Some days it feels like there is a new story of bribery, corruption or nepotism in our papers every day, but this is the case wherever there is power in the hands of a few and little or no accountability. This is sadly not only rampant in governments everywhere, but in businesses as well.
In both cases, the introduction of transparency into their financial transactions, from their budgets and forecasts to their reporting, can make the world of difference. Beyond making any anomalies open and obvious, the individuals who might be inclined to behaving in unsavoury ways would be put off knowing that their ability to hide their actions had been removed.
And with today’s technology, software and services, there is no excuse for a lack of transparency at all levels. Transparency of financial information needs to be made up of many things – real-time access to information, ensuring the information is easy to understand, being able to delve deeper into the top layer of numbers, giving people responsibility for setting their own budgets, and ensuring they are accountable for their results.
In the past you could only examine January 1st’s expense figures sometime in the middle of February, when the books for January were closed and the monthly report became available. This could leave almost two full months for someone to cover their tracks before someone even sees anything that might raise suspicion. Today you are able to review figures in real-time, leaving very little place for anyone to hide.
Financial information used to only be understood by financial people who then had to find the time to go through all the information and translate it for the average manager – a time consuming and expensive exercise that also made any mismanagement of funds very difficult for the average person to identify. With simplification and new systems that are user-friendly and easy to understand for even non-financial users, hiding anything becomes that much harder.
Most systems allow you to drill down into your information, which means that large lump sum “Travel” or “Entertainment” expense amount that used to be able to hide a multitude of sins becomes an open book to anyone who might be curious, revealing exactly what is being spent, for what and by whom.
Allowing the people who have to use the budgets to set those budgets makes so much more sense than letting a financial person based elsewhere set this amount for them. Nobody knows better how much they need, and of what, than the people on the ground. There is also a lot more likelihood that they will take responsibility and be accountable for the results of their own decisions than those imposed on them by others.
As you can see, all of these points could be equally applied to government or business. Transparency is easy to achieve when you have the right tools and systems in place and with these easily available, there is no excuse for anyone in power to get away with nefarious activities that land them in the media.
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