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ATCnet ... The Accountability Project
The ATCnet Accountability Project 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 a good methodology for performance analysis and accountability. And media does not have a high level of objectivity.
Who knows about good development performance, and the people who have been responsible for excellence in development. Who knows about improvements in accounting systems and audits in governments around the world. Who knows about policy reform and regulatory reform that has changed trade patterns and created jobs. Who knows about the people who are doing important work in the global health and HIV-AIDS crisis without much in the way of material and financial resources. Even though this is an era of incredible information and communications technology, virtually nobody knows.
And who knows about the errors and omissions and downright failures of the big organizations that dominate the international official development assistance (ODA) arena. And who knows how little money actually is used for important work that would have a benefit on people’s lives, and how much is spent on the admin and overhead of major organizations.
And who knows about the economic value destruction and social disruption that is associated with foreign direct investment. Not to mention the environmental abuse that often goes with it when the pollution is thousands of miles from Washington or Whitehall.
The goal of the ATCnet Accountability Project is to change this. A powerful modern relational database, and the globally accessible Internet, together with a network of ATCnet volunteers and supervisory staff are making it possible for critical information about development performance to be easily accessible.
Under the ATCnet Accountability Project, the public will be able to see basic 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. Some reporting and analysis will result in demonstrated excellence. Other analysis will identify poor performance and it will be clear what were the causal factors.
The ATCnet Accountability Project is an independent initiative. It will be funded in part by organizations that may be subject to negative accountability reports. But no organization will fund the project to the extent that it can influence the objectivity of the process and the reports
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.
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