news here on JSA TV. This is breaking news, that's right. It will be live on Tuesday, so. We'll make sure it gets posted on Tuesday. So we just made that acquisition now with Cyberverse, we have facilities, additional facilities in LA and also in Phoenix and Plano, Texas. So we've got a national footprint now. We've got a world-class roster of Fortune 500s, also a couple of guys in a garage. So we are an entrepreneur. We started the company. My first ISP was in a garage, so we have a personal affection towards startups. That doesn't mean we treat all customers regardless of their size equally. So Silicon Valley of you, starting it up in the garage. Well, yeah, the rent was cheap. So you chose West 7 specifically. You knew the rising management team. You were into their philosophies and how they're going to build a better building, taking already the existing assets and enhancing them further. And so this is sort of the evocative home, if you will, particularly in the LA area. Yeah, this is our flagship service product line in LA. 1200 West 7th, or West 7th is the premier data center in Southern California. Just the sheer size of it, the mechanical, the electrical infrastructure is second to nine. It is by far a top ten building from a just pure infrastructure perspective. Of course, having a major presence in LA, LA is still considered a very large metro from an edge computing perspective. So you got almost 14 million residents. So regardless what transpires with mega data centers that are happening in cheaper sites outside of California because of cost of power, electricity and real estate would have you. The need for edge computing still resides and this is by far, arguably this is, I mean, obviously I'm slightly biased, but this is the best data center from an infrastructure perspective. And it's rivals that of some of the major carrier hotels. And disaster recovery sites. We're sitting, I believe what, is it like 30, 40 feet under the ground? So it's three levels of basement, all of it on the ground. The building had spent over $30 plus million building out. It's electrical and mechanical infrastructure. It's all on an M plus one basis. True M plus one, if you know what I mean for the technically inclined ones. It's got multiple grids coming into it, multiple power feats. It's got multiple generator, M plus one generator. We are M plus one on the UPS, M plus two on the cracks in this case. So it really is a mission critical facility. Love that, love that. And one last question, which I like to throw to my CEOs who are here in the hot seat, if you will, on JSA TV. Looking into your crystal ball, where do you see a bucket of heading in the next 12 to 24 months? Obviously, further expansion in terms of both organic growth and acquisition, we're looking for international expansion and also increasing our product line. So we kind of view of having a flagship facility within what we call a five to 10 millisecond radius of large metrocytes. So we've got Silicon Valley covered LA, we have Virginia now, we have Phoenix, we have Texas. So additional sites such as Chicago, New York area, and of course internationally. So we're looking for opportunistic expansion with the core emphasis of being customer focused, quite simple. And your URL, evocative.com, awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here and for being so generous with your time and insight and thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV. Happy networking.


The journalism she reads, technology is everywhere. Every industry needs it. So whatever she's interested in, start with that. Just be like, all right, so you like watching YouTube videos? Why don't we make a project to analyze how people are watching it? Grace Hopper's Celebration of Women in Computing coverage continues in a moment. From Houston, Texas, it's The Cube, covering Grace Hopper's Celebration of Women in Computing. Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Rick here with The Cube. We are live in Houston, Texas for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, the best name at tech conferences, bar none. We're going three days of wall-to-wall coverage just as day one. They had the keynotes earlier today. Expo Hall is buzzing, and we're really excited to have a return guest that we've had on way back since the beginning, and a new guest, Sarah Clatterbuck, who is the Director of Engineering for Applications Engineering. Did I get that right, Sarah? Application infrastructure. Infrastructure, very important. Erica Lockheimer, the Director of Engineering, Growth, and Head of LinkedIn's Women in Tech Initiative. Those are huge titles. Welcome. Thank you. And of course Rebecca Knight is joining us. Yes. She's been anchoring the set all day, and we'll be really happy to have you on board. So, LinkedIn's Women in Tech Initiative, what is it? Yeah, so it's basically, it's a dedicated group that we have at LinkedIn, where it's 20% focus of our time. So Sarah and I commit 20% of our time for Women in Tech. 20%. Yes, I mean it's basically valued just like any other core project that we have in engineering. And it's a program that we have initiatives inside, that's happening inside the company and outside the company that we focus on. Yeah, because often, you know, like the Google's got like the 10% or a lot of companies have 10% but 20% that's one day a week. That's a significant amount of time. It's a substantial commitment. And I think we started initially like a lot of other companies where there were a core group of us women leaders who were doing this on a voluntary basis and we would plan our Grace Hopper event and we would do different lectures and talks internally but then we realized that we actually needed to commit real time to this and have objectives and key results that we were trying to measure our outcomes on the program. Yeah, and our executives approached us and said, hey, will you lead this? And we wanted it to be a change initiative, not an ERG group. So we have funding, we have programs. It's a true commitment. I was just going to say from the keynotes earlier, they said what separates the top companies from the not top companies and one of the items was flex time policies, leadership development programs but true gender diversity programs that are not ad hoc, that are not kind of feel good but have funding, have budget, have executive sponsorship and are just like any other project that you would want to successfully execute in the company. And you want the people that are in the trenches leading it, right? They know exactly what should be done and how we're feeling and what we should do moving forward. So talk a little bit about the specific programs that are part of the initiative, the high school training program and other kinds of things that you're doing as part of. So I'll, you want to go first? Yeah, so I'll talk about the high school trainee program and then maybe we can kind of round out some of the other programs that we're working on. So the high school trainee program is something we've just completed our second year running. The first year was very much a pilot and our hypothesis was that if we expose young girls to what it was like to be a software engineer in a tech company before they had to make that decision about what they would study in college that we could influence their decision about what they would study. And the first year we came out with all but one declaring that they were gonna study computer science. And as we followed up with them, it's been amazing that even the last one has now switched her major to computer science. So really encouraging results. This year we expanded the program a little bit. We had 10 trainees this year, similar results. So I'm really looking forward to trying to scale that program in upcoming years. And were these high school girls who were inclined toward computer science or were they? They had some experience with programming but we were more hiring for potential than for actual skill set. So they had some exposure either through coursework at school or through immersive community programs like Girl Scouts or Technovation. And then we actually brought them in and did, this year we developed a curriculum for them where they actually built a full stack web app in their first couple of weeks to get a sense of how the whole thing goes together. And then they pivoted towards working on actual features with our engineering team. So for the day in the life, they participate in stand-ups, do they shadow you, do they go out to launch? I mean.  Sit in meetings. Yes. We bore them with meetings. Long conversation. I know. And they came out wanting more. And they still bought it. A lot more, yes. They came for our lip sync competition that we ran. So yeah. So what did they say is different than what they expected it to be? Or what was it that appealed to them? Or that kind of connected to them that maybe they thought it was or they had no idea that this was, because a lot of that stuff's just kind of work. Yeah. Besides the coding piece, right? I think they realized when they come that it's really much more social than they thought it would be. So even though I think the media is portraying computer science in the right way now and even though they've had exposure in classes, I still think that they have a perception that it's going to be a lot of heads down coding work. And they don't realize how social coding is and how much you have to interact with the product managers and the design team and all the other engineers that you're working with. And so what are some of the other parts and components of the women who lead? Yeah. So one of the other programs we have is an Invest program. So we want to invest in the women at LinkedIn as well, it's about giving them visibility and opportunity and coaching. So if we think about some of the ways that we have grown in the company, we have people that chose to invest in us, got us the right resources, worked on some challenges and also opportunities. So we designed the program based on how did we get where we're at and we basically have executive coaches come in and we're training some of the women to basically go through some of those challenges, have those difficult conversations and be able to have those outcomes that they wanted and it's great to see they come full circle and now it's like they want to pay it forward. Like they're here at this conference, they want to just figure out how they can do it for everybody. It's like once you get that itch and you've made that pivot point yourself, you're like, wow, I really want to give back and make a change. So we're seeing that in a lot of the conversations at LinkedIn and the women. So it's great, super inspiring. Yeah, go ahead. Last month you launched LinkedIn Learning. Yes. And so your platform is used by 433 million users around the world and yet your company's always innovating, always trying new things, always coming out with new features. Can you talk a little bit about LinkedIn Learning? Yeah, well, I think the way that we're thinking about it is that in this new age that people need to learn in different ways. They don't always have a traditional path of like a degree program and then an internship and then a job that they go to for 20 or 30 or 40 years and people are changing jobs. The technology is changing, industries are changing and people need to have different paths to keeping their skills relevant in the new economy. And so I think that's sort of what LinkedIn Learning is about. And then I think we're also thinking about how can that sort of expand our hiring practices and actually can we use that platform to identify people with potential to come work with us. And we even gave all of our high school trainees a subscription this year when they came so they could continue their learning online around Java or web development and different topics that they were learning during the summer. Yeah, because if you think about how we're hiring talent today, I think we've done it very traditional to Sarah's point. It's like, you have a four year degree, you did your two year internship, we'll then look at your resume, then we'll interview. It's like not everybody has taken that path. Maybe they taught coding themselves or maybe they did some academy and they threw some two year boot camp or something. There's no reason why we shouldn't be basically looking at them and figuring out, hey, how can they join our company and basically contribute. I mean that opens up a whole diversity in itself by hiring different types of people for different backgrounds. And LinkedIn really, this is the business of LinkedIn. It's helping people find opportunities. And yet you're also evangelists about how the future of work is changing and the nature and our day to day experience of work is changing. My question is how open are other companies to drinking your Kool-Aid in the sense of are other organizations and firms that you work with also seeing this changing path and are they open to it to being different? Yes, actually I was at LinkedIn Talent Connect last week and we had a small forum of about 15 people of the top companies around and we had this very open discussion and they're realizing, yes, we need to look at hiring differently. And I know Starbucks has some initiatives and some programs too about helping them get the right skills so they can get to where they want to be. So it is about solutions like LinkedIn Learning or how do they up level the skill force. I think everybody's open to it. It's just, we're not there yet. It's making these small steps as we move on. Well that's other companies. I was even just going to ask with Informal HR at LinkedIn, how much do they buy into it or how much of it? Okay, that's great. We're working on this cool project but when people are coming through the door we're routing them through the same kind of process, the same kind of gates. Or how's that conversation, are they accepting it? Is it a hard conversation? Do they see benefit? I think the whole company is bought into this from every discipline from HR and engineering and the executive team. I think everyone's starting to think about this in new ways and so everyone's on board with helping us to change how we hire, how we can be more inclusive as a company and how people can belong in our company. And they are our key partners in designing this program. You're right, you can't use your same program that you have today of how you hire talent. You have to do it a different way. So maybe if they fit this mold then that's the way that they're going to go on this time. But there's a new way that we have that we're designing right now that we basically get candidates that way. So they're partners in it. They have to be. There's no other way. Right, right. And then how does it manifest itself in my LinkedIn profile? So that Starbucks and the other people now see those as qualifications where before it didn't kind of fit the template, if you will. Yep. We have to innovate. We have to be the pioneers. Since you are ahead of it, but high up in engineering, also high up in HR, talk about what gives some advice to a young female engineer who's starting out some career advice in terms of what she should have on her LinkedIn profile and then also the kind of message she should be sending to her prospective employers. So I would say, you need to have a LinkedIn profile. First-in-one. I need to do a picture with the whole, right? Yeah, you're just gonna say, don't run out.  Get a picture of yourself. And fill it out, not just with your schooling because if you just put your schooling in your degree program, then you're just giving us the same information that we've always had. Like tell us about who you are and what problems you want to solve and what interesting experience that you've had that may be non-traditional. Like try to explain through your profile. Stand out from the back. How you can stand out. And then I would say, take some intelligent risks. You have to take risks. You have to be out of your comfort zone. So even if that means putting non-traditional experience on your LinkedIn profile, that's what you have to do to succeed in this industry. And as you're saying this, I'm just thinking of listening to the ads online of the resume sniffers and the good employee, bad employee. Are the kind of the algorithms that drive the automated part of these processes knowing to look for, wow, that was kind of a high risk behavior that this person stepped out of their comfort zone in a box. I mean, it still seems like, what do we need to get there? Maybe it's the better question. So that it does flag positive thing that this person has this kind of non-traditional block on their LinkedIn profile. Yeah, I think you're talking to some innovation that we still need to do. Maybe in our recruiter platform we could have some different types of facets for searching that would be different characteristics that we're looking for beyond sort of the traditional education. Right. And also I think there's just ways to use the LinkedIn platform. I mean, there's great things on there as far as common connections, people that you know. I mean, that's relationships truly matter at the end of the day and be able to build them when you're here right now at Grace Hopper. This is where some of that just starts, even in college, right? So use the platform for what it's useful for. Eric, I have to follow you. I haven't followed you before. Sarah's got posts constantly. It's almost like Facebook with all the... Erica puts me to shame really.  Yeah. So I mean, get ready. We're here together on this.  They're all kids to me these days. But, you know, doing all these activities at a very steady and constant cadence, it's very impressive. Yeah, I would just add on that that I'm a firm believer that you do have to over post. You have to over speak out. I mean, you can't be the best kept secret. Awareness is key.  Think about it. You can scale it as fast as possible. All right. So take risks and over post. Yes. We're to live by. All right. So we're running out of time. Give you the last word really on the Grace Hopper conference you both mentioned you've been coming for years. It fascinates me that I still talk to people that don't know what this is at all. So for the folks that don't know about Grace Hopper, what's your kind of impression here where we are today, what it's come from and why people need to get involved? It's a movement. It's now at scale. Learn who Grace Hopper is. Come to the conference. Be part of it with us. And I invite men to join us as allies here. It's amazing. And I think it's as soon as you come to the conference, it's really like a wake up call.  There's so many of us that are exactly the same. And it's just a feeling. You just have to come. All right. Erica, it's great to meet you. Thanks for stopping by. Sarah, always great to see you as well. Absolutely. Rebecca, terrific. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. We are in Houston at the Grace Hopper celebration of women in computing. We'll be back with our next guest after this short break. Thanks for watching. Great.