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Original article: Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess | ||
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Your potential collaboration with the Urban Sea- Initiative
Peter Burgess Thu, Sep 23, 9:57 PM (11 hours ago) to Gus, Gus, Jonathan, Jerome Dear Gus I am not sure whether these are active e-mails for you, but they seem to be the most recent. I hope this message reaches you. Jerome Peloquin has let me know that you are looking to help get traction for the Urban-Sea initiative that Jerry and others have been working on for some time. It would be great if you can help because many of the core ideas are pretty exciting. I have known Jerry for a good number of years ... just as I have known Jonathan Cloud for a pretty long time. In both cases the goals are laudable, but the hurdles to make such goals the norm are substantial. My role in both of these situations has been to promote better metrics that are more 'fit-for-purpose' than conventional financial accounting and the associated reporting. The idea that modern financial accounting, audit and reporting was designed in its main characteristics when sailing ships were giving way to steamships and horses were giving way to steam locomotives and hasn't changed much since that time is quite thought provoking. It is no wonder that the big decisions that govern the progress of our socio-envir-economic system rarely get the balance right. I started to think about better metrics a long time ago ... actually in 1975. This was when I was in Nigeria and was trying to understand how a country that was so financially rich could have a population that was so poor. Clearly this was something to do with decision making and the priorities for deploying the available wealth. During the '80s and '90s I did a lot of work on assignments associated with international economic development and humanitarian assistance for the World Bank, the United Nations and others. I figured out how to move the needle a bit from a purely financial analysis to something that embraced impacts on people ... not so much the environment. I created a database application (using FoxPro) that facilitated development planning on a large (national) scale with detail at the project level. I called this BDSDA ... Burgess Database System for Development Analysis. It never got much traction because of two factors: (1) Microsoft acquired FoxPro and almost immediately stripped the old FoxPro coding interface in favor of a Microsoft tool, and (2) The UN stopped producing the national level Development Cooperation Reports (DCRs) in favor of a new publication, the Humanitarian Development Report that they argued would balance the World Bank's Economic Development Report. Actually, I think the UN decision about the DCR was the sad reality that many major donors to the UN and development more broadly were uncomfortable with the level of transparency that the DCR provided ... and I believe it was the French that were heading this charge and happily supported by others including the UK and the USA. In any event the DCR disappeared and together with quite a lot of the work I was doing in the late 1990s! I think it was in 1994 that John Elkington articulated the idea of the triple bottom line (TBL) ... a very basic idea for better metrics.. Since then there has been a proliferation of ideas for better metrics most of which have been some variant of the idea that meaningful metrics that actually measure what needs to be measured is a bad idea. Why am I not surprised ... because powerful economic interests are focused on the maintenance of their financial wealth and power and little else. This is important ... a rather small number of people have created an immense amount of wealth for themselves, while the world ... society, environment and economy ... are degrading at an ever increasing pace. I am concerned about the power structure that controls our world and want my work with TrueValueMetrics to address this in a meaningful way. This was an issue when I was at the apex of my career and continues to the present time. This issue must be addressed, and I will do all in my power to do what I can to help. Please feel free to engage with me in any way that you see fit. Best PeterB _____________________________ Peter Burgess ... Founder and CEO TrueValueMetrics ... Meaningful Metrics for a Smart Society True Value Impact Accounting ... Multi Dimension for ALL the Capitals http://www.truevaluemetrics.org LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/peterburgess1/ Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/PeterBurgess2/ Twitter: @truevaluemetric @peterbnyc Telephone: 570 202 1739 Email: peterbnyc@gmail.com Skype: peterbinbushkill
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