COMMENTARY
The initiative described here was put into Wiki and Internet form around 2003. Much of the conceptual framework was developed over the previous twenty years or so, and used in different ways on a variety of consulting assignments around the world. Some of the work was associated with the famine in the Horn of Africa and the Saheel in the 1980s, as well as many refugee situations around Africa in the 1980s and 1990s.

While the use of accountancy as a management tool is the norm in the corporate arena, its use in humanitarian emergencies and in development is negligable. In turn this has led to corrupt practices in the official development assistance (ODA) community without any accountability and structures that are beneficial for the controllers of the system at the expense of the intended beneficiaries.

There is something badly wrong with ODA when 30 years of poor performance does not get addressed.

The Wiki worked as intended but sometime in 2009 the Wiki was trashed by some hackers. This was an important lesson about Internet security and a weakness of the Open Information movement. The good news is that technology is improving ... the bad news is that some hackers are improving along the same trajectory. In the current iteration of TVM Data, a very different architecture is being used!

It is interesting to note that the data structure being recommended in 2003 is similar to the data structure being used in the latest iteration of TrueValueMetrics ... but it is also fair to say that the origin of this data structure goes back to some work I did as a corporate CFO as far back as the early 1970s, and refined somewhat over subsequent years, but nor fundamentally changed. The aim is to get data that are meaningful for the people who have to make decisions and are accountable for performance.
Peter Burgess

NB ... The links below are old and inactive

The Old Wiki
Go to the website where the Wiki is being hosted

Database Background
One of the underlying themes of the Tr-Ac-Net strategy is that good information is the foundation for good decision making. The challenge is to make a lot of information easily accessible in a useful way, and to do it at a minimum and affordable cost.

Content
Content is now more of a challenge than technology. The available technology allows for very large quantities of data to be processed and stored for subsequent retrieval. The challenge is for these data to be compiled in an organized way so that subsequent use is easy and cost effective. The architecture of the data so that it is useful for analysis and decision making is an issue that Tr-Ac-Net is working on and seeking to optimise .... more

Wiki
In November 2003 someone in the Tr-Ac-Net community proposed that the first iteration of data collection could be done using a Wiki, rather than developing a rigid database structure that would be relatively difficult to change. The idea was that 100% of the effort could go into the data compilation and hardly anything would need to be done at the technical level. Since November 2003 a Wiki ... a Wiki Tikki Tavi ... has been used and a lot of information has been compiled. So much information has been put on the record that the system has now become a constraint and the Wiki has been overwhelmed. It is now very slow and no longer effective. .... more

The Wiki content architecture that evolved
HELP STARTING
Some basic information about how the Wiki works, and how users can get started
Introduction
Help

ORGANIZATIONS
The main focus of the initial Wiki was on organizations. This came about because it is the prevalent mindset in the official relief and development assistance (ORDA) community about structure and the critical entities of the sector. A lot of information about organizations was collected. One unique aspect of this data collection initiative was that any and all organizations may be 'on the record', not just those that pass through some sort of filter or screening process. The screening comes afterwards based on information about the organizations and its performance. The following are some typical pages.
Main Org. Page
United States
United Kingdon
Global / UN / etc
Kenya
More

PEOPLE
People emerged as another important component of the database data. People were a reflection of ideas, activities, organizations and more. Though Tr-Ac-Net had an academic view that 'people' were important, the process of collecting data made this even more apparent. The information compiled about people is rather limited compared to what is possible, and desirable.
Main People Page

COMMUNITY
Almost no information was collected about community. The Tr-Ac-Net focus on Community Centric Sustainable Development (CCSD) and the lack of easy data to facilitate good decision making with CCSD has been a surprise. It has become apparent that this is one of the biggest weaknesses in the management information dimension of development.
Main Communities

ISSUES DIALOG
In contrast to hard community information, there is a huge amount of dialog and writing based on rather soft data and the analysis of analysis. Modern ICT up to now has facilitated dialog, but has not yet been used to mobilize hard and reliable data that can be used for decision making.
Main Issues List
Development
The AIDS Crisis
Poverty
TAAME
More

BOOKS AND DOCUMENTS
Even though rather little was documented and put on the record in the Wiki, there is a huge amount of written material in books and documents about the relief and development sector. While there is a lot of information in these sources, it is not easy to use the information for decision making and management in the sector.
Main Book Page