Home

ImprovingAccess.org ImprovingAccess.org is developed by an international group of researchers and practitioners interested in innovations in democratic governance. A partnership relation between the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Centre for Government Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands resulted in ImprovingAccess.org: a global network initiative producing and organizing research, conferences, publications, training programs and teaching materials on the theme of improving access.

The State of Access: Success and Failure of Democracies to Create Equal Opportunities The academic volume ‘The State of Access: Success and Failure of Democracies to Create Equal Opportunities’ is now available. A preview of the book cover can be found here. This book documents a worrisome gap between principles and practice in democratic governance. The State of Access is a comparative, cross-disciplinary exploration of the ways in which democratic institutions fail or succeed to create the equal opportunities that they have promised to deliver to the people they serve. Seminar on Democracy, Equity and Public Services Monday, March 16, 2009, 12.00 PM Harvard Kennedy School Archon Fung and Tony Saich as well as contributors toThe State of Access: Success and Failure of Democracies to Create Equal Opportunities Guy Stuart, Jorrit de Jong, and Gowher Rizvi will elaborate on the potential and performance in democratic governance at this public seminar. read more

Conference on Improving Access to Public Services, November 6-8, 2007, The Hague, The Netherlands In November 2007, 90 innovators, practitioners and academics from all over the world gathered in The Hague, The Netherlands, to discuss innovations that have improved access to public services, the economy and justice. The conference resulted in plans for ‘Breaking the Glass Wall: A Practitioner's Agenda for Improving Access’ which will be published in spring 2009. This book, richly illustrated with cases and practical insights, identifies the common challenges worldwide for practitioners in modern democratic governance, as well as innovative ways to cope with them. Besides working on the agenda, we are also developing training programs for public managers in developing countries on the theme ‘Improving Access’. The cases discussed at the conference can be found here.