Collective failure..... the universal failed development paradigm
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Dear Participants
I do not have much time to read all the material that is being posted
on the Internet that talks about "failure" in the economies of the "de-
veloping countries".
It is now more than 15 years since I started to speak out about devel-
opment performance..... and not surprisingly my career in development
consultancy serving organizations like the World Bank and the UN agen-
cies and the development cooperation agencies went into terminal de-
cline. But the facts that precipitated my concerns about development
performance were right on target then, and continue to be valid now.
Before addressing development issues I was a technically trained (engi-
neering and operations research) corporate manager with a financial
background (Chartered Accountancy UK-E&W) and had a successful track
record at understanding corporate performance and being able to improve
it. When I applied this in the "development" arena, it became apparent
that development performance was appalling. While the development com-
munity was populated with many good hearted and well meaning individu-
als, many of whom were technically excellent in their fields, the sys-
tem as a whole was disfunctional in the extreme.
And the "system" remains more or less where it was 15 or more years
ago. The "project cycle" still is the dominant funding mechanism, even
though it should have been junked as a part of the "development (busi-
ness) process" years ago.
The role of accountability is still absent in practice, though it is
now talked about. Transparency is talked about. Corruption is talked
about. A lot of things are talked about. But the actual development
performance is rarely measured and is not a major part of the develop-
ment dialog.
We talk about debt forgiveness..... but we do not ask how it is that
there is such a build up of debt. We do not demand accountability both
from the funding sources and from the recipients.
We talk about the health and HIV-AIDS crisis.... and the need for more
funding.... but we are unable to easily see data about the amazing ef-
forts being made by individuals in the face of the crisis. We do not
know what works and we do not know much about where all the money is
going..... because an enormous amount of money is flowing in connection
with the global AIDS crisis
The postings that now circulate often talk about "failure"....... and
it is good that this is talked about...... but what is needed is clar-
ity about what it is that has caused the failure..... preferably from
people with expertise who are not part of the community that is impli-
cated deeply in the failure.
I have just sent a post to another list about "accountability" in de-
velopment, and bemoaning the fact that we have failed terribly to use
modern computer and communications power to bring accountability to de-
velopment, even though it is technically quite easy to do.
WalMart can do amazing things to understand its business, and weather
forecasters routinely use the most powerful computers on the planet to
simulate weather patterns, and we use computers amazingly for "real"
war games, and we use powerful computers and computer technology for
entertainment and all sorts of game playing, but when it comes to ac-
countability in development, we remain in the "stone age".
The people who want accountability and need accountability do not have
the money to pay for accountability, and the people who have and who
control the money do not want either accountability or transparency.
There is no major organization in either the public or the private sec-
tor that has willingly introduced excellence in public accountability
and transparency..... no corporation, no donor government or government
agency, no international development institution, no beneficiary gov-
ernment..... yet the public in the SOUTH needs this accountability and
transparency as does the public in the NORTH.
The technology to do this is at hand... the systems can easily be de-
veloped and deployed.... but the established leadership..... corporate,
political, academic, administrative..... in both NORTH and SOUTH.....
for some reason does not seem to be willing to help get such a program
funded.
Surely it is time for alternative leaders to emerge to get an account-
ability and transparency program funded and implemented.
Sincerely
T. Peter Burgess
VP and CFO ATCnet
New York USA
Tel: +1-212-772-6918
Fax: +1-707-371-7805
mailto:profitinafrica@aol.com
mailto:hivaidsstories@aol.com
http://www.atcnet.org
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