GIS Bringing Accountability to International Relief Efforts

Seeing the region today, little evidence remains of the devastation, as Aceh Province continues to not only recover but also, as the government's motto says, "build back better."

It was important to ensure that contributions went to the people who needed the help so that the next time a disaster occurred, countries would once again be willing to provide relief. Trying to meet the challenge of following the global audit trail with the help of GIS is the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI).

INTOSAI, based in Vienna, Austria, serves as an umbrella organisation for the international government audit community. Over the last few years, this organisation has learned how to improve the transparency, accountability, and audit of the flow of international aid by using GIS.

Representatives of INTOSAI's Tsunami Task Force attended a weeklong training course in the spring of 2006 at Aceh's Syiah Kuala University on how to use geospatial information to help plan, coordinate, monitor, and audit disaster-related aid. Auditors from the Indonesian Supreme Audit Institute (Badan Pemeriksa Keuangan) followed an intensive course focused on GIS and the use and integration of imagery data in their work. Training was provided by the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, now part of the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Esri provided ArcGIS licenses for a hands-on tutorial.

As a result of the training, the Netherlands Court of Audit-the chair of the Tsunami Task Force and a member of INTOSAI-set up a knowledge centre in 2007 that explores how GIS and geospatial data can be used in auditing. It uses GIS to map the results of combating money laundering in the Netherlands. The technology is also used to help social programs target services for homeless children and for the distribution of Dutch funds for development assistance worldwide. By providing a visual representation, the Court of Audit can account for where money has gone and measure the success of policy measures. INTOSAI is now urging nations and agencies to use GIS and geospatial information for transparency and accountability as aid flows to Haiti and Chile for the earthquake recovery effort.

The Netherlands Court of Audit intends to use its GIS knowledge and expertise to advise the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a group of major nongovernmental organizations on how to enhance transparency and accountability for tracking aid monies for Haiti.

INTOSAI promotes the use of GIS and imagery data to plan, coordinate, and monitor disaster-related aid in order to prevent waste, duplication, fraud, and competition between aid organisations. Besides the Netherlands Court of Audit, examples of effective use in aid abound, including the United Nations World Food Programme, which uses satellite images and GIS to locate refugees and plan the distribution of food. The European Commission's Directorate-General for Agriculture has used GIS successfully over several decades in its Monitoring Agriculture through Remote Sensing project. The program helps European member states make decisions on where aid should be provided based on remotely sensed data and statistical input to allocate agricultural and environmental subsidies.

GIS benefits all stages of an audit from assessing relevant risks and designing, conducting, and analysing the audit to communicating the results:
• Assessing relevant risks-GIS can analyse the geographic spread of projects that are behind schedule, the use of certain contractors in a region, and the geographic spread of funds allocated. Remotely sensed data can be used to quickly verify information in databases with information from the field, for example, whether houses registered as finished actually appear to be on current imagery.
• Designing the audit-GIS can be used to focus on projects behind schedule in order to audit contract management risks or focus on projects on schedule to audit performance, such as the quality of the houses and occupation rates. Field visits by the auditors can be planned more effectively through establishing the locations to which teams need to be sent as opposed to the locations for which the auditors can rely on remotely sensed data.
• Conducting the audit-By combining geographic data from GPS and satellite-based maps with audit field data, the data can be analyzed immediately. The data can then be used throughout the project.
• Analysing the audit-Analysing large quantities of data is possible and understandable with GIS. For example, when looking at settlements in Aceh Province that were affected by the tsunami, data on the loss of school buildings and surviving children and location-specific information, such as elevation and the location of the destroyed buildings, helped auditors better measure whether schools had been built in areas where they were needed.
• Communicating the results-GIS provides a visual means of communicating that is immediately understood by the audience.

INTOSAI has published its findings in a report, Lessons on Accountability, Transparency, and Audit of Tsunami-Related Aid. INTOSAI also produced and distributed a flyer to help the auditing community.