Transparency

2005-01-15T14:10:00.000-08:00

It is not entirely clear why transparency is so difficult. It seems that organizations are determined to operate with a minimum of scrutiny and public understanding.

There is a case for privacy where the organization is small and has little impact on the community, the society and the environment and the resources used are private resources.

The same case cannot be made for large organizations that impact, community, society and the environment and use other people's money, whether public or private.

The concept of transparency is that outsiders should be able to see and understand what is going on. A simple concept.

The TAAME Elements

2004-11-17T11:48:00.000-08:00

TAAME - Transparency, Accounting and Accountability, and effective Monitoring and Evaluation

Corruption and poor performance in relief and development can be blamed to some extent on lack of transparency, weak systems for accounting and accountability and ineffective monitoring and evaluation. The TAAME initiative is a comprehensive approach to improve management information in development, and improve decision making and development performance.

The TAAME initiative has been designed to be cost effective and efficient and to make best of use management information and modern technology. Accordingly TAAME uses local resources with Internet web database support. TAAME has the following elements: (1) Transparency; (2) Accounting; (3) Accountability; and, (4) Monitoring and Evaluation.

Transparency
Decision making with respect to public resources should be visible to the stakeholders. One way in which this can be achieved in a practical way is to have key information easily accessible on the Internet. TAAME provides a place where decisions regarding use of development resources can be discussed.

Accounting
Keeping track of financial transactions is the foundation for management control. Accounting is the basis for keeping track of financial transactions, and includes timely periodic reports about revenues, expenditures and financial condition of the entity. This information should be related to performance and the achievement of the entities goals.

Accountability
Accountability is a feedback process that brings the results of decisions back to the decision makers for affirmation or explanation. Good accounting facilitates this process. Transparency makes the process visible to all stakeholders.

Monitoring and Evaluation (“M&E”)
The TAAME approach to M&E differs from the M&E process in wide use by donors and international agencies and NGOs in recent years. TAAME M&E is done as a routine part of the accounting and reporting process to provide insight into operational performance as soon as it is needed.

These elements all draw on a single pool of management information that is derived from the accounts and feedback from operational activities.

For more information see http://www.afrifund.com/ and look at the pilot database that has been implemented using a low cost Wiki to compile initial content about organizations and issues. For more information contact Peter Burgess in New York by e-mail at peterb@afrifund.com or telephone 212 772 6918