Dear Colleagues, Following up on postings by Janice Brodman and Ed Cherlin ... the interesting thing about a company is that the stakeholders who are interested in its "value" look at both balance sheet and the profit or cash flow past and future. This is very helpful in thinking about what works and what does not. Governments (including local governments) do their accounting on a cash basis that cannot reflect the financial performance of the government entity in a meaningful way because expenditures that have life beyond the current period are essentially "off the books". It is a weak system, and I am sure has stayed in vogue for that very reason.
Sadly most NGOs also use cash based accounting. Maybe for the same reason, or because it is the type of accounting that suits tax reporting. Giving NGOs more sources of revenues is a laudable goal. But international selling is not easy. There is a powerful global market economy. It is very expensive to move goods around the world, especially if you are not expert and are not doing it in huge quantities. The Walmart business model works for international selling. The mom and pop businesses will lose money. But I do think there is a case for excellence in accountancy for NGOs so that it is easy for them to show how well they are doing. Tr-Ac-Net has progressed along these lines and may be able to put it into a software solution later this year. Local governments should certainly look at reworking their business processes to take advantage of ICT, and again Kris Dev has developed some software applications that have been deployed in government offices to improve the handling of their paperwork. Deploying them in other situations is possible in cooperation with local ICT professionals who are able to provide the needed training and support. The software is based on an Open Source approach which reduces cost significantly. Government must be able to fund the implementation costs and ongoing support. Sincerely Peter Burgess ____________ Peter Burgess Tr-Ac-Net in New York 212 772 6918 [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Transparency and Accountability Network With Kris Dev in Chennai India and others in South Asia, Africa and Latin America http://tr-ac-net.blogspot.com On 5/23/2005, Edward Cherlin wrote: > On Friday, May 20 2005, Janice Brodman wrote: > >> I would like to propose what may be a somewhat radical approach to using >> ICT to strengthen local governments (LGs): We should be thinking of LGs >> -- and encouraging them to think of themselves -- as companies do. > > We have had some very bad experience of this concept in various levels > of government. Too often, the company that government models itself on > is Enron. :-( > > I have a different idea. Let us make our NGOs into companies, like the > microcredit institutions, and like the organizations that help poor > artists and craftspeople sell their wares on eBay and Overstock.com, and > like ITC in India, which puts computers into villages so that farmers > can see world crop prices at no charge. ITC also offers to buy at prices > publicly pegged to the Chicago Board of Trade, thus increasing farm > income and (they say) getting better quality product at lower cost than > the alternatives. ..snip... ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For past messages, see: http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html
