Day 5 Ring of Steel

No post yesterday, I was writing my initial report until half past midnight. I then tried to sleep but my head was buzzing.

This morning I woke very bleary-eyed. Work starts at 7.30 so I attempted to get going to redraft my report in time for a 10am meeting.

In the meantime I got distracted by receiving the results of my Open University assessment. The tutor had sent an email to his group yesterday telling us where we had gone wrong and that some of would be disappointed. So I had decided that I had got the wrong end of the stick I had expected to get 75% but downgraded my expectation to 56% (random number). However I got 85% so I was extremely pleased and simply had to read his comments at least twice.

The management team meeting started at 10am and lasted 3 hours only discussing my report. I was expecting a torrid time as I was challenging ways of working and affecting the power base of the people around the table. The thrust of my proposal was to merge the programme teams into one programme department and also strengthen that department by giving it a budget holder function that would determine which admin costs could be afforded and be able to prioritise them and make decisions in the context of programme delivery. So if the IT department want another person to improve the database they would have to check with the programmes department to see if there was any money. If the programmes department felt that having a good database and reliable email was better for programme delivery than hiring someone to dig a well they could make that decision. It's basic management accounting as some of you will recognise.

I was relieved that the report was received well and treated seriously: I had expected resistance and the very-obvious-challenge that I have only been here for 4 days so what the hell did I know? However instead I received positive feedback about how quickly I had got to the nub of the issue and come up with clear recommendations. I think all my experiences counted here - whether thinking about how the University's finance department organised its managers into an Operations Board and a Management Board (the mistakes as well as the positives); Or looking at how Oxfam ran its programme services so that the International Division had a strong finance function or thinking about last year in Haiti and the controls needed to get field offices to improve their financial management. The problems are not unique, but the context is.

In the afternoon I got out (hooray) to visit another large NGO. This involved a car trip across Kabul, through the ring of steel (which to be frank looks as solid as the central reservation on the Oxford Ring Road). It was an interesting journey: there are lots of Afghan soldiers and armed policemen and not much sign of foreign troops here. There is clearly a lot of money being spent on reconstruction, there are building sites everywhere - high rise flats, shopping plazas and wedding halls(!). The country also seems to be brimming with construction companies, as I passed several compounds of caterpillar diggers, etc. Kabul is very flat and spread out - most businesses are in large compounds with grounds and high walls. The city is encircled by mountains and these are encircled by snow-capped mountains. It is hard to see through the dust, but it is quite an amazing location.

The NGO I visited works in Health and Education, but has a similar structure: basically an Afghan organisation with a small operation in Europe that taps into development assistance from European governments and the EU itself. They have faced the same issues on admin costs and have tackled them well. I wish I had met them before today's meeting. However I can incorporate some of their practices into my final report. I will visit another organisation on Monday.

In the meantime the weekend starts here: as it is a muslim country (you may have gathered) the weekend is Friday and Saturday. I was in fear of being locked in the guest house for two days. However I will have an early lunch tomorrow with the Deputy Director (getting back before the end of prayers, just in case...) If the security situation calms down I will spend Saturday and Sunday out of Kabul visiting a provincial office that I can reach by road.