I am about to head off to the annual meeting of Transparency International, a group who’s work I have long admired. They’ve invited me to join them to talk about Sunlight’s work in the context of Accountability 2.0 , using the social web to fight corruption by increasing transparency. I’m excited about the opportunity to join with more than 1,000 transparency advocates at the conference.

One of the groups that will be there will be Poder Ciudadano, which means “citizen power” in Spanish, This Buenos Aires- NOG is dedicated to citizen activism and participation in the democratic process, as well as promoting transparency and access to public information, all in an effort to “strengthen democracy through collective action,” as their Web site says.

In 1989, with Argentine democracy still quite fragile, a group of people concerned about civil rights formed Poder Ciudadano. They believe that in order to have better leaders, Argentina needs better citizens. The organization builds networks of citizens who are empowered to stand up to their government.  They teach them how to get involved and to influence public policies. Poder Ciudadano builds tools, online and otherwise, to promote governmental transparency and combat corruption. In this sense, they sound like an Argentine Sunlight Foundation. They work in concert with international networks with similar goals, such as Transparency International, Inter-Americas Democracy Network and the International Budget Project.

I’ll try to post throughout the conference. For sure I will be on Twitter with regular updates.