Bottlenecks and Drip-feeds
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Dear Colleagues
The crisis of development seems to be getting broader recogni-
tion amongst some organizations involved in relief and develop-
ment, thanks in large part to three reports that have been pub-
lished this year:
1 ............. Oxfam UK published a report called Millstone or
Milestone referring to the UN's MDGs.
2 ............. Action Aid UK published "Real Aid" which intro-
duced the idea of "phantom aid" and an agenda for making aid
work.
3 ............. and most recently Save the Children UK has pub-
lished :"Bottlenecks and Drip-feeds" which identified many rea-
sons why aid was not reaching the intended beneficiaries.
All these reports are clear about development performance, and
the need for a change in the paradigm for development.
The Transparency and Accountability Network has talked for some
considerable time about the need for management information for
development (MI4D)... and we have expressed concern that talk
about transparency and accountability is bigger than practical
implementation. We have talked about the need to move beyond de-
scriptions about the failed state of development as in the World
Bank's World Development Report, the UNDP's Human Development
Report, UNICEF's State of the Children, UNHCR's report on refu-
gees, etc. These all describe various facets of failed develop-
ment, but do not talk much about new solutions beyond "send more
money" in the same old way ... and more and more conditionality!
But they do not explain WHY development has failed.
And they do not describe HOW it has failed.
These three reports go a long way to suggest why and how devel-
opment has failed. They have highlighted issues like the propor-
tion of the total fund flow that leaves a donor organization
such as DFID or USAID that actually reaches the nominal benefi-
ciary and the "south" community. They have observed that con-
sumption of development resources in preparing studies and re-
ports amounts to maybe 70% of the total funding ... they suggest
the existence of "phantom aid" ... they point out that bottle-
necks constrain the development process and highlight the huge
value of small amounts in the right places.
The question still remains about HOW does one deliver develop-
ment resources in the right way, to do the right thing, in the
right place, and to do it cost effectively and to have adequate
transparency, accounting, accountability and monitoring and
evaluation (TAAME). The Tr-Ac-Net solution to this is a combina-
tion of old fashioned ethics and accounting, coupled with modern
ICT and a management information architecture that delivers what
TAAME requires plus a mindset that put much more emphasis on a
process that requires accounting for how money has actually been
used, rather more than writing proposals about how I plan to use
the money (knowing full well that this is only required to get
the money, and not important relative to how I am actually going
to use the money.)
We should happily deliver $50 to someone who is doing good work
and needs some help... and if we lose the $50 then we made a
mistake and now know someone who is a crook and can put it on
the record. If on the other hand we learn that the $50 was used
for real valuable works, then we are disposed to send more ...
and more... and more. As soon as the $50 goes missing... that's
the end of the good times. Good people in poor communities know
this. The microfinance repayment rates are an example of this.
The emerging Tr-Ac-Net system aims to provide a database infra-
structure and community network that will handle this and make
it possible to get a lot of small funding delivered AND
ACCOUNTED FOR in a way that has never been done before on a big
scale.
The Tr-Ac-Net program is not yet deployed... we wish we could
say it was. But the elements are coming together nicely. We are
going as fast as we can.
I would like to share our thinking with those of you who are in-
terested. We want to be part of the solution that provides a way
for drip-feed to work. If you would like PDF copies of the re-
ports referred to, you can get them from the respective websites
of the organizations, or I can e-mail them to you.
Sincerely,
Peter Burgess
Tr-Ac-Net in New York
Tel.: +1-212-772-6918
mailto:peterbnyc@gmail.com
The Transparency and Accountability Network
With Kris Dev in Chennai India
and others in South Asia, Africa and Latin America
http://tr-ac-net.blogspot.com