(EID-032) “A FRAMEWORK FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE”

It’s good to see so many organizations working on their own to pursue their own advocacies, but it’s so sad to see them working so apart from each other, without integrating, coordinating and consolidating their diverse efforts. It is for this reason that we have formed the United National Integrated Development Alliance (UNIDA), to integrate, coordinate and consolidate efforts in five areas of concern namely shelter, health, agriculture, peace & order and education or SHAPE for short.

I believe that the lack of objective “targets” is one reason why integration, coordination and consolidation are not achieved, and it is for this reason that the UNIDA has identified specific “targets” for each area of concern, namely foundations for shelter, hospitals for health, the cooperatives for agriculture, courthouses for peace & order, and universities for education.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the Inter-Charity Network (ICN) defines shelter simply as “a place to stay”, meaning that its objective is to assist people in “having” an affordable place to stay, regardless of whether it is a house, an apartment or a condo, and regardless of whether they are buying it or renting it.

Strategically speaking, hospitals should be the “hub” of the health sector, bearing in mind that there are many other “spokes” around it, namely the clinics, laboratories and pharmacies. In the same manner, cooperatives should be the “hub” of the agriculture sector, with the farms, orchards, ranches and fishponds as its “spokes”.

Taking this strategy further, courthouses should be the “hub” of the peace & order sector, with the prosecutors, police stations, jails and firehouses as its “spokes”. The last but not the least, universities should be the “hub” of the education sector, with the colleges, vocational schools and training centers as its “spokes”.

In order to integrate, coordinate and consolidate their efforts, the five sectors will need to build databases and networks. Things are looking good up ahead, as the UNIDA has recently acquired a Digital Electronic Forms (DEF) technology that will make these tasks easier.

Sustainability is the name of the game in good governance. In order to sustain development programs, we need sustainable frameworks. Putting good technology to good use, we could possibly win this game.