Expressing Interest in Monitoring and Evaluation... but more for
TRAC excellence
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[the response refers to a message from AF-AIDS:
"Call for Expressions of Interest: Monitoring and Evaluation"
attached below]
Dear Ian Grubb,
I am so pleased to learn of WHO's interest in strengthening its
work in the area of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E). You may al-
ready know something of my concern about the very weak M&E that
is practiced by the official development assistance (ODA) or-
ganizations, and the emerging solution to this problem that is
being developed by TRACnet, a growing community of professionals
in many countries with an interest in transparency and account-
ability (TRAC) and a determination to change the way accounting
and management problems are being addressed.
Our work is taking on an increased urgency, because it is more
and more apparent that the ODA community is faced with an enor-
mous problem in terms of keeping track of the resources that are
available... small relative to the need maybe... but huge in
terms of potential for misappropriation.
One of the issues TRACnet is addressing is the underlying weak-
ness of management information and systems in the ODA community,
and the focus on M&E rather than on improving basic systems. M&E
has informed us for years (decades) that the accounting has not
been adequate and therefore the resources are missing, but im-
proving M&E does not improve the accounting, it just makes the
reporting of failure more efficient. Good professional account-
ants would not approach the problem this way, rather they would
argue for better accounting in the first place, and for the man-
agement and leadership to give the organization the accounting
tools and the accountants enough status so that the accounting
can do its job. What the ODA community needs is not stronger M&E
but stronger basic systems and basic reporting, and a willing-
ness to accept a high level of transparency.
There has been a lot of dialog about improving transparency and
accountability in the ODA community, and of course in the last
fifteen years Transparency International has carved out a role
in this arena. But the bottom line is that there has been an up-
grading in the talk about TRAC, but rather less action to really
improve TRAC... and improved M&E is not going to make much of a
difference. There are almost no professional accountants in-
volved in the ODA world and addressing the TRAC issue.
To highlight what I mean... last week the OECD - DAC organiza-
tions had a meeting to address the problem of governance and
corruption (not the exact title of the meeting) and of 44 people
who were to speak or were invited VIPs, only one, Mr. Nussbaum
of Transparency International, was identified as having any pro-
fessional accounting background. I find this of concern for two
reasons (1) what ever happened to the profession of accountancy
and their concern over getting the numbers right; and, (2) why
is it that the ODA community is not trying to get experienced
accountants into the middle of the situation to try to get the
problem resolved.
Drawing on my early training when I worked as an auditor... the
answer to the what ever and the why above is probably quite sim-
ple... and that is the underlying problems are so huge and em-
barrassing that leadership has no other option than to keep the
problems hidden. Essentially that is Audit 101... and the more I
look and listen, the more it appears that this is the problem.
OOPS
Please bite the bullet and get some good professional account-
ants, with forensic experience involved... and get some systems
operational that will deliver excellence in TRAC
Sincerely
Peter Burgess
in New York
Tel: +1-212 772 6918
mailto:peterb@afrifund.com
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