Public Good Transparency Index - Expression of interest for a Joint Venture

AWF (Assessment with Facilitation) Private Limited is a leading consulting firm in Pakistan, registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan. AWF drives to identify scalable opportunities while aiming for high-quality solutions for its clients in particular and society at large. AWF aims at developing long-lasting partnerships and mutual learning. AWF (www.awfco.net) has a proven track record of developing and executing numerous organizational evaluation indices and performance measuring instruments, as well as providing research and development support to its notable clientele.

AWF Private Limited, has developed an index (Public Good Transparency Index - PGTI) for the ratings of development sector players in Pakistan and is now gearing up for its launch through stake-based partnerships (share the cost and enjoy the ownership). In this regard, AWF is inviting expression of interest from civil society organizations, INGOs, academia, think tanks, consulting and accounting firms to take part in PGTI, aimed at rating of development sector players in Pakistan and South Asia.

Why Public Good Transparency Initiative - PGTI

The public disclosure (proactively) of critical information (i.e., governance structure, information on the governance board, financial statements, related party transactions, grievance mechanism, successes, failures etc.) is imperative for the donors/funders and partners to make fair and accurate judgement on the governance model of the partner organizations. Additionally, there is a need for more transparency in the “public good” sector as they are dealing with public money and their disclosure ratings would be another step in the right direction. The hypothesis is “high levels of proactive disclosures shall result in high levels of accountability and efficiency”.

Presently, majority of the development organizations engaged in the public goods and services are not benchmarked and graded on the basis of public information disclosure. Essentially, globally accepted methodology will be underlying basis with which to determine the quality and quantity of data disclosed. https://www.publishwhatyoufund.org/ and www.csostandards.org offers a great reference in this regard.

The proposed PGTI is about rating (of development sector organizations that operate in a country) on the basis of the information that organizations disclose on their websites. PGTI relies on global methodology towards benchmarking and grading setups associated with the “doing good” to ensure that stakeholders are able to evaluate partner and development sector organizations during decision making processes. It has been developed on the basis of indicators that are being practiced by International Aid Transparency Index https://iatistandard.org/ and https://www.csostandard.org/. AWF believes that there is a need to encourage development sector to practice disclosure of information in proactive manner and for that a rating index is needed in Pakistan and the region. The publicly disclosed information will be used to assess and grade each development sector player. Ratings can serve the purpose of due diligence needed by stakeholders including governments, funding agencies, beneficiaries and public at large. This shall also contribute in holding organizations accountable and achieving higher levels of effectiveness and operational efficiency. 

Number of partnerships offered – 10 (02 from each province and one each from AJK and GB)

Eligibility

1. Should be legally registered entities/organizations/firms (Small and Medium sized organizations will be given preference)
2. Should be operational for a minimum of three years
3. Should have functional websites
4. Should be willing to adopt maximum disclosure practices
5. Should be willing to act as regional secretariat and coordinate activities
6. Should be willing to make essential human resource available to perform the activities
7. Should have the capacity to contribute 40,000/- per month (head office costs) to the national secretariat in Islamabad

Benefits

1. Status of founder in the launch of an innovative accountability framework in Pakistan and South Asia
2. Share in the ownership of the PGTI
3. Leadership and recognition at the national and international level
4. Visibility and enhanced probability of partnerships with international accountability bodies