The Emperor Has No Clothes - But He Does Write Reports

by Michael Kleinman

Published November 19, 2008 @ 01:45AM PST

It's hard to overstate how much I hate report-writing.  Or, for that matter, how much everyone I know hates report-writing.  (There might be an exception or two, but masochists are always an exception.)

As Alanna Shaikh described on her blog Blood and Milk:

"An awful lot of every expat’s job involves paperwork. Most people picture international work as feeding hungry people, providing health care to refugees, or building schools. In reality, it makes no sense to pay an expatriate to do that. Instead, we do what cannot be hired locally: English-language paperwork. We write reports to HQ and donors, proposals, and program guidelines. We write even more reports."

I recently came across an excellent post by Paul Currion on the humanitarian.info blog about the incessant, never-ending demand for reports. A post whose title - Kill Your Reports - pretty much says it all.

According to Currion:

"The ECB research showed clearly that while nearly every expat staff member - and many of the senior national staff - in an international organisation is required to contribute to situation reporting, donor reporting, co-ordination reporting and so forth, precisely none of them believed that the reporting process added value to their work."

Verily, the truth shall set you free.  Please see Currion's post for more analysis, and ways to make reporting more effective.  Then, to the barricades.

[N.B. To give credit where due, I stole the idea of using Alanna's quote from Currion's post.  Imitation, the sincerest form of flattery.]

[Photo from ticklylittleimp.wordpress.com]