Clinton Global Initiative on the Ground in Haiti

Comment

Comment by omdesign on February 16, 2010 at 8:29am

Open Street Map is an excellent platform for rudimentary tracking accountability of funds. Compliance is always the issue, but reporting the use of funds serves every organizations interest, if they want to do good, that is.

Conceptually it is easy to say "Let's track the funds from donation to application" but the truth of accounting is much more complicated. Everyone is already 'tracking' this information on an individual basis so nothing new has to be implemented so much as gathering existing data.

Books, salaries, crayons and water are all expenses that get jumbled in any meaningful effort and there is plenty of room for mismanagement - intentional and non.

I think there is a deeper philosophical question at work. The current state of Aid continues to look at Haiti as a population of 'victims'. Ironic then, that a Clinton is pushing educational favors since he was on watch when Arustide, Arguably Haiti's First modern freely elected leader, was forcibly removed by US Military forces. World Bank and US support have destroyed critical political and economic engines that would be invaluable right now.

Aid agencies really could (and should) have a 'fast track' accounting system to manage disaster relief that circumvents their usual administrative process that has an electronic equivalent of RFID tags indicating the exact location between donation and application. This would improve donor confidence and create a means to compare with follow up reports to track actual efficacy.

Opening up this process allows more knowledgeable individuals to enter the equation and for funding priorities to be discussed. Now there is a hodge-podge of redundant activity to provide resuscitation that might not be very well thought out, culturally or effectively.

But (more importantly) the overall Aid package should be going to a single administrative body who would then be responsible for dispersal and allocation. It would be important for this body to have strong cultural and social awareness and responsibility to the people of Haiti. Gee, it sort of sounds like a "Government", which may already exist. We have to look deeper at whose interests are served by donations going to private organizations. It is essentially a vote of "no confidence" in the existing political structure. As in, we trust Ex President Clinton more than we trust Haiti's electorate. But Clinton is the very reason we have an unstable Haitian political scene! Not to mention the fact that exporting US educational values/practices is more like a poison apple when we look at efficacy across the spectrum.

Hang the World Bank! Arustide could easily come back and with better awareness from Civil Society many of the destabilizing influences can be brought to light before they gain too much extrapolitical power. Haitian people are not incapable of managing their own relief and recovery and in fact are critically essential. Aid funds that currently pay for redundant administrative tasks and short sighted 'solutions' really should be used to help create an open and fair political governance structure to build a viable future.

Comment by Peter Burgess on January 26, 2010 at 6:07pm

How good is this "The CGI has helped more than ten million children gain access to better education, ..." ... it sounds pretty impressive ... it is a good "sound byte" ... but does it really have any meaning? Looked at from the perspective that there are about 4 billion people on the planet who are obscenely poor and lacking much access to education, the NEED for better education is about 2 billion for child education (50% of 4 billion) and maybe another 1 billion who would benefit from basic adult education. So 10 million is big ... is good ... but what is the plan to address the need for 3 billion more seats at the education table? I wonder how many communities there are on the planet ... and what is the state of education in each of these communities ... is it getting better or worse ... how much is being spent on education, is it enough ... what would happen if even a little bit of extra resource gets added to improve education? Maybe the CGI is the best thing ever for education ... but this is not self-evident. I wonder where this story would fit if there were performance metrics around the money and activities associated with education?
Peter Burgess
Community Analytics

Comment by Peter Burgess on January 24, 2010 at 3:14pm

Dear Colleagues
There are hundreds, if not thousands of initiatives to mobilize resources to help people in Haiti ... and the organizations are proudly announcing how successful their fund raising has been. Good ... but the feedback about how well these resources are being used is almost non-existent. This is why, when we attempt to have some accountability ex-post facto, it will be impossible to explain how so much of these resources just cannot be accounted for! What needs to be done is simple ... the resources need to be tracked from origin to final use ... and the final use documented showing when, how much, where, what and who by. This is basic accounting ... with a value component and with a big focus on where so that there may be easy verification!
Peter Burgess
Community Analytics