[afro-nets] New Report to Show U.N. Overestimated AIDS Epidemic (2)

["Peter Burgess" <peterbnyc@gmail.com>]

Dear Colleagues

It is good that there is something coming out about macro-data published by the UN, World Bank and others ... but the inaccuracy in the AIDS data is probably replicated in almost every other piece of macro-date published by the organizations of the relief and development sector.

Fortunately it does not matter very much. Certainly the presentation of data in support of a really bad situation does drive fund allocation ... but it is only one of many factors that drive what is a generally a widespread misallocation of resources.

I come from serious training in mathematics for engineering, economics and in accountancy. What is clear is that too many of the numbers are good for journalism but not for much else. The samples are small, and the statistical accuracy of the results, totally inadequate. If these numbers were used to build bridges, all the bridges would fall down. In development resource allocation, we merely have impressively poor (aggregate) performance.

The good news is that a lot of work that is done is very good indeed ... costs are low and results are valuable. But there is no system for putting these data into a framework that gives these good things credit, and separately looks at other resources that are used and do not very much at all. On average ... the results are mediocre ... made up of some work that is amazingly good ... and a lot that is obscenely bad.

Until there are metrics to differentiate between the amazingly good and the obscenely bad. Performance in the relief and development sector will always be more or less mediocre

Hopefully there will soon be movement to changing the existing framework to something that is much better.

Sincerely

Peter Burgess

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Peter Burgess
The Transparency and Accountability Network: Tr-Ac-Net in New York
http://www.tr-ac-net.org
IMMC - The Integrated Malaria Management Consortium Inc.
http://www.IMMConsortium.org
+1 917 432 1191 or +1 212 772 6918  
mailto:peterbnyc@gmail.com