As
you remember, BRR (Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency of Aceh and Nias)
was established to coordinate the recovery program and to jointly administer
the reconstruction funds ($7 billion) with World Bank acting as fiduciary,
through its Multi-Donor Trust Fund program. BRR’s mission was “to restore livelihoods
and strengthen communities in Aceh and Nias by designing and overseeing a
coordinated, community-driven reconstruction and development program
implemented according to the highest professional standards.”
One of the things BRR (or rather, its
well-paid international consultants) did very, very well was create impressive
hundrd-page documents outlining the proojects, heralding their successes, and
making even their failures (“lessons learned”) sound positive and hopeful. (their 16-book, 3,200 "BRR Books" series is a marvel.) One of the shorter documents at 23 pages was a Power Point Presentation on
the RAN Database.
Here is what BRR said about it:
What is the RAN Database?
•RAN Database is a system for collecting, tracking, analyzing and
displaying project and funding
information.
Who will use it?
•NGOs, donors, BRR, local government, media and the public will have access to RAN
Database and to paper based reports.
How will RAN Database benefit the reconstruction effort?
•RAN Database will provide up to date, transparent and accountable
information on the recovery process in
Aceh and Nias.
•RAN Database will be used by BRR to coordinate more effectively, pinpoint gaps
and overlaps in the recovery process and resolve bottlenecks and
issues.
•RAN Database will enable all organisations to plan and coordinate
their projects with
other actors working in the same sectors and locations.
Sounds
great!!
But let me tell you, even
in its heyday, with IT personnel at their battle stations, and money flowing
like wine, none of us could wrestle this multi-tentacled monster to the
ground. Still, the developer (Synergy)
touted it as a godsend: “The RAN
Database won the Innovative Government Technology Award in the Information Management
category at the 2008 FutureGov Summit. RAND was . . . recognised as an
innovative model of information management that has successfully promoted
improvement in public services, modernisation of government administration and
efficiency of public sector management.”
And
just as soon as it appeared, with a halo round its head, it disappeared.
Well, that's not entirely true; the website still exists, with a helpful list of 500+ recipient agencies. But every link is broken and no one is maintaining the site.
http://rand.bappenas.go.id/RAND/rc?requesttype=html&topmodel=[AM_MonoFrame]&now=1413834974744&sessionid=141383497335656&clickedModelId=*54#
I do have to say, however, that its Help section and instructions for using the thing, were it live, are quit extensive, so I am sure that the database itself exists.
Just not in Aceh.
http://rand.bappenas.go.id/RAND/Documents/help/Application/index.htm
It
has no backup that anyoe knows of.
It
stopped being used after 2 years.
Why?
First
and foremost, because of the same bloody thing that I have been harping about
in this space for over 5 years: no one ever thought, with all their money and
all their wonderful ideas, to teach Acehnese survivors how to implement the
projects that were supposed to “save” them.
So
when the highly paid IT people left, no one knew the system, including
government employees, BRR, Bappenas, Bappeda, World Bank’s PMU, etc.
I
wish I could think that this was just a horrible oversight.
But
I can’t.
Those
in charge simply did not care about sustainability. They operated a reconstruction program in
recovery mode, and because of that, the province has neither recovered nor been
reconstructed.
But
I digress.
The
BRR document goes on to say that “Within the RAN Database, Synergy developed a number of other
systems to build the capacity of the Government to track tsunami reconstruction
and enhance the management of the work-flow processes. These included a
Donor/Partner Profiles Module and a Concept Note Submission and Approval Module
for organizing the bottom-up and top-down budget planning process of the
reconstruction. The Concept Notes online submission and approval process
involved the entire NGO community in sharing data on their planned activities
for better coordination.
Ahahahahahahahahahaha.
The RAN has become
the central coordinating
database for Tsunami recovery data in Indonesia, tracking 1700 projects and a
total of USD 3.7 billion in commitments.
And nobody bothered to use it or maintain it .
“Synergy
worked with the government of Indonesia to define Sector specific Key
Performance Indicators (KPIs) for measuring progress of reconstruction at
various levels including the project level and overall sector level.”
If these KSI’s existed in document form, they are in the
wind now.
“RAN
provides a tool to analyze trends of KPIs against baseline and target values,
as well as financial and other project data. The RAN was also integrated with
the Regional DAD that includes information from other Tsunami affected
countries including Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Maldives. “
Could
be. Haven’t chatted with Maldives
yet. But over the past year when I have quizzed former colleagues working with
both NGOs and directly with the Indonesian government regarding this and other
possible locations about programmatic information concerning any of the
MDF/EDFF projects, no one has mentioned this database as being an information
archive . It appears to have been a
multi-million dollar boondoggle from right out of the gate, global prizes
notwithstanding. Don't get me wrong--I think Synergy developed a bang-up program. I don't know whether it was charged with teaching anyone to use it, however. Someone kind of fell down on the job on that one.
So
counting on RAN as being the receptacle of any further information on AAA’s
cocoa improvement project, or Keumang’s community development/participatory
rural appraisal work in the five districts, was pretty much out of the
question.
Happily
(in a surreal, mildly hysterical John Waters sort of way), EDFF, MDF and the
World Bank had not run out of money to spend on phantom databases. I was next introduced to something called
KNOW--the kinder, gentler reconstruction database.
Since
there are no appropriate photos to accompany this post (unless photos of me
crying into a big handkerchief and gnashing my teeth in frustration will do), I’ll
stop here. More tomorrow!
RAN
Database gush-fest:
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