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Key Elements of Accountability

The ECB Accountability and Impact Measurement (AIM) advisors developed a paper, the Key Elements of Accountability to use as the central document and impetus for a shared understanding of the key elements for accountability work that ECB agency partners undertake together, under the auspices of the ECB Project.

By agreeing on key elements and indicators to establish a baseline for measuring our accountability we are also agreeing what will be the central tenets to all work that agencies undertake to improve or increase accountability in our humanitarian responses. These include ECB Standing Team deployments, representation work, and support to consortia.

The paper informed the baseline assessment of agency capacity to deliver programmes that are accountable to beneficiaries. AIM advisors are using the paper to serve as a basis for defining and developing capacity building areas for the ECB agencies and the ECB consortia with targets relevant to each context.

We propose that accountability, to ECB members, can be captured by the following five key elements, with a small number of indicators per element.

For full details please download the paper the Key Elements of Accountability.

The 5 Key Elements

1. Leadership/Governance:

The extent to which:

Agency leaders and managers articulate what accountability means to them and to the organisation
Policy and practice is explicit about expectations around accountability
Accountability is modelled and demonstrably valued by leaders and managers.

2. Transparency:

The provision of accessible and timely information to stakeholders and the opening up of organisational procedures, structures and processes that affect them.
An organisation needs to do more than disclose standardised information. It also needs to provide stakeholders with the information they require to make informed decisions and choices.
Transparency is more than just a one-way flow of information; it is an ongoing dialogue between an organisation and its stakeholders over information provision.

3. Feedback:

The systems, processes, attitudes and behaviours through which an organisation can truly listen to its stakeholders.
Essential for organisations to understand whether they are meeting the agreed needs / wishes or wants of their stakeholders.
An organisation that actively seeks to improve policy and practice on the above three dimensions will decrease, significantly, the number of complaints it receives.
Organisations should ensure that they have Feedback Mechanisms in place throughout their programmes, and that these are robust enough to support complaints.
Oversight of these mechanisms allows the study of trends and/or areas of concern that will then allow appropriate corrective action.

4. Participation:

The process by which an organisation enables key stakeholders to play an active role in the decision-making processes that affect them.
It is unrealistic to expect an organisation to engage with all stakeholders over all decisions all of the time. Therefore the organisation must have clear guidelines (and practices) enabling it to prioritise stakeholders appropriately and to be responsive to the differences in power between them.
In particular, mechanisms need to be in place to ensure that the most marginalised and affected are represented and have influence.

5. Design, Monitoring and Evaluation (DME):

Encompasses the processes through which an organisation, with involvement from key stakeholders:

monitors and reviews its progress and results against goals and objectives
feeds learning back into the organisation on an ongoing basis and
reports on the results of the process.

To increase accountability to stakeholders, goals and objectives must be designed in consultation with those stakeholders.

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