5. Mainstreaming Accountability and its Challenges

By Paul Gol
What is mainstreaming?
The word mainstreaming is obviously derived from the metaphor of a small, isolated flow of water being drawn into the mainstream of a river where it will expand to flow smoothly without loss or diversion. Therefore ‘mainstreaming beneficiary accountability’ describes a process to fully incorporate accountability principles and standards into relief and development policy and practice. It means radically consulting and involving beneficiaries, sharing information and providing feedback handling mechanisms with beneficiaries so that it becomes normal practice, fully institutionalised within an agency’s relief and development agenda.

What is beneficiary accountability?
Beneficiary Accountability is a process of ensuring programme transparency, participation, feedback and learning with beneficiaries.

Mainstreaming beneficiary accountability has four purposes:
1.Improve the way an agency engages with the local communities in decisions that affect them by striving to enhance participation of affected populations in order to seek informed consent.
2.Share information with beneficiaries in order to promote and improve transparency through information provision.
3.Provide beneficiaries with channels through which concerns can be raised. There is an ethical commitment to listen, monitor and respond to beneficiary concerns.
4.Ensure that disaster management teams are provided with a thorough understanding of Accountability and Quality Management Principles and Standards.

Defining levels of attainment
Level 1: ‘Little or no progress’ Level 1 represents little or no progress with mainstreaming. The organisation undertakes beneficiary accountability in an ad hoc manner and has little or no awareness of the relevance and importance of adopting a systematic approach to accountability within its relief and development processes.

Level 2: ‘Awareness of needs’ Level 2 refers to an early stage of mainstreaming. The organisation has a growing level of awareness and understanding of the value and requirements of mainstreaming accountability to beneficiaries, and recognises the need for action. (It may also have decided to take action. This may include joining an accountability initiative or recruiting or assigning or designating accountability to a member of staff.)

Level 3: ‘Development of solutions’ Level 3 refers to an intermediate stage in mainstreaming, where there are identifiable actions to consolidate the gains made in Level 2. The organisation is developing plans and tools to address the requirements of integrating accountability into its relief and development processes. This includes an accountability and quality management system and accountability action plan.

Level 4: ‘Full integration’ Level 4 refers to a situation where beneficiary accountability is fully absorbed into relief and development processes. The organisation places high importance on accountability to beneficiaries in a sustainable programme of action at multiple levels and within multiple sectors, and there is a comprehensive demonstration of practice. Thus Level 4 describes a situation where beneficiary accountability is ‘institutionalised’. However, this is not to suggest that an optimum level of attainment has occurred: there is still a need for further progress. The process of mainstreaming should be viewed as open-ended: while organisations should aim to achieve Level 4, they should also aim to make continuous improvements to their approach. Standard 6 of the HAP 2007 Standard in Humanitarian Accountability and Quality Management states in part that “The agency shall establish a continuous improvement progress for its accountability and quality management systems.”

Sufficient ownership by stakeholders, practical and simple skills and knowledge and financial resources will be crucial if an organisation is to be successful in mainstreaming. Some of the finance required to support the mainstreaming process could be raised by organisations allocating a percentage of their humanitarian assistance budget (and/or development budget) to beneficiary accountability including the process of mainstreaming. Some donor organisations already have levies on their humanitarian assistance budgets in place.

Staff ‘ownership’ of both beneficiary accountability and the process of mainstreaming itself is key to attaining ‘full integration’ and hence mainstreaming accountability to beneficiaries will to a significant extent dependent on enthusiastic and well informed staff continually promoting it. If staff ‘own’ accountability as their responsibility, it has an excellent chance of becoming sustainable within the organisation.

It is prudent therefore to anticipate potential barriers to ownership and consider how to address them, in order that mainstreaming accountability may be regarded as an organisational asset rather than a liability or a policing mechanism as observed in one Tearfund Programme.

Potential barriers to ownership include:
1. WORKLOAD: Staff may be concerned that an additional crosscutting issue to be
mainstreamed is likely to result in a considerable amount of extra work for them, when they are already likely to be very busy. To address this, the organisation should recognise that the process of incorporating beneficiary accountability at all levels and in all sectors will require considerable additional work and wider responsibility. Therefore budget support may be needed to employ additional staff to cope with the increased demands.
Another way to avoid over-burdening staff is to clarify and strengthen the links between accountability and other crosscutting issues to be mainstreamed. Also, accountability tools and methodologies should be made directly relevant to and, where possible, integrated with existing structures, procedures and activities rather than developed as separate processes that place a heavy burden on overworked staff.

2. LACK OF LEADERSHIP: A beneficiary accountability ‘champion’ within an organisation is important to promote and strengthen accountability both internally and externally. Without such a person/s, the issue will struggle to gain profile in the short term, and in the long term it may be difficult to achieve coordination, monitoring of progress across the organisation and engagement in strategic processes in order to mainstream the issue into normal business.
Equally important is the good leadership of line managers of relevant departments who are, in the long run, in the best position to facilitate the engagement and ownership of their staff (however inspiring and facilitative the champion may be). Good leadership does not need to be coercion; but lack of leadership or the disinterest of line managers in a subject that is meant to be mainstreamed sends a clear signal to their staff that they do not need to apply themselves, even if there is a formal policy of mainstreaming.

Moreover, for the staff member keen to mainstream the issue into their work, lack of interest by their line manager can be a major disincentive. Therefore, an important and effective combination of leadership is an institutional champion and line managers who take ownership and can then facilitate and encourage ownership in those whom they manage.

3. MISTRUST: Deep resentment can arise when accountability work plans and framework and handed down to staff without full consultation and acceptance. Such a top-down approach ignores the opportunity for individuals at various levels in an organisation to actively contribute to their design. In Tearfund Southern Sudan for example, the Area Co-ordinators were involved in the designing of the Humanitarian Accountability and Quality Management Framework. In North Kenya the Accountability Officer was viewed as policing staff on their individual performance and targets. By fully involving relevant staff in the entire process of such developments there is a genuine opportunity for sustainable targets to be reached and maintained.

Also, it is vital for organisations to recognise that where rigid control is exercised, managers’ all-important trust in staff to reach targets can decrease as a direct consequence. Therefore the aim must be to inform and educate and involve staff in the objectives of mainstreaming beneficiary accountability and ultimately to rely on trust rather than control to achieve these goals. This ‘culture’ should then guide how an organisation handles its beneficiaries.

4. LACK OF SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE: Ownership can only be achieved if staff understands the importance and relevance of beneficiary accountability to/for their own work. Building staff skills and knowledge is crucial to increasing understanding and, ultimately, ownership. Skills, knowledge and understanding can be developed through, for example, senior management briefings, training materials, regular courses for relief and development staff, and regular communication between relief and development staff including joint travel and joint participation in ‘lessons learnt’ exercises. The accountability champion could undertake research, develop and disseminate case studies, and ensure strong links between headquarters and field staff.

5. TIME: It is important to recognise that building staff ownership of accountability, and subsequently achieving ‘full integration’, is a process, and will take time. It will be helpful if an organisation understands more generally how change can be achieved, and how to manage change.

Adopted by Paul Gol Accountability Officer Afghanistan DMT from Tearfund publication “Mainstreaming disaster risk reduction: A tool for development organisations” by Sarah La Trobe and Professor Ian Davis (January 2005)