What makes a good open government story?

�Storytelling to bring �open gov impact �and data to life

Isabelle Kermeen

Communications Manager

Integrity Action

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About us

We support communities to monitor what was promised against what’s been delivered in essential services/projects, and work with those responsible to get problems fixed

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integrityaction.org

Storytelling: where to start?

• What do you know? What do you need to find out?
• What data/key elements do you have / what’s missing?
• Photos, videos, voice recordings
• Reports, evaluations, programme data
• Quotes by various stakeholders
• In-depth accounts of what happened; interviews
• Consent!
• Why is this interesting to the audience? Why should they listen to you?
• Take the time to gather more information and data, as needed

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Storytelling: explore it further

• Explore it further: what changes have taken place?
• Improvements in community members’ lives?
• Changed attitudes?
• Improved services? Policy changes?
• Increased trust?
• Improved relationships between duty bearers, communities, other key stakeholders?
• Unexpected / unintended outcomes?
• Compare the project aims with achievements (even if it’s still part-way through)

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Storytelling: why are we telling it?

• Based on this, identify the key insights you want the story to tell
• What’s the relevance to people’s lives?
• Also consider: what’s the aim of this story?
• Demonstrate impact
• Convince a donor to provide support (or start a conversation)
• Other fundraising (e.g. public facing, individual giving)
• Pique new partners’ interest
• Feed into lobbying for policy change
• Comms product as part of an existing donor agreement
• Profile raising

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Practical considerations

• Patience and time are essential
• Be flexible and prepared to take the story in a different direction depending on what you find
• Data cleaning and analysis may take time alongside engaging with those who can elaborate on the programme’s successes and challenged
• Again, consent for stories, photos, quotes

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Our data:

Monitors use our App to report problems

A promise is made to a community

Duty bearers are informed and take action

Problems are fixed

VOICE initiative, Kenya

Citizen monitor Mbodze is changing this – alongside 125 of her fellow Kwale residents

Infrastructure like clinics, schools and water sources, is paid for by local and national government.

But often fails to materialize or is unfit for use when it does.

Fix Rate over programme lifetime

In the VOICE programme, citizen monitors reported 2001 problems and 1661 fixes – that’s a “Fix Rate” of 84%.

The volume of problems was highest at the beginning

Fix Rate and frequency of individual problems

The issue with the lowest resolution rate was a lack of access to documentation for the community

From data and insights �to a finished story

• Once you have the key story points, you need to order them so it makes sense
• You need to turn it into a linear story, even if your points didn’t necessarily take place in a chronological order
• Storyboarding can help, using a live online doc can be helpful
• What level of understanding does the audience have?
• The beginning of the story needs to draw them in, while also explaining any basic details they need to know to understand the rest
• Consider what OpenStories platform tools lend themselves to crafting your story
• https://www.displayr.com/resources/how-to-communicate-the-story-in-your-data/

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Crafting and publishing

• Once we had the story mapped out, with:
• Key points ordered in a logical way and main narrative text
• Quotes and photos
• Data insights and graphs
• Some kind of conclusion or call to action (we often ask for feedback at the end of our content)
• You could plug it into OpenStories!
• We used Adobe Creative Cloud (free version)

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The story

https://integrityaction.org/data-story

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The story

The story

The story

Challenges

• Time
• Too much data, too many interesting insights
• Balancing the technical, complex and nuanced nature of the story with making it accessible for a non-expert audience
• Keeping it brief

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What to do?

• Allow yourself enough time, patience
• Keep going back to the point of the story, and the audience
• Work with others to get feedback throughout

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Key stories by us

Data story: integrityaction.org/data-story

Impact videos: https://integrityaction.org/what-we-do/impact

Interactive quiz: https://integrityaction.org/research-quiz

Explainer animation: https://youtu.be/bLxS5BOC-nM

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Thanks for listening!

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www.integrityaction.org

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isabelle.kermeen@integrityaction.org

Research on improving readability by using subheadings:�https://www.nngroup.com/articles/layer-cake-pattern-scanning/