Analysing the UN tsunami relief fund expenditure tracking data: Can the UN be more transparent?

This report summarises an analysis by the International Budget Project of the UN’s real-time database for tracking expenditures for the tsunami relief program. The aim of the database is to provide interested parties with the opportunity to know where money donated to the UN's and some other agencies' relief effort is being directed and the rate at which it is being spent.

The analysis finds that the data contains a lot of useful information, but also raises a number of questions about how those finances are utilised. Questions raised include:

• UNICEF is the only agency carrying out programs in the education sector, and received the more funds to conduct education programs in Indonesia than for any other country. Why has UNICEF spent only a small portion of the Indonesia funds on education, considering the fact that Indonesia was one of the hardest hit countries?
• why have agencies spent a higher portion of the funds they received for programs in Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and at the regional level than the funds they received for programs in Indonesia, Somalia, Thailand, and Seychelles? Are there constraints to program execution in some countries that could have been anticipated?
• in health-sector programs, UNICEF has spent so much more of its program budget than the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
• why do the expenditure rates for different agencies often vary within the same country? For example, why have the IOM and OCHA spent more than 90 percent of the funds they received for programs in Indonesia, while the FAO, UNICEF, and WHO have spent less than 75 percent of the funds they received for programs in that country?

The report makes the following conclusions and makes several recommendations including the following:

• the database is potentially useful for informing international donors on how relief funds are being utilised
• OCHA must strengthen the database to include additional information that enables a user to develop a more comprehensive picture of the relief programs and that will serve as a credible model for the transparent accounting of relief aid
• detailed information should be provided on each program’s monthly or quarterly spending targets, the actual targets the program achieved, and the targets achieved by similar programs in other natural disasters. This will allow users to analyse whether funds are being utilised appropriately
• the OCHA database also does not provide adequate information on the status of a program once it has been executed and is nearing completion; such information is needed for users of the database to make a general assessment of the program’s performance. To make such an assessment possible, agencies should submit a proposal for each project that lists the project’s objectives