Date: 2025-03-13 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00003125
ATCnet
Project for Universal Accountability
Need for objective and independent and meaningful and universal information on the use and effectiveness of scarce material and financial resources.
Project for Universal Accountability
Need for objective and independent and meaningful and universal information on the use and effectiveness of scarce material and financial resources.
Overview
The ATCnet Project for Universal Accountability was developed in response to the widespread impression that performance in development and in humanitarian and emergency interventions is expensive, inefficient and ineffective. The project addresses the need for objective and independent and meaningful and universal information on the use and effectiveness of scarce material and financial resources.
The media is a powerful tool for communication. But it is not a good methodology for performance analysis and accountability. It does not apply a universal methodology and does not have a high level of objectivity.
Economic activities are largely carried out in secrecy, especially those that relate to development and emergency operations and foreign direct investment. Few have knowledge about good development performance, nor the people who have been responsible for excellent performance. Few have access to information about resources flows and the benefits realized from these flows.
The prevailing methodologies for “Monitoring and Evaluation” and other oversight modalities favored by the official development assistance (ODA) community rarely make it possible to assess performance in relation to the resources allocated and to make judgment about performance in the development context. Failed projects can be reported as successful merely because the planning documentation was as faulty as the implementation performance.
With accountability it become possible for good work that has been done in the background to be highlighted. Who knows about improvements in accounting systems and audits in governments around the world. These improvements can be important, but only if the improvements are fully integrated into a generally more efficient ODA environment. Installing an upgraded accounting system is costly and valueless unless it is used to improve performance. With accountability, value and benefit in relation to resources employed is a constant question to be addressed. With accountability value and benefit from the resources employed in relation to these activities are open to question relative to the other possible use of the resources.
With accountability, policy reform and regulatory reform that is intended to change trade patterns and create jobs and improve the economy does not succeed unless these goals are actually accomplished. And the question is ongoing as to whether or not these results were as good as they could have been or should have been.
With accountability it will become clear who are the people and groups and organizations that are doing important and valuable work in the global health and HIV-AIDS crisis. The measure of “amount disbursed” is only one of many measures in an arena of universal accountability. An accountability methodology challenges media relations spin where large amounts are talked about and are dutifully printed in the media but are never reflected in the actual deployment of resources and the value of benefits.
The ATCnet Project for Universal Accountability is now practical because of the data management and analysis power that is now available using modern information and communications technology (ICT). Up to now this power has been used for some amazing works including weather forecasting, scientific research including the human genome project, war games and intelligence gathering, engineering design and manufacturing, and corporate data mining such as the Walmart inventory management and analysis systems. Nothing of such power and quality has yet been deployed in the critical arena of global development performance.
Without accountability, it is difficult to know about errors and omissions and downright failures in the international official development assistance (ODA) arena. Accountability can be an element in controversial plans, but will not serve to simplify complex planning issues with competing goals and values. But accountability does enable good performance to be differentiated from bad performance in any implementation. And accountability can add a dimension to planning dialog that comes from stakeholders that might otherwise be ignored.
Accountability will highlight the relationship of benefits delivered to expenditures made, and make it much clearer that very little of the total development resources actually used benefit people’s lives. Accountability will show how much of the total of development resources are spent on administration and overhead rather than on program activities.
Accountability will also make it far easier to understand the full extent of economic value destruction and social disruption that is associated with foreign direct investment. There are multiple layers of analysis that can be addressed by an accountability methodology so that all aspects of social and economic performance can be assessed. Community perceptions of natural resources and environmental matters and quality of life can be addressed in the same forum that corporate investment and corporate profits and economic rent are analyzed.
Accountability is missing in the prevailing modalities for globalization. Without accountability globalization is going to benefit most those that have power and influence. With accountability stakeholders in both SOUTH and in the NORTH able to participate much more in the process of globalization. With a broader and objective system of information there can be a much more equitable allocation of benefits. It is widely accepted that knowledge is a powerful element in the efficient running of any market. Accountability is the source of knowledge that is needed for a more equitable process of globalization.
Accountability helps to address the issue of acceptability of unacceptable behavior when the behavior is out of sight and out of mind. Without accountability environmental pollution that is thousands of miles from the rich NORTH can go unseen and be ignored by leaders in Washington or Whitehall or Quai d’Orsay, because the PUBLIC stakeholders are not sufficiently aware.
The goal of the ATCnet Project for Universal Accountability is to change this. A powerful modern relational database, and the globally accessible Internet, together with a large professional network now makes it possible for critical development performance information to be easily accessible. The PUBLIC from SOUTH and NORTH can see critical information about resource flows and results achieved.
The PUBLIC will be able to draw their own conclusions about resources flows and investments that produce good results and resource flows and investments that are ineffective and destroy economic wealth. The system facilitates reporting and analysis and demonstration of excellence. Other analysis will identify poor performance and it will be clear what were the causal factors.
Universal accountability is a key to effective change. Not the type of accountability that has dominated recent discussion of accountability and transparency but independent accountability by the PUBLIC and for the PUBLIC.