AIMS
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AIMS - Aid Information Management Systems
Background
This site will be updated by end of September to include a Frequently Asked Question guide to Governments and UNDP Country Offices (or others) who are considering introducing an Aid Information Management System. In the meantime, pointers on what to consider are given below, along with Country Examples.
What are AIMS?
There are many different systems in use to track ODA resources. At its most basic, an Excel spreadsheet can provide decision-makers with basic information on how much each donor has pledged, and how much of its pledge it has committed and disbursed. [Definitions will follow]
Many countries have introduced "homegrown" Aid Information Management Systems (AIMS) alongside their budgeting systems. Some of these systems are highly advanced, while others provide simpler functionalities. See examples below Country Examples of AIMS.
Can a Budgeting System track aid flows?
Where countries have effective financial management information systems (FMIS) for their domestic budget, the best option may be to modify existing systems so that they can also track externally financed grants and loans.
Why are AIMS Useful?
Accountabilty, effectiveness, supporting translation of national plans into actions through budget - alignment of oda with national budget.
What factors determine the success or failure of an AIMS?
Importance of champion, policies, capacity, etc.
What contexts can AIMS be used in?
Long term development, and post conflict or post-naturual disaster examples.
Key Features of an Aid Information Management System
The points below have been drawn from a Lessons Learned paper prepared by Jorg Nadoll, Aid Coordination & Management Specialist at UNDP's Regional Centre in Bangkok.
Practitioners are invited to contribute further lessons or perspectives to the text below.
The OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) has prepared a paper on how Aid Information Management Systems can help countries implement the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness looking at. See section on Standards below.
In general, an aid information management system should allow tracking of project-level information on commitments, disbursements, and – if feasible – expenditures, as well as planned results and progress towards achieving these results by sector and geographical location. See Country Examples of AIMS below.
When designing an information management system that is supposed to effectively supports nationally-led aid coordination and respective decision making, one should consider the following features and functionalities:
System should be web-based and easy to use
Note: In principle, it is recommended to use a system that is web-based, because this allows everybody to access the information, provides for greater transparency and accountability and therefore fosters the acceptance and sustainability of an AIMS. However, the usefulness of a web-enabled system obviously depends on the existing national IT infrastructure and capabilities. Ideally, the set-up of an information management system should be part of a holistic IT strategy to establish/upgrade the IT infrastructure within a certain ministry or the government as a whole. In any case, the IT infrastructure and capabilities need to be assessed thoroughly before selecting/designing a system. In places without sufficient internet connectivity one is well advised to refrain from trying to establish a web-based system. In general, a web-based system seems advantageous in addressing the following aspects, which should be considered when designing an AIMS:
- Partners enter data directly/on-line on their assistance: While the Ministry of Finance (MoF) usually has detailed information on loans, it can be rather difficult for the MoF to obtain information on grants, depending on the existing legal framework and established business processes. Through sharing the data entry burden among all development partners, the MoF does not need a large data gathering team and can allocate its existing human resources on data analysis. The responsibility for entering project-level data should be split between development partners. While funding agencies are best placed to provide information on commitment and disbursements, their implementing partners will have more up-to-date information on progress towards results.
- Partners get something back: Development partners have immediate access to their data and that of other partners, which provides an incentive to share information in the first place.
- All ministries benefit: Aid coordination is a shared responsibility. Line Ministries need an overview about who is doing what in their sectors in order to develop a sectoral plan that adequately addresses the needs within this sector and allocate the available resources effectively. In order to facilitate this task and to avoid that different Line Ministries request the same type of information from development partners, in addition to the Ministry of Finance, the data on external assistance needs to be accessible by all ministries.
- All levels of Government benefit:Local governments are best placed to provide information on actual needs of and respective supplies to their provinces and more importantly to provide feedback regarding the achieved results of development interventions. Where access to the internet is not available, the data could be distributed on CD-ROMs. Ideally, in a later phase, the aid management system allows off-line data entry in order to support local governments in their monitoring and reporting function.
- Full transparency & accountability, including downwards accountability to beneficiaries: Provided that access to the internet exists, a web-based system allows that the information is easily available to all. Local beneficiaries can see what has been decided and allocated in their name. If the system is not web-based the accountability function of an AIMS can be supported by using other means to provide access to and disseminate the information, including preparation of pre-packed district and sector reports, which can be distributed as hardcopy directly or through media and other established channels.
System should provide an overview of loans and grants, and ideally be linked to the system used to prepare the national budget
- In order to support the effective allocation of all resources available to a Government in accordance with the national development strategy, it is essential that the system allows tracking of projects funded through loans and through grants side by side – for analytical purposes and because many projects are mixed-funded, e.g. by a loan with an additional grant component. In the longer run, a link to the domestic resource management system should be established to ensure effective budgeting and optimal alignment of available resources behind development goals. Depending on the IT infrastructure, this link can be manual or automatic.
- In general, financial data should be captured and presented in a format that is comparable to the national budget. The system should allow tracking, presentation and analysis of financial data (project cost, commitments, disbursements) by year, by quarter and ideally by month, as well as analysis of accumulated figures and time series.
System should track progress towards planned results
In order to make sound assessments regarding aid utilization and effectiveness, it is essential that the system supports monitoring of planned results and progress towards achieving these results. In this respect, the system should provide answers to the questions like:
- Do projects support the National Development Plan and the budget?
- What outputs will each project deliver?
- Did the project deliver the promised results – and on time?
As an AIMS usually captures project-level information, it is foremost useful for tracking of output-level results. Nonetheless, including the capability of tracking Key Performance Indicators deriving from a National Development Plan and linked to higher level results can facilitate linking the AIMS to the bigger, national Monitoring and Evaluation Framework. However, one should keep in mind that an AIMS is not meant to monitor social development outcome indicators, which are usually tracked by the National Statistics Office. Instead, when designing the AIMS, one should think about how the different data sets can best be used in a complementary way.
The images below are taken from DAD Pakistan (http://www.dadpak.org), and provide an example of how Key Performance Indicators, which derive from a sectoral plan, could be tracked through an aid information management system. The system allows tracking of indicators which link the individual project to a higher level development strategy, as well as recording of project-specific outputs, progress towards these outputs and factors causing delay.
The system should contain a number of indicators pre-defined per sector. The data provider would select an indicator reflecting the project strategy from a drop-down list. As these indicators are directly linked to development objectives defined in the national development strategy through the sector plans, this approach of linking individual projects to a national strategy through an aid management system supports aligning of external assistance with national priorities.
Line Ministries should play a key role in defining sector-level KPIs, as well as in monitoring progress of projects within their sectors and in following up with the development partners regarding updating of project-level information, in particular on project progress. The working groups can support Line Ministries in identifying priority interventions, a monitoring and evaluation framework to judge project performance, as well as supporting the analysis of sector and sub-sector results.
System should have a powerful analytical and reporting module
- The main reason for collecting data is to prepare analysis that influence decision making. Data processing and presentation are important elements in this respect. The system should allow cutting and dicing the data in the most flexible way, i.e. linking all data fields to each other in unlimited combinations. The system should further have a reporting tool that allows flexible connection of all data sets and presentation in user-friendly tables and charts. Given that different off-the-shelf reporting tools, like Crystal Reports, are readily available and can be pronged onto the back-end of most standard databases, it is not essential that the reporting tool is an integrated part of the core database. The design of a good database and the design of a good reporting tool require different skills and capabilities. Where a government decides to commission the development of a new AIMS from scratch it seems advisable that the designers focus primarily on core database functions to collect, store and process data.
- Note: Some off-the-shelf reporting tools are single desktop applications, i.e. not web-enabled. Such an application can be used to prepare reports, charts, etc. for publishing through a website, but it doesn’t allow external users, who access the system through the internet, to produce their own reports.
Setting up an AIMS - Common Challenges
The design, set-up and maintenance of aid information management systems often go along with a set of difficulties and challenges, particularly with regard to technical and political issues.
In general, people tend to over-estimate the problem solution capability of IT tools, while under-estimating the time, financial and other resources required for developing, installing and maintaining it. Another common challenge designers are often facing is that the people requesting an AIMS don’t have a clear vision of what the system is supposed to do exactly. The following issues constitute usual challenges within the course of establishing an AIMS:
Technical Issues
- User-friendliness of the system: Potential users of the system need to be involved in the design and customization from the beginning. The tool needs to be designed around existing business processes, not the other way round. Nonetheless, the design process can trigger a review of existing business processes and should in such a case be interrupted until unit mandate, objectives and business processes are clarified.
It is recommendable to keep the number of data entry fields limited. In this context, one should also consider how many different people would be required to provide the requested information. If a data entry module requires too many different people within a development partner agency to provide information, it is either rather unlikely that the partner agency will enter the data online or the data quality might be fairly low. In this case, it might be better if the outreach team visits the respective agency from time to time, literally collects the information and enters it itself.
- Stability of the system: AIMS should be web-based in order to ensure adequate transparency and benefits for all stakeholders. However, a web-enabled system usually faces stability problems if combined with a high number of features and functionalities that might work well as a desktop application. One should refrain from “over-engineering” an AIMS.
- Connectivity: In order to be functional it is important to ensure that the server hosting the system has sufficient capacity, in particular regarding up-load and down-load speed. From an ownership point of view, it is preferable to locate the server within a Government premises. However, depending on the existing IT infrastructure, it might be better to host the server at an ISP, in order to ensure functionality. It should be kept in mind that although the hosting server has sufficient capacity and appropriate dedicated bandwidth, users might still perceive the system as being slow if the capacity, in particular the download speed, of their own server is too low.
- Development time: The development of comprehensive web-based AIMS requires a considerable amount of time. The development time can be cut short through adapting and customizing an existing system. However, depending on how sophisticated the existing system is, the customization can still require a large amount of time. While designing a new system from scratch by using a local IT company can provide for more flexibility and sustainability there is no guarantee that the final product will meet all needs.
- Reliable long-term support from the software developer: It is essential to plan and provide for the adequate IT support capacity to manage and maintain the system. In this respect, especially if using an international, i.e. non-resident IT company, it is advisable to engage a local IT company from the beginning in the project. The IT company should be able to produce adequate documentation and user guides. Past experiences have shown that systems that have been developed by individual consultants have often not been sustainable, as the required continuous support was lacking.
Data Collection Issues
- Selection of data entry fields without clarity about the type of reports the system is supposed to produce. People tend to define the data fields intuitively without a clear assessment of the information needs and the type of reports required.
Note: the following issues should be taken into consideration/avoided if any additional data collection exercises are foreseen, e.g. cross-checks through district surveys.
- Questionnaires are developed without knowledge of data processing: Designing a questionnaire/survey requires expert knowledge. Data must be requested in a way that it comes back structured and categorized in order to ensure that the data can be processed and analyzed.
- Data processing capability is developed after questionnaire has been approved and survey/assessment has been undertaken: When developing an indicator, it is essential to have clarity about the data source (availability, timeliness, etc) and the method of data collection (questionnaire, interview, etc.) and data analysis. Political decision makers tend to request specific information with rather short notice. Hence, outreach teams are often rushed to collect data, although the necessary capabilities to process and analyze the data are not in place.
- Survey tools are not tested: Often, survey tools developed by central agencies don’t entirely fit with the realities at local level. It is essential to test survey tools in order to verify if the requested data can be provided, collected and processed to form meaningful reports that actually answer the initial questions.
Political Issues
- No or slow decision making: In general, the design and deployment of an IT system always takes longer than initially planned, for various reasons. In many cases, the customization process brings up fundamental questions regarding existing business processes, responsibilities and reporting lines, which might not be sufficiently clarified. Respective decisions take time and might slow down the establishment of the AIMS considerably. In this context it should be noted that failed attempts to establish an AIMS are often a reflection of institutional weaknesses in general.
- Obstruction: If aid coordination roles and responsibilities within and between ministries are not sufficiently clarified and accepted, the placement of an AIMS within one department might cause conflicts that can result in non-supporting or even obstructing behavior by other departments. When it comes to information sharing and resource allocation, different parts of a Government might consider each other as competitors and might therefore be reluctant to share information concerning their external funding.
- High expectations regarding issues the system will solve: Many people tend to consider an IT tool as a miraculous black box that will solve all their problems. It is essential to manage expectations from the beginning and clarify that an AIMS is just a tool that requires adequate management, maintenance and respective technical support by humans, who need to have adequate capacities.
Another closely related challenge is that the responsible government department, while expecting that by establishing a tool everything else will fall in place, might not be clear about what exactly the system is supposed to do and/or might find it difficult to communicate the related specifications to the IT developer.
- Limited Government capacity: In many cases, the capacities of the department responsible for aid coordination are limited and often already overstretched. In order to use the system effectively, analytical, communication and outreach, as well as negotiation capacities often need to be increased. Additional human resources might be required, especially during the initial roll-out, i.e. data entry phase. A thorough capacity needs assessment should precede the development and establishment of an AIMS.
Tips & Recommendations
Against the background of the general challenges outlined above, the following recommendations can be made.
- Given that an AIMS is supposed to support broader aid coordination and needs to be integrated in the respective broader architecture, it is essential to have a good understanding of the aid coordination architecture and respective strengths, weaknesses and capacity needs. In this respect, an aid coordination capacity needs assessment must be done before designing the system.
- The selection/development of an AIMS should be done against the background of the existing IT infrastructure. Ideally, the establishment of a comprehensive information management system should be done as part of a holistic IT strategy, which is supported by various partners and addresses broader hardware and software needs of either a specific government institution or the government as a whole. This helps ensuring that different hard- and software components provided by different partners are actually compatible.
- When designing an AIMS it is essential to be clear about the type of questions that shall be answered, the type of data that needs to be collected, the method of data collection, including the actual availability of the data, and the required capacities to collect and analyze the data, as well as communicate the findings. Adapting/reengineering an established system to fit changed requirements can be very cumbersome and counterproductive.
- An AIMS needs to be adjusted to existing business processes (if these have proven to be useful); for example, what type of reports are required and for whom. What are the standard reports required by decision makers? Who is usually responsible for data gathering and which methodology is used?
- The AIMS needs to be linked to the decision making process that it is supposed to support.
- The deployment of an AIMS needs to go along with:
Setting clear objectives for the system: Which development objectives and what kind of business processes is the system supposed to support? What type of data shall be collected, why, how and with what frequency? Additional human resources, especially during the initial deployment and data entry phase; Adequate policies supporting the process; in order to ensure that the system becomes an integral part of the broader aid coordination mechanism and related government business process, formal policies and guidelines regarding role and use of the system should be released by the government – ideally as part of an aid management strategy; Adequate training on how to maintain the system (technical requirements) and how to effectively use the system (analytical skills, etc) Intensive communication with line ministries and development partners before and during deployment.
- It is crucial where the coordinating unit managing the system is located within the institutional structure. The unit needs to have an adequate and sufficient mandate, adequate resources and appropriate institutional linkages. It is important to keep in mind that the mandate of the unit will influence the design of the system. For example, a system located within the Ministry of Finance (MoF) and developed with support from respective civil servants, is more likely to have strong features for financial monitoring, but might be less strong with regard to supporting monitoring of physical progress. Nonetheless, the MoF is generally the preferred Ministry to host the aid management entity and therefore an AIMS, given its genuine responsibility to develop a coherent budget covering all available resources. Design and maintenance should never be left entirely with an IT unit, but should be driven by a substantive department.
Note: In principle, only one central aid management entity should cover all external assistance, including technical assistance. The only exception should be emergency aid and some humanitarian aid, even though there is still a need for linkages between such assistance and the budget process. Split aid management responsibilities have proven to be a recipe for confusion, waste and conflict. The occasional three-way split between Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Economy and Ministry of Foreign Affairs is difficult to administer. The practical outcome of split aid management responsibilities is that government loses control of the exercise altogether, and aid decisions end up being driven by competing donor agendas.
- In addition to the day-to-day manager of the implementation process, it has proven to be useful to identify a higher level government official as champion, who supports and backs the development and implementation of the tool.
- It should be kept in mind that any AIMS is just a tool, it will only be as good and useful, as the people using, maintaining and entering data into it. In most cases the deployment of a new information management system requires additional human resources to enter the initial data and potentially also to analyze the gathered information. If the data quality is low even the most sophisticated and well-designed system isn’t helpful for decision making.
- In order to stimulate development partners to provide data, it can be helpful to publish reports showing partners commitments, disbursements, expenditures, results, etc frequently on a public website and announce their existence. Similarly, one can produce ‘meta-reports’, showing partners’ performance with regard to providing and updating data. For example, reports on projects without outputs, or without disbursement/expenditure can be produced and published. As a more sophisticated approach, a score card, rating data provision and quality can be used.
- If local data providers to a web-based AIMS experience difficulties with entering data because of slow or not existing connectivity despite sufficient capacity of the hosting server, it can be useful to either set up a data entry facility within the hosting agency and invite partners to enter their data from their or to develop offline data entry capability. Offline data entry allows data providers to enter data into an application saved on their desktop, save it on a CD ROM and send it to the Government agency, who can upload the data into the online system. One should carefully examine what type of data needs to be entered offline. In many cases it won’t be necessary to develop an offline module comprising all data entry fields, as only certain information, like progress towards results at local level, or only general feedback on the project or a specific output.
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Principles for Effectiveness
Not stand alone – aid info management systems should be part of broader system – from planning, to identify funding gaps, to budget.
An effective AIMS is also a vital link to planning and budgeting systems.
Standards
Standards, features and capabilities that countries should look for in aid tracking. What is the minimum set of features users should insist on?
The OECD DAC published a paper on Aid Information Management Systems at the Eighth Meeting of its Working Party on Aid Effectiveness, 5-7 July 2006. Scaling up development assistance and the Paris Declaration commitments demand urgent steps to increase the quality, transparency and accountability of ODA. This global agenda, reiterated at the UN World Summit in 2005, places importance on the reliability, transparency and accountability of public financial management systems and monitoring of ODA flows. A prerequisite for the effective coordination and management of aid is easily accessible and timely availability of up-to-date information on planned and ongoing aid flows by funding agency, sector and geographic location. Consequently, many governments have worked to set up databases, websites and other information management systems and tools to more effectively track, document and analyse aid flows to their countries. This paper describes how aid information management systems support all aspects of implementing the Paris Declaration and good practice in selecting and implementing such systems, based on several years’ experience in a variety of country situations.
Examples of AIMS
There are a wide range of different systems in use. For each system, summary information is given below, and a link provide to a Home Page where more details are available.
While each system has technical strengths and weaknesses and varying costs of customisation and maintenance, the key lesson of experience is that policy and capacity issues are central to whether any Aid Information Management System brings benefits or not.
AMIS - Aid Management Information System
Click for AMIS Homepage: background information, countries where implemented, contact persons, manuals.
Information on The Aid Management Information System (AMIS)
In 1996 the UNDP Fiji office offered assistance to the Aid Unit at the Ministry of Finance (MoF) in Suva for the design and implementation of a database to manage and share information related to foreign grants and technical assistance projects.
The database took the name of AMIS, the Aid Management Information System. AMIS is still used today and has been a precursor to similar exercises in other countries, including, more recently, Syria. The concept of a database to manage the daily up-keep of aid-related information within government was new at that time, and it was designed to retroactively include projects that had been previously recorded on paper. The data repository (called the backend) was installed in a computer server and the data entry interface installed in several computer workstations at the Aid Coordination Unit. Security was ensured by passwords and certain administrative actions reserved only to supervisors.
Today the system stores information related to grants and aid-in-kind received from a wide range of donors. AMIS is used mainly by MoF and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The MoF’s aid unit is responsible for data entry, and reports are produced periodically using a series of preset templates.
As for Syria, the system was connected with an online reporting tool that allows users to query all international cooperation projects in Syria according to MDG, Sector, Country, or a combination of them. The system is helping international donors to study other donors' work in the country for better collaboration and to avoid replication of work [1]
AMP - Aid Management Platform
Click for AMP Homepage: background information, countries where implemented, contact persons, manuals.
The Aid Management Platform (AMP) is a web-based AIMS that has been developed in partnership with OECD Development Assistance Committee, UNDP, World Bank and the Development Gateway Foundation as well as the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing in India.
The AMP tracks project-level information and provides, among others, group and aggregate information by sector, donor, program, year, quarter, as well as view of information in different currencies, and according to different fiscal calendars.
Extensive information on AMP is available at the Aid Management Platform home page. This includes the following information:
- Fact Sheet on AMP - in English, French and Spanish
- Case Study on AMP - based on experience in Ethiopia
- Presentation on AMP - in English, French and Spanish
- Other information
For more information contact the Development Gateway Country Operations Team: Country Operations Team Development Gateway Foundation 1889 F Street NW Second Floor Washington, DC, 20006 USA Tel: +1-202-572-9265 Fax: +1-202-572-9290 amp@dgfoundation.org
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Cambodian CDC/CRDB Development Cooperation Disbursement Information System
Click for Cambodian CDC/CRDB ODA Database: background information, countries where implemented, contact persons, manuals.
The Cambodian CDC/CRDB Database is a web-based system, which replaced DCAS, and was developed by a Cambodian IT expert in 2002 and has since been used to produce the annual Development Cooperation Report.
The system has successively been enhanced, among others to allow on- and offline data entry by development partners. The Cambodian ODA database tracks project-level information on commitments and disbursements, funding and executing agency, type of assistance, sector and geographic location, as well as target groups and physical progress. The general public can access the database through the websites, which allows viewing of standard predefined reports, as well as preparation of customized ones. The system is hosted and maintained by the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC), with the support of UNDP.
Click here for Manual.
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DAD - Development Assistance Database
Click for DAD Homepage: background information, countries where implemented, contact persons, manuals.
The Development Assistance Database (DAD) is a customizable, off-the-shelf, web-based aid information management system, developed by Synergy International Systems, a US-based private sector firm, with whom UNDP signed a Long-Term Agreement in 2005. The DAD is being used in more than 20 countries in the world including several countries in Asia.
The DAD allows tracking of project-level information on funding agencies, implementing partners, commitments, disbursements, expenditures, sector and geographic location, as well as progress towards physical results through key outputs and performance indicators.
DAD Systems are operating in the countries listed below (NB: more information is available at the DAD Homepage
Afghanistan: http://dad.synisys.com/dadafghanistan/
India
Indonesia: Recovery Aceh-Nias Databsae (RAN) Website:http://rand.brr.go.id/RAND/
Iraq: http://www.mop-iraq.org/dad/
Maldives http://dad.finance.gov.mv/
Pakistan http://www.dadpak.org
Sierra Leone:
Sri Lanka http://dad.rada.gov.lk/dad/
Thailand http://dadthailand.mfa.go.th/dad/
Vietnam http://dad.mpi.gov.vn/dad/
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DevInfo
Click for DevInfo Homepage: background information, countries where implemented, contact persons, manuals.
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OCHA W3
The Who does What Where database (3W) is the an information product most often produced by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), to support their co-ordination role. Knowing which organizations (who) are carrying out which activities (what) in which locations (where) is essential for ensuring coordination between organizations and their activities in a way that ensures that humanitarian needs are met. In most countrie, the 3W database is a simple Excel spreadsheet list with organisations, contact details, sector and district of operation.
Click for OCHA W3 Homepage: background information, countries where implemented, contact persons, manuals.
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Private Sector
As part of aid coordination efforts at the UNDP Regional Centre Bangkok in response to the tsunami, a Private Sector Development Assistance Database (PS DAD) has been developed capturing private sector tsunami contributions and investigated the experiences of integrating the private sector into aid coordination mechanisms. The result of this initiative is both the online database http://privatesector.tsunamitracking.org and a final report discussing the private sector and aid coordination in the tsunami context and beyond. The Final Report is available here: Private Sector and Aid Coordination in the Tsunami Final Report prepared by Elizabeth Leff, Aid Coodination & Management Regional Tsunami Private Sector Coordinator at UNDP's Regional Centre in Bangkok.
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Tamil Nadu Disaster Management System
Click for Tamil Nadu Homepage: background information, countries where implemented, contact persons, manuals.
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ODAdata Aid Information Management Systems (AIMS) - ODAmoz & ODAnic
Developed by ODAdata for the EU – simple but efficient - includes 3 year MTEF Forecasts per activity! http://www.odamoz.org.mz/ http://www.odadata.eu/odanic
ODAmoz since 2005: http://www.odamoz.org.mz/
ODAmoz is a new electronic tool that provides information on Official Development Assistance (ODA) to Mozambique. It was created in response to the Paris Declaration advocating for strengthened coordination and harmonization among donors and alignment with the Government of Mozambique.
ODAmoz enables to track donors’ and United Nations agencies’ projects and programmes in the country: where they are operating, who finances them, and which organization implements them.
It is a user-friendly database, accessible to all through the internet. Its “Design your own report” function makes it easy to search for specific information through a set of predefined criteria (donor, sector, location, project status, funding type and MDGs) and offers tables and geographic maps (ODAmap) for analysis.
History
ODAmoz was born out of a joint effort from the EU and UN to improve coordination among donors in Mozambique, thus carrying forward the agenda set by the 2005 Paris Declaration for improved aid effectiveness. This initiative was fully endorsed by the Development Partners Group in charge of the simplification and harmonization of development cooperation in the country.
Objective The main objective and focus of ODAmoz is to provide donors with a tool, based on international standards (e.g. OECD/DAC sector codification), to fulfill their obligations towards the Government of Mozambique of reporting and planning on quarterly disbursements (see downloads).
It also gives the GOM, donors and the public in general a snapshot of donors and UN agencies’ projects and financial commitment.
Responsibility Each donor and UN agency has selected a focal point that is responsible for collecting, entering and updating the data online on a quarterly basis. Accuracy and completeness of the data can only be guaranteed up to the last quarterly disbursement; forecasts are based on estimates.
The Ministry of Planning and Development (MPD) and its Directorate for Investment and Cooperation (DIC) is gradually taking up responsibility for the general overview of the database and production of the quarterly reports on donor disbursements.
ODAmoz’ Vision ODAmoz is becoming more and more donor inclusive, and is seen as a very useful tool, e.g. in the On/Off-Budget discussions with the Government of Mozambique and in providing a common source of information for many of the Donors involved that are revising their country strategies in 2006.
The intention is therefore, among other, to train focal points in each sector line ministry as users in order for the Government of Mozambique to fully exploit ODAmoz’s potential.
ODAnic to be launched end April 2008:
http://www.odadata.eu/odanic
History
In 2007, the DFID representation in Nicaragua hired ODAdata Aid Information Management Systems to create a dynamic version of the EU Blue Book based on Best Practices in Mozambique (ODAmoz) and the EU Bluebook in Vietnam. ODAnic was established in order to centralise, and make available in a harmonised and coordinated way, information on the activities of the European Commission and all EU Member States operating in Nicaragua.
In a further step towards greater harmonisation, it was agreed to open up ODAnic in future to ALL Donors present in Nicaragua and link where possible to the Government of Nicaragua’s own Aid Information System (SYSODA).
This initiative was fully endorsed by all EU Member States present in Nicaragua in order to simplify and harmonise the provision of information on EU Aid Flows to the country.
Objective
The main objective and focus of ODAnic is to provide EU donors with a tool, based on international standards (e.g. OECD/DAC sector codification), to fulfill their reporting obligations It also gives the Government, donors, civil society and the public a snapshot of EU Donors strategies, projects and financial commitments.
For further information please contact Alexander Bohr, ODAdata AIMS, alexander.bohr@odadata.eu
ODAdata is a freelance consultancy group specializing in the implementation and administration of Aid Information Management Systems (AIMS). ODAdata provides tools & maps for better Donor Coordination & Harmonisation.
ODAdata toolsets are based on international best practices such as ODAmoz, the Mozambique Country Donor Atlas, and ODAnic, which includes the EU Bluebook. ODAnic and ODAmoz are the online accessible Official Development Assistance databases to Nicaragua and Mozambique, located at www.odamoz.org.mz, and nic.odadata.eu respectively.
ODAdata offers field tested Coordination & Harmonisation tools & services, which are essential for the implementation of the International Aid Effectiveness Agenda (e.g. Paris Declaration, EU Aid Effectiveness Package).
Other systems
'Nicaragua has developed its own “System of ODA” (SysODA) in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with support from UNDP. It is a useful tool which provides an overview of the donors providing ODA, broken down by amount and by sector. For more information go to: System of ODA
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Capacity Development requirements
Capacity development requirements for resource and results tracking to function effectively.
Enabling environment
– data decision policies to populate the system the key to making systems viable, Verification of system, comparing data from donors and governments. Definitions of types of aid (e.g. bilateral versus NGO versus non-ODA actor).
OECD DAC Reporting Requirements and Guidance
- Creditor Reporting System (CRS) Reporting Guidelines
- The OECD DAC recommended in 2001 that aid provided to Least Developed Countries should be untied. The text of the recommendation: http://webdomino1.oecd.org/horizontal/oecdacts.nsf/linkto/DCD-DAC(2001)12
The DAC estimates that tying increases the cost of goods and services by 15-30 percent: OECD DAC, 2001, Untying Aid, Policy Brief: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/16/24/2002959.pdf
Open Source for Aid Information Management System ?
Useful References
OECD DAC
Comparisons based on Asian Experience, RCB
The AMP and DAD systems are in general very similar. The two systems have similar objectives and capture more or less the same dataset related to projects funded by the international community.
There are five main areas where AMP and DAD differ:
1. AMP is geared towards tracking of externally funded government projects for financial planning in relation to the national budget, while DAD is more geared towards tracking aid funded and implemented outside government, with approximate and simplified expenditure, for donor coordination purposes.
2. DAD tracks aid flows on multiple levels, by recording disbursements (interpreted as simplified expenditures) to contractor / 2nd level partners, which AMP does not (yet) do. Even though this feature is not fully utilized in any DAD deployments, it represents an opportunity to monitor smaller organisations in a complex emergency / recovery response.
3. AMP integrates results-based monitoring and project output per user-defined indicators. While some DAD systems has customized features for monitoring of outputs (Sri Lanka), key performance indicators (Indonesia) and Paris Declaration Indicators (Pakistan), the AMP system allows more flexibility and user-friendly monitoring and reporting of project results, managed from a more comprehensive administrative module.
4. AMP is experienced by user to be 3-9 times faster than DAD (see speed test).
5. DAD is generated by IDM knowledge builder, which generates the source code for each application module, while AMP is Open Source using a series of five Java Open Source applications. While Synergy may allow clients to use IDM to edit DAD systems in the future, AMP provides a gradient level of client customization opportunities, ranging from simple application layout editing to full-scale programming depending on the technical capacity of the client.
By simplifying expenditure reports, and focus on donor funds for projects implemented outside government (1), makes DAD rely mainly on donors to report data. Government capacity required to run the system is therefore more limited to exert pressure and provide support to donors and implementing agencies to report to DAD. The AMP system requires more government capacity to report on real expenditure, transactions to local government and budget integrated reports and financial planning.
DAD can thus be managed by a coordination unit outside key government ministries (like in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand or Sierra Leone), set up in an emergency / recovery context, while AMP operates preferably in key government line ministry functions (such as Ministry of Finance and Planning) where there is a certain level of capacity with regards to managing funds for government projects and planning capacity in relation to the national budget. The benefits by tracking fund transfers and real expenditure to ministries and local government levels is that AMP directly supports accountability of externally funded government managed projects and serves government financial planning objectives, to a degree DAD does not support.
By tracking donor funds to contractor (2), DAD has a potential to capture funds allocations to smaller NGOs that are difficult to monitor. This functionality and level is barely used throughout the DAD deployments due to lack of detailed data reported by agencies, and the reporting engine not able to easily analyse the aid flow across multiple levels. It has though, a good potential for accountability of partners and contractors that would otherwise be difficult to monitor, in particular in an emergency context where most projects are implemented outside government. This supports governments in monitoring actors in a complex emergency response with a large number of organisations involved.
The AMP web application has good performance and every page downloads fast like normal web pages. In comparison, the DAD is slow (3). Many users ‘lose patience’, in particular when modifying the list view to find projects and partners. It often takes users 1 – 1.5 minutes waiting time to login, look at one project and generate one simple report in DAD, while the same process requires less than 10 seconds of waiting time in AMP. While the reporting engine of DAD and AMP are mostly the same, DAD data may be less utilised by the general public ‘losing patience’ compared to a faster application like AMP.
DAD is generated through a knowledge builder application (4), while AMP is generated directly in Java using a set of Open Source applications, such as Tiles to design layout templates, Apache Struts for business objects and Hibernate to build database tables. Currently, few country supported by UNDP has the capacity to make programming changes using either the IDM Knowledge builder or the Java programming environment. Several countries and institutions would like to have the option to do so, and are about to develop such capacities (Afghanistan has developed their whole system in Access and use DAD only for web presentation; Sri Lanka has just developed two database modules operating alongside DAD without contractor help).
Synergy has indicated that they may allow countries to use IDM to make changes to their DAD. However, the IDM builder has been a Synergy internal application devolved over many years, and it is a question how easy it would be for outsiders to effectively learn how to use it and the level of flexibility allowed. AMP is based on Open Source technology and has unlimited potential for clients to develop and customize. Even with html skills and a basic understanding of Java, AMP allows clients to reorganise the layout structure of the application and the web presentation (a flexibility requested by Sri Lanka, but that cannot be facilitated by DAD or the Synergy’s web portal technology). Along with the government’s learning curve in Java, AMP allows for more and more customization by the client, following its five layers of open source Java applications.
As both database applications are SQL based, an MS Access-based Reporting Tool and Data Quality Assurance Systems like the one developed to operate in conjunction with DAD Sri Lanka and now newly established in Rwanda, can be used for both systems.
In order to be able to make a sound rational choice about which systems to deploy, quality technical documentation is needed. Technical documentation should assist in determining which solution will support the institutional processes and objectives sought. A key document is the solutions methodology. Synergy does not seem to have a methodology document for DAD at all, and the DAD and portal technology user manuals are outdated and not very user friendly.
There is a methodology document for AMP, though it only describes its system’s data fields and not its objectives and the methods chosen for the data. While there is a lot of information available on the internet about the Java open source tools used for AMP, it would be useful for AMP users to have a technical guide to help them learn and enhance their technical capacity to customize AMP further according to their needs. Documentation providing an insight into the systems high-level infrastructural and software architecture should be available for both systems. In particular is this important for countries aspiring to acquire more technical expertise to fully utilize the systems.
Who’s Who
Categories: AIMS | AMP | DAD
