Dr. Ashot Hovanesian, President of Synergy International Systems, and Mr. Richard Bradley, Aid Management Advisor, recently participated in the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, held in Accra, Ghana from 2-4 September 2008.  The Forum is a follow-up to the Paris High Level Forum in 2005, which resulted in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.  The Forum is a unique gathering of national government leaders and aid practitioners from around the world. 

Synergy’s Development Assistance Database (DAD) was featured in the Marketplace of Ideas, which highlighted best practices in aid effectiveness in governments around the world through posters in an exhibit format.   The Governments of India, Iraq, and the Central African Republic all highlighted their national aid management systems, which were developed by Synergy.  These included the Coordination & Decision Support System for the Ministry of Finance in India, the Development Assistance Database Iraq for the Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation, and the upcoming implementation of DAD in the Ministry of Planning, Economics, and International Cooperation in the Central African Republic.  In addition to the posters, Government staff made brief presentations to explain how these implementations strengthened the principles of alignment, harmonization, ownership, managing for results, and mutual accountability.   

At the conclusion of the High Level Forum, the Accra Agenda for Action was released, which specifically calls for donors to support, and invest in strengthening, developing countries’ national statistical capacity and information systems, including those for managing aid.  DAD is greatly strengthening governments’ capacity for aid management through its implementation in over 25 countries.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Central African Republic and the Ministry of Planning, Economics and International Cooperation has selected Synergy International Systems to implement the Web-based Development Assistance Database (DAD), the Donor Profile module, and the off-line mobile DAD to effectively track and manage all humanitarian and development projects in CAR.  The DAD supports UNDP’s capacity-building programme, ARCAD, one key module of which focuses on aid management.  

Within four weeks of the project start date, a fully operational pilot was customized and deployed in the Central African Republic.  Data collection on humanitarian, recovery and development projects has already begun.

As a government owned tool, the CAR is bilingual (French-English), and will promote partner alignment with CAR’s first Poverty Reduction Strategy.  Further, DAD will enable for greater managing for results for CAR’s population, supporting informed decision-making by humanitarian and development partners.  

To support sustainability, a dedicated aid coordination unit within CAR’s Ministry of Planning, Economics and International Cooperation will receive comprehensive training on Synergy’s powerful IDM Knowledge Builder tool, which will build capacity in maintaining the DAD, thus achieving a high return on investment and low cost of ownership.

Synergy International Systems is creating a Development Assistance Database for the Secretariat of Planning and Programming in the Central American government of Guatemala.  This DAD will be completely bilingual and will consist of core modules for mapping, charting, reporting and data entry, as well as an Executive Dashboard. 

A needs assessment mission was conducted for the DAD Guatemala from August 4-8, 2008.  A pilot version will be released shortly and development is expected to be completed by early-October, with training for the development community in Guatemala occurring later in the month.

The DAD will allow the government of Guatemala to effectively track, analyze, and report on all development assistance projects within the country, and will provide a single forum for all donors to meet Paris Declaration requirements for aligning with government information systems. 

The DAD is being implemented in close cooperation with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). 

Synergy was an exhibitor at the recent two day Digitech and Microsoft Innovation Forum hosted in the Armenian capital of Yerevan from 26-27 June.  The forum attracts local and international vendors, and is aimed to present innovative opportunities for IT application in Armenia and to serve as a discussion forum between government representatives and IT solutions providers.  The panel discussions addressed issues relevant to the context of Armenia, such as e-Health, e-Government, Telecommunications Development, Business Automation Processes, Banking and Finance.  New IT solutions were presented by more than 17 companies, including different local and international organizations such as Microsoft, Beeline, Armsoft, Sourcio, Grant Thornton Amyot, Intel/Russia, and Hewlett-Packard.

“The introduction of e-governance in Armenia will start from the government,” Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan told reporters after the opening ceremony of the DigiTec Business Forum in Yerevan.  According to Sargsyan, they have already held meetings with representatives from the business community to discuss the concept of e-governance. One of the priority tasks of e-governance is the reduction of corruption and bureaucracy, as well as the simplification of government-citizen communications.

Synergy brought to the forum a unique combination of local presence in Yerevan, innovative solutions, and extensive experience from our collaboration with the Government of Armenia, US government agencies, and international organizations such as the World Bank, UNDP, IDB, UNIDO and OECD, as well as governments in more than 30 countries worldwide.

Synergy has just been awarded a prime contract under the SeaPort-e contracting vehicle with the United States Navy.  This is an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity multiple award contract that will allow the various branches of the United States Navy to provide Synergy with the opportunity to compete for task orders.  This took place under the most recent SeaPort Enhanced Rolling Admissions solicitation N00178-08-R-4000.  Synergy’s award is for the National Capital region (Zone 2) and the following functional areas: Software Engineering, Development, Programming, and Network Support, and Information System (IS) Development, Information Assurance (IA), and Information Technology (IT) Support.  It is estimated that up to $5.3 billion worth of services will be procured annually through SeaPort-e contracts.  A list of all awardees can be viewed here.

Synergy just completed another round of Intelligent Data Manager (IDM) Knowledge builder training for the purpose of building local capacity to manage the Development Assistance Database (DAD).  This latest training took place in Sri Lanka, where selected managers and database administrators were provided with a week long intensive training session on how to implement IDM’s unique Knowledge Builder tool.  This tool was designed to help rapidly execute the creation or modification of IDM based databases such as the DAD, and allows government personnel to affect changes within the database that would otherwise require the involvement of Synergy or an outside consultant.  Synergy has also provided training in Pakistan (March 2007), Maldives (August 2007), India (October 2007), Indonesia (December 2007), and on more than one occasion for the government of Iraq.

This in-depth technical training is dedicated to building capacity within local DAD teams and ensuring DAD’s sustainability in the long run.  When ownership of the DAD application is transferred to the government of the recipient country, it is essential to make sure that the local team will be able to support the application without Synergy's involvement. This tool allows the Government to reduce maintenance costs and sustain a solution that evolves with the changing needs of the government. 

The goal of this training is to produce a local team that is able to perform all required maintenance activities on a daily basis as well as modify the existing application’s data structure, introduce new groupings, columns and filters in reports and enhance on-line and off-line Data Entries.  For countries with an IDM Portal this also includes training on the Portal Administration module, allowing the local web master to maintain the country’s DAD Portal.  

Synergy will continue to offer IDM Knowledge Builder training to customers around the world to equip them to fully manage the operations of their Synergy solutions.

Synergy International Systems has been supporting the Government of Iraq in the field of aid management and coordination since 2005 with the implementation of the Development Assistance Database (DAD). Over time, this project has expanded into integrating capital investment projects funded by the national budget into DAD, tracking international assistance projects financed through loan modalities, as well as the implementation of an application to track donor’s pledges, as well as represent donors’ contributions channeled through IRFFI trust funds.

Furthermore, as this project includes components of assistance to regions aiming at strengthening decentralized aid and budget coordination, and establishing appropriate linkages between Federal and Regional Governments and Provincial Councils, to better track, plan, prioritize and analyze development projects financed by the donor community and the national budget. To this end, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed jointly by the Minister of Planning of the Kurdistan Regional government, H.E. Mr. Othman Shwani, and UNDP-Iraq Director, Mr. Paolo Lembo to extend UNDP’s assistance to Northern Iraq by implementing a Regional version of the DAD for Kurdistan.