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Participants from various
government ministries in Somaliland
discuss strategies during a March
2012 training in Hargeisa
on the Development Assistance
Database, a widely implemented
development effectiveness
management software created by
Synergy International Systems.
Photo by: Synergy International
Systems
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Lately, governments around the globe
have been feeling the pinch — and they’ve been looking for ways to streamline
operations and provide services more efficiently and effectively.
This sharpened focus on
value-for-money has put a spotlight on the importance of reliable ways to
report spending, monitor performance, and evaluate the impact of development
projects.
Synergy International Systems Inc.
is a Washington, D.C.-area software development firm that helps governments and
organizations working in development achieve precisely that overarching goal —
to improve their operations and decision-making by effectively managing
performance and results data. The company, founded in 1997, is dedicated to
bringing private sector expertise to public sector management, and it has
partnered with the United
Nations, U.S. Agency
for International Development, and others to do so.
Governments often exhibit a healthy
skepticism of new technologies because they worry that these might become added
burdens rather than viable solutions, says Ashot Hovanesian, Synergy’s CEO and
founder.
“Our goal is to create information
systems for people who are doing their daily jobs in the government,”
Hovanesian says. “We try to bring the power of information technology to
professionals who are trained in a field other than IT. Without sacrificing the
power of the solution we provide, we create systems that are easy to use.”
The Synergy approach
At the heart of Synergy’s offering is
its technology platform, the Intelligent Data Manager. IDM is a modular,
commercial off-the-shelf platform that allows organizations to choose a
customized application consisting of separate yet combinable tools for data
collection, analysis and reporting, as well as workflow management. It offers
everything from inputting indicators online to visualizing project data through
GIS maps to rapidly generating complex reports. This platform is what powers
the company’s various software product lines, from the internationally awarded
Development Assistance Database to its increasingly in-demand monitoring and
evaluation software.
Synergy continuously invests in
refining and expanding its IDM technology so that it can deliver user-friendly
and flexible applications. The company employs more than 100 professionals in
charge of project implementation, on top of 45 experts dedicated solely to
research and development.
Korina Kalopsidiotou, one of Synergy’s
senior systems analysts, says she usually gets involved in a project right
after a contract has been signed.
“I go with a team to the country and
meet with stakeholders to determine the kind of information they need to
capture in the system,” Kalopsidiotou says of her job. “Upon completion of the
needs assessment, I develop system specifications and relevant prototypes. As
soon as these are approved by the client, I manage the software development and
the project implementation.”
What may be unique about Synergy’s
approach is its relentless focus on presenting prototypes to the client,
collecting feedback and finetuning the system in line with the client’s vision
— in other words, an iterative process of agile software development that
creates synergy between the company and the client. Thanks to this methodology,
the company is able to build software that is well tailored to the client’s
present expectations and at the same time scalable to address the client’s
evolving needs.
Once the system is deployed, Synergy
experts train system administrators, end users as well as other trainers. The
company also offers its clients technical support and capacity building
services. And the system is owned by the client, meaning that Synergy has no
proprietary rights to the data or the system itself.
Monitoring and evaluation
Among Synergy’s flagship projects is
the development of a web-based monitoring information system for the U.S.
government’s global hunger and food security initiative, Feed the Future as part of a consortium
led by Abt
Associates. The system — formally called the Feed the Future
Monitoring System — is being used to collect and report data on U.S.
government-funded food security activities around the world. It is used by
implementing partners, country missions and USAID headquarters, as well as
other U.S. federal agencies that make up the initiative such as the Millennium
Challenge Corp., the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Treasury Department,
and the Peace Corps. With about 600 users globally, FTFMS currently tracks a
portfolio of more than 1,600 activities in 130 countries, including all 19 Feed
the Future focus countries.
“The Feed the Future Monitoring System
is the backbone of the U.S. government’s approach to track progress and manage
project performance under the Feed the Future global hunger and food security
initiative. The system enables us to provide accountability for our work. We
were excited to develop this system with our partners at Synergy and Abt
Associates in the early stages of the initiative. It has been a useful tool in
measuring results such as those highlighted in the first Feed the
Future progress report, which was issued in October,” according to
Emily Hogue, monitoring and evaluation specialist at USAID’s Bureau for Food
Security.
Synergy also creates enterprise-level
M&E applications specifically for countries that have entered into a
compact with MCC, another major U.S. donor. In Mozambique, for instance, the
company has set up a system that monitors the implementation and performance of
all programs and activities under the five-year, $506 million compact between
MCC and the Mozambican government.
Post-disaster and post-conflict
recovery
Synergy’s capacity to swiftly develop
information systems has also proven important in the aftermath of disasters and
other emergencies that often prompt a sudden outpouring of aid.
Take, for instance, the Indian Ocean
tsunami in December 2004. The influx of billions of dollars in aid that
followed increased the urgent need for a system to properly monitor
reconstruction projects in the affected countries. Synergy was tapped to create
it.
“There was high pressure,” Hovanesian
remembers. “You needed a powerful IT system that would have taken months or
even years to develop. We were able to put together solutions for each of the
four affected countries within just four to six weeks, thanks to our
off-the-shelf solutions that we can customize depending on the need of the
project.”
In Sri Lanka, one country affected by
the tsunami, Synergy’s engagement in developing an information system for the
government has since evolved significantly: from just tracking tsunami
assistance to a government-wide M&E system that manages both external
assistance projects and the Sri Lankan government’s public investments. This
system — the Integrated National Development Information System, or INDIS— was
developed and implemented in partnership with the U.N. Development Program and
Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Finance and Planning.
By compiling information about
external assistance and government investments in one unified database, says
Hovanesian, INDIS allows the Sri Lankan government and its development partners
to identify what is already being done, where the gaps are, and how best to
address those gaps.
Synergy has had a similar experience —
and success — in Iraq. In 2005, it established a Development Assistance
Database, or DAD, for the Ministry of Planning to help with post-war
reconstruction planning and monitoring.
The Iraq Development Management
System, or IDMS, which was developed in partnership with UNDP, USAID, the
European Commission, the U.N. Office for Project Services, and the government
of Spain, builds upon the previous DAD system. IDMS is an online system that
manages external assistance and capital investment projects implemented
throughout the country. But it not only tracks projects, but also enables
managing business processes related to the submission, review and approval of
capital investment projects as part of Iraq’s annual budget preparation.
Assessing Synergy’s work in Iraq,
Richard Cox, participatory governance coordinator and program manager at UNDP
Iraq, remarked: “Synergy has been involved in all stages — from the
inception to the implementation of the system in Iraq … Synergy offers two
types of expertise — expertise that we required [for the project]. First,
they understand about development, they understand the world of development.
The second thing is their ICT knowledge. Bringing those two areas of expertise
together into a coherent path is the value of Synergy. You don’t just get IT
experts or computer programmers who have no idea of what the world of
development is about. They got those two very precious levels of expertise …
They have worked with the U.N. so extensively that they understand how the U.N.
works and what our constraints are.”
Helping governments better manage
development projects is not all that Synergy does in post-crisis countries.
Another growing area of work is judicial reform. Countries emerging from
violent conflict or misrule are often marked by woefully dysfunctional judicial
systems where, among other problems, record-keeping and case tracking are done
entirely manually. This leads to a whole host of problems, such as an inability
to manage large quantities of information, case backlog and judicial
improprieties. At a deeper level, such shortcomings do little to foster public
trust in the judiciary — hence the importance of computerizing court operations
to help improve the efficiency, transparency, and accountability of the
judicial system. In Iraq, Synergy is developing a court case management system
to achieve precisely this goal. According to Kalopsidiotou, who’s in charge of
the project, Synergy developed a system that allows three Iraqi courts, as part
of a pilot project, to manage all stages of a legal case and monitor court
statistics. Synergy is also developing a similar system at the national level
in Lesotho.
Transparency and accountability
In Kenya, Synergy developed a
management information system that monitors the design, development and
implementation of donor and government development projects. The Electronic
Projects Monitoring System, or e-ProMIS, is a government-financed initiative
that captures information about these projects and makes them publicly
available through an online portal. Information available through the portal
includes project justification documents and progress reports based on
indicators like Kenya’s Vision 2030 strategy and the Paris Declaration on Aid
Effectiveness.
Overseen by Kenya’s Ministry of
Finance and Treasury, e-ProMIS is used by more than 42 government agencies.
Synergy created the system based on specifications and guidelines by Kenya’s
finance ministry, Christopher Oisebe, chief economist there, tells Devex.
“Synergy has a very competent team
that we worked with,” Oisebe says. “We learned a lot from them given that they
have developed a number of systems before in around 30 countries. Even if we
already had our specifications, we tried as much as we could to learn from
Synergy’s expertise and competencies in systems development.”
Country ownership and the way forward
The ultimate measure of success, in
Synergy’s view, is not how well it delivers software to a client, but rather
how that software empowers the client to overcome informational challenges,
improve business practices, and make decisions based on good data and
analytics.
Synergy currently works in about 30
countries, and in each case it strives to ensure that the client is ultimately
able to manage the software on its own.
“Our goal is to gradually work
ourselves out of a given software implementation, and to make our clients less
and less dependent on us over time,” Hovanesian says.
The company is now focusing on its
next generation of M&E software technology and on applying its expertise to
other areas of the public sector.
“We feel that we are in a very good
place in terms of growth, we have diversified sectors and clients,” Hovanesian
says. “We are confident that Synergy is on the right track both domestically
and internationally. And we are looking forward to seeing Synergy expand in the
coming years.”
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