Effective capacity building within development assistance requires substantive knowledge transfer that can be applied immediately. Institutional partners in countries receiving assistance need practical tools, techniques and methodologies. Highly complex topics are presented often in a short time without follow up means for implementation leaving institutions ill-equipped for change. Stream House has developed ICT and knowledge products to make technical assistance more effective. We use a non-commercial pricing model that makes our products affordable for formative institutions with tight budgets.
- ALERT - Secure SMS Whistleblowing
- INFORM-IAD - Income & Asset Declaration
- Case Management System
- ACORN - Case Tracking System
- TRIMS - Trade Route Incident Management System
ALERT
ALERT is a secure mobile-access whistleblowing reporting and case management system that can be deployed for any situation where sensitive whistleblower reports are received and processed securely.
With agreements with local or regional telecom providers, the system ensures anonymity and security as the sender's phone numbers are encrypted and inaccessible. Secure message exchange with the whistleblower is enabled and all data processing is handled from a secure HTTPS/SSL-encrypted control panel for the administrators.
INFORM- IAD
Managing Income & Asset Declarations (IAD) of public officials requires a clear data management strategy. Stream House has developed an easy-to-use IT database system to enable countries implement electronic submission of declaration forms and conduct verification.
INFORM-IAD combines the efficient collection and storage of the forms electronically and incorporates search and retrieval functions of IAD filings for analysis, reporting and achieving compliance and verification. INFORM-IAD been designed to be flexible and allow the incremental adoption of ICT tools to collect, store and analyze income and asset declarations submitted by public officials according to the laws of that country. The product runs on a UNIX or Linux server (open source and free server software) and requires other freely available web-server and database tools.
CASE MANAGEMENT
In 2018, Stream House worked on a UK government funded project to evaluate the CMS landscape of the Malawian Anti-Corruption Bureau, the Directorate of Public Prosecution DPP’s office and the Financial Intelligence Authority FIA.
Our experts provided recommendations for how automated systems can be instituted to undertake case work more systematically and bring in efficiencies to track, monitor and report on cases while providing greater visibility to management and accountability towards the public.
ACORN
To address organised crime and corruption in Nigeria, the Anti-Corruption in Nigeria programme ACORN was launched. The goal was to create “more accountable formal and informal institutions that deliver better services, an improved environment for business and investment, improved performance on security and to contribute to inclusive growth and poverty reduction in Nigeria.
Stream House worked on a UK government funded project to develop a case tracking system for the Federal Capital Territory High Court as part of the ACORN initiative. This tracking system will facilitate the work done by Members of Court, as well as strengthen accountability, increase productivity and enhance transparency. The digital tool allows Members of Court to work more efficiently, as it will indicate where bottlenecks are, allowing resources to be steered accordingly.
TRIMS
TRIMS is a crowd-sourced facility for traders and general citizens to send anonymous, structured text (SMS) messages to a public website to report non-tariff barriers encountered such as artificial check points, bribery solicitations and other forms of harassment leading to delays and increasing the cost of essential goods such as perishable food items, agricultural goods and small appliances.
TRIMS is unique for the notoriously clogged West African trade corridor where non-tariff barriers disproportionately impact poor traders and increase the cost of trucking basic essentials. TRIMS offers a quick and simple way for these traders to have a voice and publicly share information to create a credible threat of detection of corruption.