Governance Web Interactive Tool

Abstract

The growing recognition that many of the underlying problems of development have to do with poor governance, has led to an increasing demand for easily available and comprehensive governance indicators. These are needed not only by the development, but also for the media, civil society organizations and the general public to be able to better monitor progress in governance in their countries. To that regard, the Governance Web Interactive Tool (GWIT), has been developed to provide an interface for accessing most of the publicly available indicators related to governance. GWIT includes over 200 variables from more than 20 different sources with data for more than 180 countries.

The paper will discuss the role of GWIT as a knowledge and decision-support tool. Background and technical information will be provided on the GWIT itself, including information on the different types of indicators with respect to the methodology used to construct them (subjectivity/objectivity, transparency, etc.). In addition, the paper will illustrate how GWIT can be used to diagnose and address governance issues. Finally, the paper provides a detailed description of the GWIT Beta version functionalities and technical features.