We should keep in mind that the kind of “drawing back the velvet curtains” that you recommend for Compact implementation could have serious political repercussions for those currently running the countries where we have Compacts. In fact, issues related to the pace and quality of Compact implementation have already become political issues in several of our Compact countries that are facing national/local elections. I can envision a public workspace used for “crowdsourcing” a Compact problem being highjacked and manipulated for political purposes. If a country’s leadership decides to engage in this type of ultra-transparency with a full understanding of the risks/benefits, then so be it. But, MCC could never force this type of transparency on our Compact countries.

As a taxpayer, I’d love to see what I’m getting for my money. Right now, it’s not apparent to many US citizens what benefits stem from this work.

I still don’t understand why the innerworkings of development projects aren’t open to more scrutiny. Involving the public can only lead to better results in the long run. The question is, how does one go about convincing them of the benefits?

First off, I agree with pretty much everything you said. Increasing the speed of Compact implementation, just by setting a time limit on the process, will most likely have a negative impact on the quality of the Compacts.

So, how does MCC spend the money effectively while keeping congress (and, by extension, the general tax payer) happy?

Well, like I said, I agree that creating a more transparent process, from the very beginning will not only keep congressional oversight informed but also, hopefully, more involved.

Compact creation and implementation is certainly a high-profile issue. It is currently a fairly long, cumbersome, costly, and somewhat disorganized process. Will a more interactive Compact development process reduce the amount of time it takes to implement and start funding? Probably not at first. But it will help create a flexible set of best practices that all stakeholders can learn from. I’m sure there would be some people, internally at the MCC as well as in the Compact countries, that would not like every aspect of this messy process brought public. However, I think this could create an extremely healthy dialogue to a process that is still far from refined.

As the Compact matures into a funded group of projects, another question arises. How are we sure that this money is being spent effectively? Daily updates from project sites by the individual projects’ managers, as well as continuously updated disbursement/liquidation by project budget would be a start. Of course, as Nate brought up, what does it mean that the MCC built three miles of road in Ghana? Let’s say it links an agricultural area with a port. That still doesn’t put the effectiveness of money spent into real terms. The most important part of this process is measuring the economic effects that this road has versus the amount of money spent on the project. This is another long, difficult process. MCC is actually set up to make these measurements. Making these measurements public, and in real time will not only help create more useful measurements for MCC, it will also help other aid organizations get away from measuring head count, or pure outputs, as effectiveness.

I do see some challenges. One is the availability of infrastructure in some MCC countries that would allow for consistent online content review and comment. I know Nate disagrees with this. But there are a number of places in the US that I’ve worked that don’t have reliable phone lines, which would constantly bring our connections down – I’m talking about semi-rural places in California and Colorado, as well as Montana and Oregon. Another challenge is helping with the learning curve, albeit a short one, with creating online content and developing the necessary interactive tools. Finally, it would be a fairly long process, requiring quite a few people, to create the tipping point where these practices would be adopted consistently.

…pretty small challenges, especially for the possible impact.