[hepr-vn] IDRC is partnering with the UK’s One World Trust to strengthen the accountability of research institutes.

[Vern Weitzel]

Article Released Thu-14th-February-2008 16:55 GMT

Contact: Vivien Chiam Institution: International Development Research Centre of 
Canada, Regional Office for Southeast and East Asia

  Partnering for accountability

IDRC is partnering with the UK’s One World Trust to strengthen the 
accountability of research institutes.


By K.J. Shore

It sounds simple. Setting accountability principles for policy research in 
developing regions could clearly benefit both research organizations and those 
affected by their work. But the process to do so may be less straightforward, 
say representatives of the One World Trust, a British based research group 
dedicated to strengthening the accountability of policy and decision makers in 
global governance.

Michael Hammer, One World Trust Executive Director and researcher Brendan 
Whitty, spoke about the challenges of applying the organization’s work to 
research bodies, which is the focus of a new project funded by the International 
Development Research Centre (IDRC). Hammer and Whitty were at IDRC’s head office 
in Ottawa to provide a progress report.

The One World Trust has its roots in an all-party advisory group founded in 1951 
by members of the British parliament to educate politicians and the public in 
the UK on global governance issues. Continuing its long standing mission the 
Trust today conducts research into the changes required within global 
organizations in order to achieve the eradication of poverty, injustice, and 
war, educating and advising decision-makers in government and international 
institutions on opportunities for cross-sector learning and institutional reform.

Measuring accountability

IDRC’s Evaluation Unit and the One World Trust are currently partnering to adapt 
the latter’s Global Accountability Project framework for use by research 
institutions.

The framework was developed over four years of research and stakeholder 
workshops by the One World Trust. It is a principles-based tool that enables 
organizations to develop accountability systems that take into consideration 
multiple stakeholders.

One World Trust’s 2006 Global Accountability Report used the GAP framework to 
create an index that annually measures and ranks the accountability of 30 
powerful organizations from across the public, non-profit, and private sectors. 
Participants included the Food and Agriculture Organization, the Organisation 
for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations Development 
Programme (UNDP) and the World Health Organization; Amnesty International, 
Oxfam, World Vision, and the WWF; and Dow Chemical, Microsoft, Nestlé, Toyota, 
and Wal-Mart, among others.

On the release of the 2007 report, Hammer stated that “Accountability makes 
powerful organizations more effective and legitimate. Without it, solutions to 
global challenges will fail. The One World Trust is looking forward to 
continuing to work with organizations to provide tailored accountability solutions.”

A road map to accountability

The work undertaken with IDRC will see the One World Trust develop a tool, based 
on the Global Accountability Framework, that research institutes can use to map 
out their accountability relationships through an open and transparent process.

Speaking at the IDRC meeting, Hammer said the new project will set guidelines to 
help research groups ask and answer deceptively simple questions about 
themselves. They include defining their own accountability; deciding to whom 
they’re most accountable; and what they need to do to become truly accountable.

It’s in these groups’ best interests to make themselves accountable to their 
stakeholders, even the ones that aren’t big players, or obvious at first glance, 
he said, adding, “One of the things we’re saying is that power alone should not 
define the terms of accountability,”

The project will build on the GAP’s original consultations with about 400 
organizations, which led to the framework that zeroes in on organizations’ 
transparency, participation, evaluation, and complaint and response mechanisms.

A new global public sphere

Overall, the One World Trust’s work is aimed at improving the understanding of 
the role power plays in an increasingly interconnected and new global public 
sphere which accompanies economic globalization. “In the end citizens of this 
world, independent of where they live, should not be simply subject to power, 
but be part of a relationship with global organisations and decision makers 
which is just and democratic”, Hammer remarked.

“People connect across international boundaries,” he said. “In that global 
public sphere we see IGOs, NGOs, and transnational corporations alongside each 
other, affecting the same people and engaging with each other.”

For example, he said, all three types of organizations delivered drinking water 
to refugees during post-tsunami reconstruction in Indonesia’s Aceh province. 
“The organization that has a strong relationship with me has a very strong 
interest in me accepting what they are offering as services.... if I feel that 
an organization has related to me in a good way, then I will be happy to 
continue my relationship with them.”

Balancing accountabilities

Researcher Brendan Whitty observed that it may not be clear whether a policy 
researcher’s greater responsibility is to policymakers, or to the people whom a 
policy affects on the ground. However, setting an evaluation framework for 
policy research suggests an ethical responsibility to the people who are 
ultimately affected.

Other stakeholders may exist. “If you purport to work on behalf of somebody 
else, what accountability mechanisms ought you have in place? What sort of 
participation processes should you go through before you start lobbying under 
their name? Most often, it’s been brought up with the question: “Who elected the 
NGOs?” It’s really an open question, and it’s something I’d like to take forward 
and investigate in the course of the research,” he said.

The challenge for members of policy communities may be in settling on degrees of 
responsibility for policy impacts to their different stakeholders, such as 
decision-makers, those affected by a policy, and those in between who bring it 
about.

Whitty added that while there’s a lot of literature on organizational 
accountability, there’s almost none balancing all stakeholders of 
policy-research groups. The IDRC/One World Trust project, at four months in, is 
still working to ground itself in the arena.

“It’s quite difficult to draw much in the way of conclusions at the moment,” 
said Whitty. “There’s just a series of questions.”

“The challenges, I think, when we’re going forward with the research, are going 
to be to capture, on the one hand, the complexity of the subject. And at the 
same time, to boil it down into some really practical tools which can be used by 
research institutes without incurring a great deal of cost, without involving 
resource-heavy methods,” he said.

The One World Trust will be hosting an e-forum for parties interested in the 
framework discussions, beginning on February 25, 2008. If you are interested in 
participating in this forum, please contact Brendan Whitty at 
bwhitty at oneworldtrust.org

K.J. Shore is an Ottawa-based writer.


For more information:

Michael Hammer
Executive Director
One World Trust
3 Whitehall Court
London SW1A 2EL
United Kingdom
Tel: +44-(0)-20-7766-3470
Fax: +44-(0)-20-7839-7718
Email: mhammer at oneworldtrust.org
Web: www.oneworldtrust.org

For interest in the online forum:

Brendan Whitty
Programme Officer
bwhitty at oneworldtrust.org

Tricia Wind, Senior Program Officer
Evaluation Unit
International Development Research Centre
PO Box 8500
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1G 3H9
Tel: +1-613-236-6163
Fax: +1-613-234-7457
Email: twind at idrc.ca



Keywords associated to this article: accountability