One World Trust launched its 2007 Global Accountability Report today. This is the second year of this thought-provoking effort that tries to assess “accountability” of inter-governmental organizations, NGOs and transnational corporations. The top performer was the UN Development Program among IGOs, Christian Aid in the NGO sector and General Electric among the TNCs. Accountability comprises four sets of indicators related to a) transparency b) participation c) evaluation and d) complaint and response mechanisms.
Worth a look. I found myself wanting to ask too many questions. How did they pick these 30 organizations? Did they allow the companies to alter the findings before publishing? Given the slightly different stakeholders, can you meaningfully compare the accountability of Interpol with the African Union with Google? Must sift through details for answers.
As an awareness-raising study, I really like this. I hope it can identify indicators that can be incorporated into the organizations’ annual reporting efforts, though I was told that isn’t a main focus of this initiative. I think assessing 30 organizations a year is too few and if such an initiative is to continue, it needs to track the progress of the same organizations over time against the same indicators. This should be done by the companies themselves. And why not put it in an easy to use and view format like XBRL, which has been developed as a reporting tool by the Global Reporting Initiative?
To be continued…
Bulldozers and Sustainable Development 