Dreckitude!

Hello all! I hope you all had lovely weekends! I was a little hurt that no one commented on my most recent blog post, but I decided to get over the pain, learn how to love again, and write another post.

You are likely asking, “what is “dreckitude,” exactly?” Well, my dear confused reader, it is a word pioneered by Vogue Editor and more importantly America’s Next Top Model (oddly, one of the few American shows we get on our TV in the Muzungu House, as it has lovingly been named) judge, Andre Leon Talley. “And why do you insist on undermining the gravity of your posts by making inane pop culture references?,” you now ask. Well, that cannot be answered in the time we have, but good use of the word “inane” back there, imagined voice of my aggregated readers!

So I figured it was about time to give you all an update on my internship, since I am over halfway through my practicum and what not (ahhhhh!!). Over these past two weeks, “dreckitude” is a word that has been popping into my head quite a bit as I try to navigate the complicated, dizzying, and often maddening world of foreign aid transparency.

One of the things that always amuses/confounds me about foreign aid is that, as it seems to me, it is a system that was built in a manner that is completely incompatible with its goals. Of course, the presumptive goals of the system have also changed since its creation.

AidData holds foreign aid records dating back to the 1950s. However, no one could have said that foreign aid was really attempting any goal other than fighting the spread of communism until after the specter of the Cold War had settled. This means that for the first fourty-ish years of the existence of foreign aid institutions, they were designed to achieve a purpose that is far different then they are now.

Of course, there are many who would argue that aid is still predominantly political in motivation, only now the aim is co-opting UN votes or access to natural resources, instead of fighting the red tide. This is one of the things that I find so fascinating about foreign aid: The idea that foreign aid can and should achieve the nebulous idea of “development” is an idea that, at best, is only 20 years old, and many think is still a nascent idea.

This summer, I worked on the World Bank on the mapping for results project, which I wrote a couple of blog posts about here and here. Also, if you want to look at some pretty maps I helped create, you can look here.

The aim of this project was to gain a better picture of aid, due to the very general information that generally exists about foreign aid, which I discussed in this post. One of the most frustrating things about that project would be when I would read through (cough skim cough) hundreds of pages of documentation just to find that “these 30 schools were built in Northern Uganda.” But where in Northern Uganda??? How can you expect anyone on the ground to know if their representative has swindled away the money that was supposed to build them a school when the most specific information we can get about the location of those schools is a region of a country?? That would be like saying that ten schools are being built on the east coast and expecting someone in Lancaster County PA to both somehow know that they are supposed to be getting a school and speak out when one does not show up. (To be fair, the good people of Lancaster County might be able to magically know about fictional aid flows, if their ability to make delicious delicious pretzels is any indication of their psychic abilities…. Mmmmm who wants to send me some pretzels? And some cheese!!!)

The other frustrating thing, food diversions aside, was knowing that someone in the World Bank, perhaps someone sitting less than a block away from me, has perfect information, knows exactly where those villages were built, and yet I was unable to find out who that person is and how to get that information. One of the good outcomes of that summer was the introduction of a discussion of adding a standardized location field to World Bank documents, so there would be a set place to look for the location of a project. However, this would only specify location to the district level, and wasn’t even a sure thing. Yet, in even considering this measure, the World Bank stands as a leader in its field.

Of course, I always wonder why, in 2010, it is just now seeming like an important idea to the World Bank to specifically record where their projects are, a task that would take the person implementing the project on the ground about 5 minutes. But this is just another one of those things that remind me that aid agencies were not necessarily designed in the best way to achieve what their stated goals have become.

The dreckitude that characterizes the record-keeping of project locations at the World Bank is certainly not unique to that organization. UNICEF has plenty of its own problems, which have injected a good bit of frustration into my first three weeks. I essentially have spent the last three weeks trying to understand how UNICEF records and organizes its aid information, who within the organization holds which information, how each piece of information can be used, and perhaps most importantly, how I can get my over-eager little hands on the information I need.

This process has proven difficult as I have found myself hitting many dead ends. However, I had a great Monday (today was a public holiday for Eid al-Adha so I didn’t have work) at work in which all the pieces seemed to fall together. It was the first day of my practicum that I actually felt that I would be able to accomplish the prototype website, the output that I have been hoping to produce from my six weeks at UNICEF.

However, much ridiculousness still exists. For example, all of the reports from the implementers on the ground only exist in HARDCOPY. That’s right, there is no electronic record of the only documents that detail specific project locations, beyond the district level. So in order to find specifically where UNICEF is working, I will have to dig through hundreds of pages of paper. Oy. Moreover, there is absolutely no way for anyone outside UNICEF to have access to this information, the information a citizen would need to hold their representatives accountable for the aid they are supposed to receive. However, the one of the most exciting things about my project is how much commitment there is within the UNICEF Uganda office to organizing themselves in the best possible way to achieve development outcomes.

In my discussions with my boss, he has seemed excited about the idea of making changes to the current reporting system to be able to feed the necessary information into the system so that it will be sustainable without an intern doing the grunt work to pull the scattered pieces together. So all in all, I am feeling optimistic right now, which feels pretty darn good!

As things start moving, I’ll try to write more often about how the project is coming!

With love and smizing,

Alena