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Our key capabilities that form our systematic ICT solution for international development and aid management include:
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Web Portals and Open Source Software
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Software-enabled workflow processes, standardized data exchange and interoperability with third-party systems
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Data analysis and reporting tools
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Aid Management
Synergy has been involved in developing aid management systems since the early 1990s. The Development Assistance Database was designed through this experience to provide a Commercial Off the Shelf product for use in national reconstruction environments that strengthens the effectiveness and transparency of international assistance. DAD is a powerful, Web-based information collection, tracking, analysis and planning tool for use by national governments and the broader assistance community, including bilateral donors, international organizations, and NGOs. The DAD can help achieve the following objectives:
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Identify national priorities and requests for donor assistance, and link aid assistance to the national budget.
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Enable the effective management of international assistance rendered by the donor community to the recipient country by tracking donor funded projects, promoting private sector projects for foreign investment, as well as Public Investment Programs funded by the national budget.
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Provide a consolidated overview, understanding and impact assessment of the entire assistance effort, facilitating coordination among various donor organizations and national government agencies to avoid duplication.
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Expand public information and awareness on the reconstruction process.
DAD enables stakeholders in the reconstruction process to capture the most critical international assistance data on a donor and project-specific basis, including pledges, committed and disbursed amounts, sector and region of implementation, brief description, implementing agency and other contacts. The system tracks funding that has been allocated to various Trust Funds and also helps in the assessment of how assistance flows are meeting national development priorities. This assists the national government to build the capacity to effectively track aid support to and within their national budget.
The DAD provides secure access through the web for data entry and updates of grant programs by donor and recipient agencies. Grant and loan programs are broken down into projects and activities with programmatic and budgetary details, as well as disbursement schedule and execution. Users can filter, group and sort all projects by any category or group of categories. The DAD system provides users with a wide range of analytical functions, including querying, reporting, charts and Geographic Information System (GIS) functions. Various predefined and ad-hoc reports and charts can be produced with a powerful report generator on the Web. The integrated GIS allows for plotting projects on the map of the country with zooming and other functions.
DAD's flexible, seamless architecture allows it to be easily deployed and extended for use in both technically austere and sophisticated environments, and accessed by any number of users via its Web interface. The system is user-friendly and includes secure online and offline data entry.
International Clients
Our international development client and partner list includes various international public and private sector organizations, and national government ministries. The DAD has been implemented for aid management, public investment and budgeting solutions in over 25 countries in close cooperation with UNDP.
Scope of Solutions
Synergy can facilitate International Development through a variety of solutions, from a simple Web Portal for a government line ministry, to a complex Development Assistance Database with interconnected ministry level applications, public investment modules, a national budget preparation module, and monitoring and evaluation modules to track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and outcomes.Synergy's solutions can link with local Financial Management Information Systems and help to consolidate and streamline aid coordination, public investment, budget preparation, and monitoring and evaluation.
Budgeting
Synergy has developed a module in DAD that covers sector or region level ODA and public investment planning, as well as basic levels of accumulated requests for funding by ministries or regional authorities. This module is responsible for directing any submitted requests to responsible government agencies and authorities for initial screening, review, approval, and funding execution from the national budget or development partners.
Localized or ministry level DADs promote the centralization of project information, enhance the coordination of internal and external financial flows, and enable pre-investment planning and project monitoring. These features effectively support any investment strategy and allow government officials to focus on national budget preparation, tracking of capital investment of the national budget, and planning of ODA.
The DAD can offer a transparent way to identify gaps, needs, priority sectors and regions in order to evenly distribute or reallocate funds. This allows the government to measure budgetary implications of international assistance and public investments with their recurrent costs in the national budget and track budget performance in relation with ongoing and planned public investment and international assistance programs.
The DAD can help define the priorities and budgetary ceilings of individual ministries and assist in planning their volume of capital investment and donor assistance for the next fiscal year.
Monitoring and Evaluation
In order to measure the output of both international assistance and on-budget capital investment expenditures, project output indicators in the form of key performance indicators (KPIs) can be formulated for projects and programs. These KPIs can then be linked to various sectors and locations to determine the output. This type of monitoring and evaluation will allow government ministries, international organizations, or non-profits to customize their aid flows for maximum impact.
One excellent example of an international standard in measuring socio-economic impact is the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These are being adopted by individual countries that set their own goals and indicators and measure the outcome of assistance and public investment in the areas of highest priority reflected in their MDGs.
At Synergy, we work closely with our clients in the initial phase of a needs assessment in order to complete the definition of the database structure and data fields, and also to determine KPIs that need to be recorded and tracked to effectively monitor and evaluate projects.
Capacity Building
Synergy's technical specialists will conduct comprehensive training on the DAD that is well adapted to the individual needs of its various users, including database and network administrators, data entry personnel, and data analysts.Training can be organized for individuals, groups, or future trainers in order to reach all users of each system. Synergy will provide both technical training and training on various other subject matters as the need arises, including financial portfolio management, aid coordination best practices, working with donors on data collection, etc.
In addition to basic training, users can receive technical training in the following:
- Core IDM technology
- Developing sample applications
- Modifying and deploying the DAD
- Adding new fields to the project details and data entry form.
- Creating and managing user accounts and user groups, as well as granting required permissions to the user groups created.
- Internal DAD database structure
- Solving data exchange and maintenance issues
- Modification of the initial DAD classification systems
- Website development with Synergy's Portal technology, content management, and installation and maintenance.
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