text:
IR Nav
TLSA Pipeline
Stock Quote & Charts
Earnings information
Dividends and Split History
NDAQ: TLSA
Tiziana to Participate in January Investor Meetings
New York, Dec. 16, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tiziana Life Sciences Ltd. (Nasdaq: TLSA) ("Tiziana" or the "Company"), a biotechnology company enabling breakthrough CNS immunomodulation approaches to enhance the functionality of Treg-based therapies, announced today that the Company plans to present at the Biotech Showcase and host institutional investor and partnering meetings at this event, as well as at the LifeSci Corporate Access Event. Both in-person events are taking place January 9-10, 2023 in San Francisco, California.
LifeSci Partners Corporate Access Event:
Dr. Matthew Davis, Chief Medical Officer and acting Chief Scientific Officer and the Tiziana team, will be hosting 1x1 institutional investor meetings.
Date/Time: Monday, January 9, 2023
Location: Beacon Grand Hotel in San Francisco
Please click here to register for the conference and schedule a meeting with management via the online system managed by LifeSci Partners,.
Biotech Showcase:
Dr. Matthew Davis, Chief Medical Officer and acting Chief Scientific Officer and the Tiziana team, will give a corporate presentation and host 1x1 institutional investor and partnering meetings.
Date/Time: Tuesday January 10, 2023, at 11:00 am PT
Location: Hilton San Francisco Union Square in San Francisco
To schedule a meeting with management, investors can register on the Biotech Showcase website
About Tiziana Life Sciences
Tiziana Life Sciences is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing breakthrough immunomodulation therapies via novel routes of drug delivery. Tiziana's innovative nasal, oral and inhalation approaches in development have the potential to provide an improvement in efficacy as well as safety and tolerability compared to intravenous (IV) delivery. Tiziana's two lead candidates, intranasal foralumab, the only fully human anti-CD3 mAb, and milciclib, a pan-CDK inhibitor, have both demonstrated a favorable safety profile and clinical response in patients in studies to date. Tiziana's technology for alternative routes of immunotherapy has been patented with several applications pending and is expected to allow for broad pipeline applications.
For further inquiries:
Tiziana Life Sciences Ltd
Hana Malik, Business Development, and Investor Relations Manager
email: info@tizianalifesciences.com
Irina Koffler
ikoffler@lifesciadvisors.com
Source: Tiziana Life Sciences Ltd.
Tiziana Life Sciences LTD, info@tizianalifesciences.com | +44 (0) 207 495 2379
Calls are charged at the standard geographic rate and will vary by provider. Calls outside the United Kingdom will be charged at the applicable international rate. We are open between 09:00 - 17:30, Monday to Friday excluding public holidays in England and Wales
© 2023 Tiziana Life Sciences


Lock in a great price for Costa Dulce Hotel and Retreat Centre – rated 9 by recent guests!
Just an incredible place. Yoga every morning and surfing right in front of the property. The food was fresh, local and amazing. Very simple but so good. It was also nice to meet other travelers in an informal atmosphere. Highly recommended.
Good staff. Location is nice. Good value on rooms.
Me encantó el lugar, la playa con poca gente. Tienen un vivero de tortugas tuvimos la dicha que nacieran tortuguitas en nuestra estadía.
El enclave donde esta situado es una delicia para los sentidos, playa y selva todo en uno. Buena atención y mucha tranquilidad.
Très beau bungalow, confortable au milieu de la nature et à côté d'une plage déserte magnifique. Repas corrects , très copieux petit déjeuner. Une voiture est souhaitée pour visiter les alentours.
Kleine Bucht fast menschenleer. Nur dieses kleine Hotel.
Diese Unterkunft ist ein Traum! Abgelegen, direkt an einer wunderschönen Küste mit viel Natur. Man hat alles, was man braucht. Das Essen war jeden Abend top!
La localización: alejada, pero exclusiva, con una playa prácticamente exclusiva. ONG tortugas. El personal muy amable y cercano. La comida genial, sabrosa y muy sanota. Las habitaciones, cabañas con mucho encanto con vistas a la playa encaramadas en una loma entre arboles.
Featuring water sports facilities and garden, Costa Dulce Hotel and Retreat Centre is located in San Juan del Sur, 12 miles from Christ of the Mercy Nicaragua. Among the various facilities are a terrace, a shared lounge, as well as a bar. Both private parking and free WiFi are available at this property.
With a private bathroom, some rooms at the hotel also provide guests with a sea view.
Speaking English, Spanish and French at the reception, staff are always at hand to help.
This property also has one of the top-rated locations in San Juan del Sur! Guests are happier about it compared to other properties in the area.
When would you like to stay at Costa Dulce Hotel and Retreat Centre?
House Rules Costa Dulce Hotel and Retreat Centre takes special requests – add in the next step!
Costa Dulce Hotel and Retreat Centre accepts these cards and reserves the right to temporarily hold an amount prior to arrival.
I was the only guest apart from a large yoga group - as it is communal dining etc it was not easy coming into that group setting - I think I should have been told, my hut was right at the back of property and was cut off from other rooms - again as a solo female traveller I didn't feel very comfortable being that far from main building, there was an expectation that you did the $35 meal package - I simply couldn't eat that much food and having stayed at other stunning properties such as Arte Sano cafe and Apoyo lodge the cost of both the accomodation and food exceeded these other properties and did not match the quality.


The Twitter Herodotus: 9.74 Some say Sophanes literally anchored himself in position during the battle. Others say there was an anchor depicted on his shield.
9.74 Some say Sophanes literally anchored himself in position during the battle. Others say there was an anchor depicted on his shield.


text:
Q: Code a validator for a WTForms form which compares the inputs from two fields I would like to have a validator which triggers a ValidationException, when the input for feature_count is smaller than for effective_rank.
I found information on this website (http://flask.pocoo.org/snippets/64/) about wtforms validators, but do not know how to apply it to my problem.
Can you show me how it is done?
This is my code:
from flask_wtf import FlaskForm
from wtforms import SubmitField, IntegerField, ValidationError
from wtforms.validators import DataRequired, NumberRange, EqualTo,

class RequestDataForm(FlaskForm):
feature_count = IntegerField('Number of features', validators=[DataRequired(), NumberRange(min=1, max=50)])

effective_rank = IntegerField('Effective Rank', validators=[DataRequired()])

noise = IntegerField('Noise', validators=[DataRequired(), NumberRange(min=0, max=1)])

submit = SubmitField('Submit')

A: There is a Validator called EqualTo which can be used to compare the equality of two fields. If you wanted feature_count to be the same as effective_rank you would simply need to add:
feature_count = IntegerField('Number of features', validators=[DataRequired(), EqualTo('effective_rank'), NumberRange(min=1, max=50)])

However, in your specific case you want to ensure LessThan so the best solution I have is to copy and paste the code for the EqualTo class, rename it for your specific case, change the comparision and re-utilise it as a custom class:
class EqualTo(object):  # --> Change to 'LessThan'
    """
    Compares the values of two fields.

    :param fieldname:
        The name of the other field to compare to.
    :param message:
        Error message to raise in case of a validation error. Can be
        interpolated with `%(other_label)s` and `%(other_name)s` to provide a
        more helpful error.
    """
    def __init__(self, fieldname, message=None):
        self.fieldname = fieldname
        self.message = message

    def __call__(self, form, field):
        try:
            other = form[self.fieldname]
        except KeyError:
            raise ValidationError(field.gettext("Invalid field name '%s'.") % self.fieldname)
        if field.data != other.data:  #  --> Change to >= from !=
            d = {
                'other_label': hasattr(other, 'label') and other.label.text or self.fieldname,
                'other_name': self.fieldname
            }
            message = self.message
            if message is None:
                message = field.gettext('Field must be equal to %(other_name)s.')

            raise ValidationError(message % d)

Then you can use:
feature_count = IntegerField('Number of features', validators=[DataRequired(), LessThan('effective_rank'), NumberRange(min=1, max=50)])

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


How My Spiritual Practice Saved Me.
I was an empath growing up in the world on online journals (xanga, livejournal- if you remember these too let me know). I was immersed in the pain of all my fellow angsty and confused adolescents. We all had the similar Linkin Park lyrics as our cryptic away messages on AIM, we all shared our heartache with the world of strangers (and the world that did know us and would use what we shared as ammunition) as we searched for connection, for hope, for meaning.
Many of us didn't find it.
I remember the night where not finding it- that hope- felt so painful it was like I couldn't breathe. How could I get this pain OUT OF ME. That was all I wanted at the time- for the 500 lb weight on my chest to be taken off. There was a pair of scissors sitting on my desk and suddenly physical pain became an instant relief from the emotional pain. On top of that, it was pain I could control. I could administer the pain when I felt like I either a) deserved it or b) was desperate for a relief.
Sadly you guys, this not only opened up the door for some deeply ingrained and f-ed up self harm habits, but it opened up the door for connection. If you don't know this- there are communities of pro-self harm and pro-eating disorder and these communities will cheer you on in your self destruction. There were girls I didn't know messaging me about how much more in control I'd also feel if I restricted my calories or started throwing up after each meal. While this is incredibly messed up- they thought they were helping. I thought they were helping. I had a whole community online that "understood me." This hole was deep and dark. I finally felt loved and in control, but it was one of the most intense illusions I've probably ever experienced.
If you resonate with this, you also know that these urges and emotions don't just go away. I'm constantly unpacking these experiences and beliefs, but I have a foundation to do that from. I was totally one of those people who studied psychology in school to 1) help people and 2) learn how to fix myself! Well, that didn't happen. I was still left sad and searching.
My spiritual practice has shown me that not only did I NOT need to be "fixed," but it showed me how I can rebuild. It showed me how I can develop a sense of self-esteem, it taught me how to handle the dark days, and most importantly, it has guided me to self love. I don't have to resort to self harm anymore because I know how to handle my emotions and care for myself deeply.
If you are needing support in your life reboot, I have just the program for you: Your Sacred Life.
This is an immersive, collaborative, and creative group program that will guide you in developing a spiritual practice so that you can live a MIRACULOUS life, not a stressful one.
I've never been one to shy away from my human-ness. I've always been transparent about being imperfect. Lately, I've been experiencing a lot of guilt with my human-ness. There was a part of the end of last year where I was experiencing RAPID momentum.
And then I got sick and it stopped. And then my mindset KEPT me sick and it felt impossible to find that momentum again.
I've noticed a disconnect and had to turn within to find out what happened so I could get back on track.
In doing so, I've realized I've let some people down. I didn't show up for them in the big way that they were hoping for. I didn't reach out as frequently as I could have. I didn't really share that I was struggling with a really deep depression and it felt like it was draining my power from me. I just avoided.
So, this post. It was going to be titled with an apology, but instead, I say thank you.
Thank you for the grace.
Thank you for staying with me for the journey and not holding it against me.
Thank you for knowing that I was going to come back in a way that was even bigger, better, and so much more aligned than ever before.
Winter is over, time to come out of hiding.
#1: Someone else has done the planning for you.
All those little details, the hows, the whats... someone else has figured all of that out ! All that you have to do is show up. Retreats take the best parts of a vacation and remove the hassle of having to plan. It's an excellent practice in surrendering and going with the flow.
#2: You'll finally have the time to do the inner work.
How many books do you have that are waiting to be read? The number of times you'd swear you'd take some time to journal, meditate, or be creative? A retreat creates the time for you. The inner work becomes a part of the sacred self care that is happening and you don't have to worry about finding space in the day.
#3: You'll try new things.
The first retreat I hosted held so many firsts for people- first reiki session, first time seeing Lake Michigan, first cacao ceremony, etc. We're constantly tempted to stay in our comfort zones, but at a retreat you never know what experiences may happen.
#4: You'll meet new friends.
The people you meet at a retreat are one of a kind. There is a certain type of magic that happens when groups of people come together under the shared intention of the retreat. While so many of our new connections happen via social media, the retreat brings back human connection.
#5: Retreats replenish your soul while igniting your spirit.
Since you didn't have to do the planning, you won't leave feeling like you need a vacation from the retreat. In fact, you may leave feeling more energetic and excited about life than ever. Retreats provide an atmosphere for personal growth and relaxation that you won't find anywhere else. You'll learn the type of self care you're truly worthy of and that makes a difference in your life, even after you leave.
Are you ready to sign up for a retreat? Check out my Sacred Self Care Retreats to see what is currently available!
What a magical time of year. It's the first full moon of the Autumn season and it's in Aries and Pisces!
The sign of Aries offers a firey energy that doesn't want us to just release all that's holding us back- it wants us to burn it down.
While full moon is always a great time to release anything and everything that you're feeling called to release, this full moon is asking us to focus in on our relationships. This could be romantic relationships, friendships, partnerships, family, etc.
This ritual will help you channel that firey energy, inspire you to restate your boundaries and get clear on the types of relationships you desire in your life.
If you have access to space that allows for a bonfire, I completely encourage you to do this ritual by the fire! If you don't have access to space that allows for a bonfire, lighting a candle will do the trick.
This ritual comes in two parts and you can do it all together or separately.
Light a candle or start the bonfire.
What materials (clothing, pictures, letters, etc.) are you still holding onto from past relationships? It's time to clear this out. If you've been holding onto an ex's sweatshirt, donate it. If you have paperwork from an old job that you hated and you really don't need that paperwork anymore, put it aside to either burn in your bonfire or ceremoniously destroy later.
Once you've identified and gathered up the materials, it's time to sit with them. Whether through journaling or silently contemplating- ponder these questions. Why have I held onto this? What does this mean to me? What does releasing it mean to me?
Now that we've honored our emotions around these items, it is time to release them. Put the donate items in a bag, safely burn or shred up anything that you weren't able to donate.
Burn sage or incense to clear the space or imagine the space being filled with white light.
With the space you've created from the release, what types of relationships are you calling in.
Allow yourself to enter into a meditative state through staring at the fire or the flame of the candle.
Imagine the relationships, parternships, etc. that you are calling into your life.
What do these relationships feel like? What do they look like? How do they impact your life and how do you impact theirs?
If you feel called to, also use those prompts for journaling.
Place your hands on your sacral chakra (the area below the navel) and breathe into that space as you set the intention for these relationships to come into your life in a way that serves the highest and greatest good.
Feel the fire within your sacral chakra and trust that this flame is attracting all the relationships to you.
Safely blow out the candle or extinguish the fire and know that the fire still burns within you.
Did you love this ritual? Any ah-ha moments? Share with our loving community, Spiritual Self Care.
Are you good at relaxing?
Both of the responses to the answers are crucial to your quality of life.
My frustration threshold used to be basically nothing.
Every little thing felt like a big thing.
Every big thing felt earth shattering.
Now, I am able to more quickly see how each obstacle is a detour to a better direction. I am more quick to trust that what is happening. I am confident knowing that I have the tools to walk myself through this stressful experience, make meaning of it, and find relief.
What is more stressful- the precipitating event/trigger or our response to it?
We have the most control over our response, but even then, sometimes our nervous system goes into overdrive. We go into constant fight or flight mode.
Which means the answer to that second question- Are you good at relaxing? Is a big fat no. You WANT to be good at relaxing. You want to relax… but you're feeling that pull of the to-do list or even harder, the to-be list.
How you respond to stress seriously impacts not only your quality of life, but your longevity! I don't need to tell you how bad stress is for you- it is pretty well documented at this point how much of a toll stress takes on your body.
When we're in this state, one stressful situation seems to impact all parts of our life. We take our personal problems to work. We take our work problems home. We start little fights with our loved ones out of being so freaking tired.
We need a better way to respond to stress. Our livelihood and wellbeing of ourselves and our families depends on it!
The Chakra Goddess energy therapy program does just this. Through going through the program, you will naturally learn new ways of responding to stress. You will learn a go-to system for stress relief and relaxation that will boost your overall health, improve your relationships, and promote balance.
This program combines two transformative practices: journaling and reiki. It is these practices that will completely shift your stress response so that you respond in a way that helps you grow.
What happens during an intuitive reiki healing?
Each person's experience is beautifully unique.
The shared intention of healing creates a bridge of energetic connection between myself and the person/people who are receiving the healing. I begin to receive messages almost immediately throughout my entire body. During my attunements, I was transported to this sacred forest for healing. I recognized this space from other dreams that I had that involved the archangels teaching me how they do energy healings. I knew this was the place for me to share with the souls I would be blessed enough to work with. Sometimes this place changes and I roll with where spirit guides me, but more often than not we start in this sacred place.
One of my gifts is translating energy into words and a deep understanding of how the chakras work. I'm able to feel exactly where there are lingering energies that are not serving and release them. I focus in on each chakra and share exactly what is coming through to me. Combining reiki with my intuitive gifts have made my healings extra powerful because while I use my energy to decipher, channel, and interpet… reiki heals. Reiki activates the healing within you and intensifies inner peace.
In each chakra, we clear the energies of stories- from this life, past lives, etc. Once the space is cleared, we call in new stories in the forms of affirmations, light, symbols, sacred geometry, etc. Sharing what the new energy looks/feels/sounds like is one of my favorite parts. My body tingles with excitement and optimism. It is a process of complete unconditional love and support.
Reiki is loving, intelligent energy that flows exactly to where it is needed. This means that while our focus may be on one chakra, we can trust that reiki is addressing all parts of the mind, body, and soul. Reiki is also not bound to the same rules of time and distance as we know it. This means that reiki can transcend space and time, being just as effective in person, distance, live, or via recording. It all works the same. It is only our ego that thinks there's any difference.
To me, distance energy work is very similar to the way that music works. You don't need to be in the recording studio with the artist the very first time they record that song that resonates so deeply with your soul it makes you cry- you may very well experience this reaction every time you listen to the song. The same goes for reiki healings- you don't have to be in the same room at the same time as a healing is occuring. You can listen to it over and over again and feel the power.
Are you ready to experience an intuitive reiki healing?
This full moon in Pisces is the start to a VERY welcomed shift in energy!
It's like the pre-party to Mars going out of retrograde on Monday. We get to celebrate who we are, all we've overcome, and rededicate ourselves to... well ourselves.
Pisces is a water sign that is known for it's dreamy, psychic qualities. It is an accumulation of all the signs can find a bit of itself in all 12 members of the zodiac. This past eclipse season called for some of the most intense inner work we've had to do, but we'll soon see the outcomes from all that work. This energy is absolutely magical and if you are open to it, it will expand your being in so many ways.
Full moons and new moons offer their own unique magic when it comes to releasing. This full moon is calling us to RELEASE so that we can EXPAND.
Start with a loving cleanse of your energy and space by safely burning sage or palo santo, imagining the room and your body filling with white light, or set the intention for your angels and guides to clear your space and energy. If you haven't already placed your favorite crystals to be out near you, do this now.
Call on your angels and guides of the highest truth and compassion to guide you and be with you through this ritual as you light the candle.
If you haven't already prepared your drink, do that now.
If you have cacao, I highly recommend using it for this ritual. Cacao has beautiful properties that help open the heart center for the expansion we are being called to do.
Hold the drink in your hand and imagine it being infused with loving light. Give thanks for having it and enjoy as you listen to the music and begin to relax.
While you are drinking, take in how you are truly feeling in this moment. Where are you at energetically.
Jot down what comes up in your journal that you need to release the most. After you are done writing what you need to release, place your hands over your heart and ask that your angels and guides remove this energy from you and fill it with only the highest love.
"Angels and guides of the highest truth and compassion. I declare my willingness for expansion. I declare my willingness to surrender the pain that once held me back. I am open and ready to learn all that has been waiting for me. I am ready to love my life. I ask that you now help me do this through connecting with the energy of the zodiac. I lovingly accept all guidance that is offered to me at this time that will serve my highest and greatest good. Thank you."
We are now going to explore different energies of the zodiac through automatic writing. If you've never done automatic writing, it is simply writing without worrying about spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc. and simply letting thoughts spill onto paper. It is a powerful practice in connecting with our intuition and inner guide.
ARIES: Aries desires to teach us how to expand through having FUN. What is fun for you? How can you incorporate more FUN into your day to day life?
TAURUS: Taurus desires to teach us how to expand through RESPONSIBILITY. What can you commit to now that will IMPROVE your quality of life? What have we been avoiding that we need to face head on and what do we need in order to be able to do that?
GEMINI: Gemini desires to each us how to expand by embracing our DUALITY: What part of yourself do you keep hidden? Why do you do this? What would you do differently if you let this part of you be known?
CANCER: Cancer desires to teach us how to expand through NURTURE: What does your soul need now? How can I show myself nurture?
LEO: Leo desires to teach us how to expand through CONFIDENCE: What part of being you are you totally in love with right now? Put self judgment and discomfort aside. What part of being you are you totally in love with right now?
VIRGO: Virgo desires to teach us how to expand through SERVICE: How does my expansion serve the world? What way of serving brings me the most joy?
LIBRA: Libra desires to teach us how to expand through PEACE: What part of yourself or life experiences, that you have been forcing to change or wishing to change, can you radically accept right now? What does peace look like to you?
SCORPIO: Scorpio desires to teach us how to expand through INTENSITY: What belief do you have about yourself, life, the world, etc. that you are completely unapologetic about?
SAGITTARIUS: Sagittarius desires to teach us to expand through ADVENTURE: What is the greatest adventure you have been on? What new adventures are you calling in?
CAPRICORN: Capricorn desires to teach us how to expand through DEDICATION: What goal do you dream about that feels "too big"? What steps can you start to take to make that goal get a little closer?
AQUARIUS: Aquarius desires to teach us how to expand through INTELLECTUALISM: How can your rational self most serve you now?
PISCES: Pisces desires to teach us how to expand through INTEGRATION: Create a declaration of expansion using some of the statements you've gathered from the prompts.
Use this declaration of expansion for manifestation by reading it while listening to Jai Jagdeesh "Ek Ong Kar" which is a kundalini chant for manifestation. If kundalini isn't your thing, just listen to some high vibe music that makes you feel good!
Enjoy this state through dancing, meditation, etc. for as long as you wish!
Express gratitude for the love and wisdom you received tonight to close out the ritual.
I hope this ritual serves you. Let me know how it went by either e-mailing me at chakrachelsie@gmail.com or joining our amazing online community, Spiritual Self Care, and sharing with the group!


text:
The shellacking that hubris wrought
There may be no more deadly force in politics than hubris. It sneaks up on politicians at their weakest moments — the height of their success — and destroys them, sometimes slowly, sometimes spectacularly.
President Barack Obama is suffering from a case of hubris so far-reaching and debilitating it will fascinate political epidemiologists for decades. His intellectual boosters egged him on. They greeted his election as the advent of, as Peter Beinart put it in Time magazine, "The New Liberal Order." Sam Tanenhaus of The New York Times rushed to print a book called "The Death of Conservatism."
It was all settled, then — of course it wasn't. "Public opinion is the lord of the universe," Thomas Jefferson said. The Obama Democrats governed in blatant defiance of it, and didn't care to notice the trends that should have been a flashing red light on their ambitions.
Just as Obama was taking office, public opinion was shifting to the right. In July of 2009, Gallup found that by a two-to-one margin people said they'd become more conservative in recent years. Gallup noted that "the results are conspicuously incongruous with the results of the 2008 elections." It is this disparity that created the conditions for the tea-party movement, and eventually Obama's "shellacking."
"The party of no" was rewarded in "the election of no." The voters went to the polls in the spirit of the Woody Allen remark, "I wish I had some kind of affirmative message to leave you with. Would you take two negative messages?" In 2010, they were "no" and "stop."
Those words must be spoken in a frequency too high for Democrats to hear. In his post-defeat press conference, Obama said people are frustrated by the pace of the economic recovery. True enough. But Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics notes that the unemployment rate in many electoral models would have only accounted for a Democratic loss of 20-30 seats. In 1982, when the unemployment rate was higher than today, Ronald Reagan lost 26 House seats.
According to exit polls, only 23 percent of voters blamed Obama for the state of the economy. But 74 percent are angry or dissatisfied with the federal government. Fifty-two percent think Obama's policies will hurt the country, and 56 percent want the federal government to do less.
Whereas Obama thought he had a license to rush to transform America after 2008, he really had a tentative endorsement from a refractory public, much of which is inherently skeptical of his goals. He was like an ice fisherman tromping around on what he thought was a lake frozen 6 inches thick when it was barely frozen at all.
Adjusting to the discomfiting reality of a center-right electorate is his challenge now. It will require the humility first, to realize how fundamentally he misread the American people, and then, to adopt a more cautious and defensive style of politics. If you are given to congratulating yourself on your world-historical importance — and contrasting yourself with Bill Clinton, the last Democratic president who shrewdly survived a midterm drubbing — none of this will come easily.
But it's the only cure for the shellacking that hubris wrought.
Lowry is editor of the National Review.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The following resources will define why MuniLogic is the right choice for your organization. You can also keep up to date with the latest news and events from MuniLogic.
When MuniLogic Municipal Management Software was created, the vision was to build a system that could grow with our customers as their needs changed over time. A modular design was developed that included a core system along with specific management modules that could be added as needed. At MuniLogic, we listen to our customers and continually strive to meet their ever growing and changing needs.
MuniLogic was developed to streamline a municipal or authority organization's daily activities by integrating technologies such as GIS with document management databases. The software will enable a municipality or authority to enhance their business processes and improve upon customer service. MuniLogic's automated document management system allows organizations to rely less on paper. Hardcopy items such as permit applications, zoning maps, and customer complaints are all now electronically filed into the MuniLogic database.
MuniLogic has proven to be extremely efficient and of immeasurable value to our clients, and as we continue to grow and expand our software, so does our client list. In the first six months of this year, we have added six more MuniLogic clients including Richland Township Authority, Doylestown Borough, and Middletown Township in Bucks County; and Schuylkill Township, Uwchlan Township and East Bradford Township in Chester County. We continue to have strong interest, not just locally, but nationwide.


Throwing is an essential skill. Apart from being a fundamental movement in various sports, it is one of the basic activities of life. We created a simple tool that teaches anyone how to throw better, because the benefits will carry on long after the ball hits its target.
The simplicity of our product encourages anyone to learn to throw. There's something about seeing and feeling results that motivates you to keep playing.
Learning how to throw instills the confidence to play at any level. We have created a tool that makes it possible to feel the pride of that moment in minutes.
Our goal is to empower you at any level. We want everyone to feel motivated to get outside and play catch, join a team, or simply feel the confidence to play.
As a kid playing catch in the backyard and all through high school, my Dad must have told me a thousand times, "Get your arm up!" I would recommend this for baseball and softball players of any age because it is a very simple way for players to teach themselves the most efficient way to throw the ball and prevent unnecessary injuries.
Our product comes with a headband and an arm that extends out over the shoulder. The band is one size fits all, fully adjustable, and easy for anyone to put on.
Although throwing is one of the basic movements of life, it doesn't always come naturally. We have created a way to reinforce the correct arm angle and proper shoulder rotation that is perfect for all ages. Learn to throw better in minutes while capturing the motivation, confidence, and empowerment that comes from using our tool.
Our tool is designed to reinforce the proper arm throwing angle and shoulder rotation. With every throw, it gives feedback that anyone can feel. Speed and power are generated when the arm is fluid, smooth, and in the correct position. We have created a simple way to work out any kinks and easily enable a better throwing motion.
Pushing or "shot-putting" the ball is one of the most common and detrimental flaws in throwing mechanics. Our tool instills the proper arm angle and release point, helping to free the arm to work in its natural and unrestricted motion, dramatically increasing accuracy.
By reinforcing the proper shoulder rotation, arm angle, and release point, our tool helps the arm to work free from stress or strain. By eliminating potentially damaging movements, we've created a simple way to sustain proper throwing mechanics. This gives the best chance of staying injury free.
Throwing is essential to softball. Learning to throw a softball confidently and accurately is a necessary foundation for all ages and skill levels, especially early on, before bad habits are formed. Our tool reinforces the proper throwing motion for anyone wanting to throw a softball better.
Throwing is an important skill in football. Whether playing on a team or in a pick-up game with the family, throwing a tight spiral can be difficult. We have simplified the process of learning how to throw a football better, no matter what age or skill level.
As a father, Justin Rubin saw a problem—both of his sons and his daughter developed a flaw in their throwing mechanics that was preventing them from reaching their full potential. After countless hours of searching the marketplace for a solution, he decided to take matters into his own hands and create one himself. Read more about the creation and impact of ThrowBetter.


text:
Eight lessons from three years working on transparency
I've spent the last three years working on aid transparency. As I'm moving on to a very exciting new role (watch this space for more details) this seems a good time to reflect on what I've learned in the last three years.
This is a self-indulgently long essay about the importance of aid transparency, and the priorities for how it should be achieved. Busy readers may want to read the 8-point summary below. And for a very clear and concise introduction to the importance of aid transparency, take a look at this video by my (former) colleagues at aidinfo.
The 8-point summary
Here are what I think are the eight most important things I've learned in the last three years about transparency in general, and aid transparency in particular:
To make a difference, transparency has to be citizen-centred not donor-centred.
Citizen-centred transparency would allow citizens of developing countries to combine and use information from many different donor agencies; and provide aid information compatible with the classifications of their own country budget.
Today's ways of publishing information serve the needs of the powerful, not citizens
Existing mechanisms for publishing aid information were designed by the powerful for the powerful. Until the aidinfo team started 3 years ago, nobody had ever done a systematic study of the information needs of all stakeholders, including citizens, parliamentarians and civil society, let alone thought about how those needs could be met.
People in developing countries want transparency of execution not just allocation
There are important differences between the information requirements of people in donor countries and people in developing countries. Current systems for aid transparency focus mainly on transparency of aid allocation, because that is what donor country stakeholders are largely interested in, and not enough on transparency of spending execution, which is of primary interest to people in developing countries.
Show, don't tell
Citizens in donor nations are increasingly sceptical of annual reports and press releases. In aid as in other public services they want to be able to see for themselves the detail of how their money is being used and what difference it is making. They increasingly expect to engaged, and are less willing to be passive funders leaving the decisions entirely to 'experts'. Donor agencies – whether government agencies, international organisations or NGOs – will have to adapt rapidly to become platforms for citizen engagement.
Transparency of aid execution will drive out waste, bureaucracy and corruption
There is, unfortunately, quite a bit of waste, bureaucracy and corruption in the aid system. There is good evidence that this kind of waste is rapidly reduced when the flow of money is made transparent. Corruption and waste prosper in dark places.
Social accountability could be Development 3.0
The results agenda in aid agencies is currently too top down and pays too little attention to the power of bottom up information from the intended beneficiaries of aid. Increased accountability to citizens may be the key to unlocking better service delivery, improved governance and faster development.
The burden of proof should be on those who advocate secrecy
We have published a compelling business case for greater transparency, with all the uncertainties this kind of analysis entails. So where is the business case for secrecy, which would be far harder to quantify or defend? Why does nobody even ask for it? Why is the (inevitable) uncertainty in this kind of analysis allowed to count against the case for transparency, when the same uncertainty would deal a much greater blow against the case for secrecy?
Give citizens of developing countries the benefit of the doubt
Transparency is necessary but not sufficient for more effective aid. But the fact that transparency alone will not solve every problem should not be an excuse for aid agencies to shirk their responsibilities to be transparent. Nor should we be too attentive to vested interests in the aid industry telling us that transparency is not enough. Citizens of developing countries will be more innovative and effective than some people give them credit for when we give the information they need to hold the powerful to account.
That's the summary. If any of that whets your appetite and you want the long version, read on. In my next post, I'll look at the ten steps that development organisations should take towards aid transparency.
Aid transparency: worthy but dull?
Some of my family and friends have wondered why I have devoted three years to a topic which is so utterly dull as aid transparency. (Most of them are too polite to ask.) The answer is that I think this matters, very profoundly, for development and for aid.
In my heart I'm a budget wonk. I've worked on budgeting in the UK Treasury and in the South African Treasury. My opinions on the importance of budget systems and how they can be improved can clear a room in seconds.
King Charles I was executed because he refused to accept Parliament's right to control tax and spending
Budget accountability is not just a technical question. England fought a civil war on the issue of Parliament's ability to control tax and spending. It is the defining characteristic of legitimate government: if the British government cannot carry its budget in Parliament, it falls. The power of the US Congress to control spending is at the heart of the relationship between the legislature and the executive in the US balance of power. In Australia, Gough Whitlam was sacked as Prime Minister on the pretext of his failure to carry supply in the Senate.
My obsession with the technical and political importance of the budget is why I first became interested in aid transparency.
Here in Ethiopia, donors and NGOs spend more than the government raises in domestic revenues. Yet there is no way for a member of parliament, a journalist, a civil society organization or – heaven forbid! – actual citizens to find out what foreign powers are doing in this country.
Donor behaviour makes a mockery of the idea that the heart of government is the allocation and execution of the budget.
It isn't only a question of legitimacy and sovereignty: for anyone who has worked on public budgeting it is also a practical question of getting the maximum value for money.
For example: a friend was working for the Health Ministry in Malawi. They were trying to work out where to invest in building new community clinics. They know where their own clinics are, of course: but have no way to find out where donors and NGOs have built, or will be building, new clinics. So there is no way for them to assess which communities do not have a clinic nearby. In the end they had to guess.
Parliamentarians, the media and civil society need to know how much money donors are paying to governments, and on what terms, so that they hold the government to account for how that money is used. They need to know how much money is being spent by donors outside the budget process, how can they have an informed discussion about the government's budget allocations.
My interest in aid transparency came about initially from anger at the way donors undermine budget systems in developing countries, and I am no less angry about that today. How dare we urge countries to improve their budget systems and lecture them about the efficient allocation and execution of their budget while refusing to provide them with the information they need to do so? How dare we demand more productive public spending, while providing none of the certainty and stability they need to get the maximum value? How dare we lecture developing countries on the need to be accountable while denying citizens and Parliaments the information they need to make an informed judgment about budget allocations?
The right to information for taxpayers in donor countries
Intellectually, I understand also the idea that citizens in donor countries should have access to information about how their money is being spent.
But to be honest, until recently I found it difficult to be motivated by this. It just never grabbed me emotionally. Foreign aid is such a pitifully small amount of money – about half of one percent of national income in most donor countries – that it didn't seem to me a great priority for the citizens of those countries to be given a lot of information about it. And I certainly did not want to use up a big chunk of a small amount of money to answer questions from freedom of information advocates, if the consequence was that we reduced the amount of money going to people who really need it in developing countries, for example to give them access to food, water, health or education.
I've changed my mind about the importance of this, for three reasons.
First, I am increasingly convinced that citizens of donor countries are, in the end, the only people who can insist on aid working better. Many of us would like aid to be accountable and responsive to the needs and interests of poor people. But that isn't how the power relationship works, at least not directly. Whether we like it or not, aid will always be responsive to the people who pay for it – and that means the taxpayers of donor countries, as intermediated by their political representatives. Fortunately, these people do genuinely want their aid to be helpful to people in poor countries, though they presently have little idea what that means in practice. If we want aid to be more effective, we have to get information from the people in poor countries who are supposed to benefiting from aid into the hands of the citizens of donor countries showing them what is working and what is not.
Expedia gives customers comparable information compiled from many different sources.
Second, the zeitgeist in industrialised countries is changing. Twenty years ago, citizens were happy to delegate to aid agencies and NGOs the responsibility of spending aid well, and to be told from time to time what had happened to their money. That's no longer true: people increasingly expect to be shown, not told, what has happened to their money, and they expect to be more involved in making choices. Information that was impossibly expensive to collect and access even a decade ago can now be published online as a matter of course, and that is what people expect from their public services. Technology enables people to be involved in the management of their services day to day, and not just every five years.
Aid agencies in the 21st century cannot continue to act like old-fashioned travel agents – respositories of expertise and information about options, to whom the money was given and decisions delegated. If aid agencies want to retain public trust, mandate and funding, they will have to become like Expedia – a platform on which citizens can see meaningful, comparable and reliable information and then exercise choices themselves. Unless aid agencies respond to these changing expectations, support for their work is likely to continue to decline, perhaps disastrously.
Third, the access to information movement is powerful, effective and smart. We in development have much to learn from the work they have done about the most useful ways for information to be made public, for rights to information to be asserted, and for the balance between freedom of information and privacy to be respected. Their ideas about the need for open, reusable, mashable government data is hugely more advanced than any thinking on these issues in development circles. (I found this paper on Government Data and the Invisible Hand especially interesting and helpful.)
Different information needs in North and South
The first thing the aidinfo team did was to pull together a comprehensive analysis of who needs aid information and what information they need. We were surprised – indeed, a little shocked – to find that nobody had ever asked this question.
The OECD Development Assistance Committee has been collecting aid statistics for five decades, and it is the global centre of excellence on aid information. But they have a specific mandate: to share information among donors about donor efforts. They have a database designed for this purpose. But they have no mandate, capacity or resources to provide information about aid to people in developing countries. (This is not a criticism of the staff of the DAC, who carry out their task with great professionalism; it is a reflection on the nature of the way that powerful interests are able to define the priorities for transparency.)
We worked with actual and potential users of aid information in developing countries and in industrialised countries to find out, for the first time, what information they need. We found a hugely rich and diverse set of people wanting information about aid. You can find our case studies here.
For me, the most interesting lesson was the contrast between what we heard from people in developing countries and people in donor countries.
In donor countries, we heard much the same from everyone: they want detailed information about where aid is going. International NGOs wanted to check whether donors had kept their promises, whether to increase aid overall or to fund particular programmes. They wanted to highlight cases where aid had been allocated badly – for example, redirected from poor countries to more politically and commercially salient middle-income countries. Researchers and academics wanted information about allocation, mainly try to estimate the impact of that aid, or to provide evidence about the motives which drive aid allocations. Ministers, parliamentarians and their researchers spoke despairingly of their inability to give a coherent account of where their country's aid is going, or to show whether aid is being used for their citizens' priorities. All this is extremely important.
Yet none of the people we spoke to in developing countries mentioned any of this. For people in developing countries the questions revolve around execution, not allocation, of aid programmes. When a donor announces that they are giving aid to – say – a housing project in their country, what actually happens to the money? How is the contract tendered? How much money gets skimmed off by consultants and in donor overheads? How much money arrives in the country, and how much stays behind in the donor country? Does any end up in the pockets of ministers and officials? Who decides what is built and where? How much money actually gets spent on construction, how many houses get built, and where are they?
Key lesson: people from donor countries are mainly interested in aid allocation, people in developing countries are mainly interested in execution.
This difference in outlook partly reflects different experiences and expectations: people in industrialised countries tend to assume that a spending decision, once made, will actually be executed with a reasonable degree of efficiency. That is not the assumption made by people in developing countries. The difference in outlook also reflects different accountabilities: people in developing countries cannot hold industrialised countries to account for the choices they make about their aid priorities, but they can hold local players to account for how the money, once allocated, is used and what is delivered with it. So that is what they want information about.
"We may be illiterate but we are not stupid"
We would like to tell you the story of $150m going up in smoke," said the young villager. "We heard on the radio that there was going to be a reconstruction programme in our region to help us rebuild our houses after coming back from exile, and we were very pleased." This was the summer of 2002. The village was in a remote part of Bamiyan province, in Afghanistan's central highlands, and several hours' drive from the provincial capital—utterly cut off from the world. UN agencies and NGOs were rushing to provide "quick impact" projects to help Afghan citizens in the aftermath of war. $150m could have transformed the lives of the inhabitants of villages like this one. But it was not to be, as the young man explained. "After many months, very little had happened. We may be illiterate, but we are not stupid. So we went to find out what was going on. And this is what we discovered: the money was received by an agency in Geneva, who took 20 per cent and subcontracted the job to another agency in Washington DC, who also took 20 per cent. Again it was subcontracted and another 20 per cent was taken; and this happened again when the money arrived in Kabul. By this time there was very little money left; but enough for someone to buy wood in western Iran and have it shipped by a shipping cartel owned by a provincial governor at five times the cost of regular transportation. Eventually some wooden beams reached our villages. But the beams were too large and heavy for the mud walls that we can build. So all we could do was chop them up and use them for firewood."
Claire Lockhart, "The Failed State We're In", Prospect Magazine, June 2008
In donor countries we heard quite a lot about the need to hold aid organisations to account. On this view, aid agencies and NGOs should be able to show exactly how their money is used, and for what. Many organisations already put quite a lot of information on their websites so that their stakeholders can look at their activities in detail.
Yet from developing countries, we heard nothing at all about the need to hold individual aid agencies to account. Few people in developing countries are concerned with the performance of the World Bank, or of DFID. They usually want to know, from all that money from whatever source, how much is likely to arrive in their community, or into their sector, and how they can influence how that money will be spent.
Many developing countries have their own aid databases. These are often developed by the planning ministry or Prime Minister's offices. I was very surprised to learn that they are almost never designed to provide information compatible with the country's budget system; and that most of them are not available to the public. So while these databases are very important and useful for the purpose for which they are designed, to enable developing countries to manage their relationships with donors, they usually do not meet the information needs of important stakeholders such as finance ministries, line ministries, parliamentarians and citizens.
The aid information systems we have today reflect the interests and needs of powerful and vocal stakeholders: donors and planning ministries. They do not reflect the diverse needs of parliamentarians, civil society groups, the media and citizens. They are donor-centred, not citizen-centred. They do not enable users to add up information from many different donors. They are focused on aid allocation, not the details of execution.
But we should not allow ourselves to be daunted by this diversity of needs for aid information. These are are all different perspectives on the same underlying information: namely how aid money is spent by different organisations and what it pays for. And although this information has not been organized in a way which makes it easy to access or use, it is information that every organization has, somewhere in their systems. After all, every aid agency and every implementing organisation knows who they have written each cheque to, and for what purpose.
Donors must resist the temptation to try to predict and prioritise these different needs. If donors try to meet all the diverse needs of all potential users of aid information, they will inevitably devote their finite resources to meeting the demands of larger and more vocal interests. (That's why we currently have data systems designed for sharing information between donors, and with planning ministries, but nothing to give information to parliamentarians, civil society or citizens.)
Instead of trying to serve the needs of particular users, donors should publish the underlying data in an accessible format so that everyone can access it easily and analyse it from their particular perspective. (David Eaves has written a good article about this, set in the broader context of public information.) Only donors can publish the information they hold: so that is what they should concentrate their scarce resources on. Once they have made the information available in an easily accessible form, many other organisations and individuals will be able to use that information to serve a variety of specific users. I'll talk in a subsequent blog post about what this means in practice for aid transparency, and the (very welcome) progress that is being made.
Corruption, bureaucracy and waste
Lai Yahaya reckons donors agreeing to aid transparency is like turkeys voting for Christmas
At the ONE Africa Symposium on technology and transparency the other day, Lai Yahaya, one of the founders of TransparentAid, said that donors and NGOs would resist aid transparency because greater openness in aid was like turkeys voting for Christmas.
When I began working on aid transparency I thought the opposite. I've seen aid making a huge difference in many developing countries, and I believed then (and believe now) that if more people could see the difference aid makes, they would be more supportive of it. I thought public support for aid would continue to atrophy, and perhaps start to hemorrhage, as long as aid agencies are not able to show the public how aid is being used. Better communication in the form of more press releases and glossier annual reports would not be sufficient: people need to be shown, not told, what difference aid is making. So I thought radical transparency was needed to convince a skeptical public that aid is not all lost in corruption, bureaucracy and waste. On this view, resisting pressure for transparency would be suicide.
Living in Ethiopia over the last three years has changed my view a bit on this. A lot of aid is hugely effective and it transforms people's lives. The aid-funded Protection of Basic Services scheme has enabled the government massively to scale up health and education services. The aid-funded Productive Safety Net Programme has not ended bad harvests, but it has made the population more resilient, preventing the large-scale famines we watched on TV in the 1980s. As well as these hugely successful government-to-government aid programmes there is amazing work done by a wide range of NGOs, funded both by individual donations and from government aid budgets.
But there is a lot of garbage in the aid system too. Donors are held up with red-tape and bureaucracy. They dump money into multi-donor trust funds which the World Bank charges a hefty fee to administer, from which money is never disbursed. Money moves from donor to international organization to trust fund to international NGO to local NGO, minus a haircut at every stage, so funding which starts as a river becomes a stream and then just a trickle. There are appalling examples of waste. Many of the people working for aid agencies in developing countries are hard-working and committed, but they face a constant struggle to do the right thing in the face of ludicrous demands and ineffective systems imposed on them from headquarters.
Aid is precious, and waste is egregious. In Vietnam, it took 18 months and the involvement of 150 government workers to purchase five vehicles for a donor-funded project, because of differences in procurement policies among aid agencies.
If donors and NGOs were businesses in a competitive market they would have solved these problems by now, or they would have gone bust. International NGOs (such as Save the Children and Oxfam) would not have half a dozen different national programmes operating independently here in Ethiopia: they would have consolidated them into one local office. Donors are trying to harmonise and improve the the division of labour between them. Some NGOs are outstanding, some are daft and some are downright harmful. But change is slow for donors and NGOs because, in the absence of transparency, political constraints in aid are more powerful than business imperatives.
Transparency would change the imperatives and so help drive out waste and corruption. A 1996 study of school funding in Uganda showed that only 13 percent of the school grant from central government actually reached the schools; the other 87 percent was diverted either for private gain or by district officials for intermediate layers of bureaucracy. So the Ugandan government started to announce monthly transfers of funds in national newspapers and on the radio, and required primary schools to post information on in-flows of funds. When this information was made available to parents and teachers, the flow of funds improved dramatically, from 13 percent reaching schools in 1991–95, to over 80 percent of the money reaching schools in 1999 and 2000.
I was talking to the head of a small NGO here in Addis Ababa, whose funding comes mainly from the US Government. I explained that under the transparency we were advocating, it would be possible to see in one place all the different things that different donors are funding in Ethiopia. She was alarmed: "But that means we won't be able to charge different donors for the same project", she said. I said that seemed to me an advantage rather than a shortcoming of greater aid transparency.
An MP from Mozambique told me recently that he had presided over three separate opening ceremonies of the same school in his constituency, each with a different donor as guest of honour to be shown what they had funded. If there was more public information about what aid was funding, this kind of scam would be impossible.
The aid industry is far from perfect, and for as long as there are dark corners there will be corruption, bureaucracy and waste. Overall I believe that aid works, but we can and must do much better. When we see the true costs of the bureaucracy of aid, the costs of duplication and proliferation, and the shocking discrepancies between good organisations and bad ones, we'll begin to see the most wasteful practices eliminated, and do a better job of funding the successful programmes. (Incidentally, in Ethiopia I think that is likely to mean putting more money through government and rather less through NGOs).
I am an enthusiastic supporter of aid. But I no longer think that aid transparency will prove to everyone that nearly aid is all efficient. I now accept that there is more waste, bureaucracy and corruption than I wanted to believe, and this has strengthened my view that aid transparency is absolutely necessary to help to drive that out of the system. But, unlike Lai, I continue to believe that unless donors become more transparent, and so do a better job of driving out the bad and making more space for the good, public trust in aid will continue to decline. It is not transparency that will bring Christmas early, but secrecy.
Knowing what works: citizen accountability
John Githongo is a member of DFID's Independent Commission for Aid Impact
There's a fashion among aid agencies for saying that we have to do a better job of finding out what works. This manifests itself in greater emphasis on evaluation, especially on making more use of rigorous impact evaluation such as randomized control trials. It manifests itself as linking funding more directly to results. The UK has introduced the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, a step which I strongly support.
I think all this is essential to making the aid system work better. I certainly don't agree with the whining from aid industry insiders that measurement of results is burdensome or that it distorts decision-making in an unhelpful way. (I'll write about that separately).
But I now believe that this approach, as it is being implemented, is too top down. We can learn a lot from rigorous impact evaluations, and we need to do many more of them. We need independent evaluation of aid agencies. But there is something we need just as much, if not more: to know from the users of services themselves whether those services are effective and meet their needs. Successful companies don't decide their strategy according to impact evaluations, they respond to their customers.
I've become less sceptical over time of the idea of making aid and public services more accountable to the poor. A few years ago I was concerned that this might be a combination of political correctness and wishful thinking. It is hard to do, and it doesn't reflect the realpolitik, which is that aid is always going to be accountable to the people who pay for it.
But we have growing evidence that greater accountability can make a huge difference to the quality of public services. In a randomized controlled trial in Uganda citizens gave feedback about health clinics through report cards and civil society meetings. In the clinics where this happened, waiting time decreased; doctor and nurse absenteeism plummeted; clinics got cleaner; and fewer drugs were stolen. Most importantly, 33% fewer children under the age of five died. Improving accountability was much more effective than more expensive alternatives, such as paying for buildings, staff and medicines.
I'm on the board of Twaweza, an initiative based in East Africa which seeks to expand opportunities through which millions of people can get information and make change happen in their own communities directly and by holding government to account. One of their partners, Uwezo, aims to improve competencies in literacy and numeracy among children aged 5-16 years old in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda by enabling parents to assess the progress of their children and increasing public accountability of education services. Daraja is a Tanzanian NGO that aims to develop tools and encourage citizens to report waterpoint functionality in their areas. Twaweza supports Daraja to enable citizens to report which water points are working in real time, through text messaging; to share information about water point functionality to the public in accessible formats, primarily through the media; and to analyze and publicize responsiveness of the government to citizen notification.
As I've written elsewhere, I now believe (along with the World Bank Chief Economist for Africa) that social accountability can make services work better, and contribute to development. The powerful combination of a growing civil society voice and changes in technology make it possible, perhaps for the first time, for poor people themselves to monitor service providers and government services.
This is a new field and the evidence base is not yet in place. The most recent and comprehensive review of the literature by Rosemary McGee and John Gaventa at IDS finds this:
…there are a number of micro level studies, especially in the service delivery and budget transparency fields. These begin to suggest that in some conditions, the initiatives can contribute to a range of positive outcomes including, for instance,
increased state or institutional responsiveness
lowering of corruption
building new democratic spaces for citizen engagement
empowering local voices
Reading this survey, my conclusions were that the evidence so far is largely circumstantial though quite persuasive, but that we know rather more about the impact of greater accountability than we know about what we can do to bring that accountability about.
We have a lot to learn about the relationship between transparency and accountability. They are not the same thing. For one thing, transparency is not zero sum: if I make information available to one person, that does not reduce the information available to someone else. (The technical economic term for this is "non rival".) By contrast, accountability can be zero sum, or at least subject to trade-offs: if an organisation or service becomes more accountable to the citizens it serves, it may as a result become less accountable to other stakeholders such as the government, donors or the employees. Till Bruckner made a similar point in a thoughtful post on the Devex blog.
We have many examples of how transparency can change power relationships and accountability. An obvious example is the publication of UK Parliamentary Expenses. In this case, as in many others, vested interests attempted to limit the information that was published and to control the narrative. For example, MPs did not want to publish the details of the houses in respect of which they were claiming accommodation costs: they wanted to publish only the summaries of claims under each category. But it was the publication of precisely these details which led to the biggest public debate and, eventually, to criminal charges against some MPs, because it was the details which showed that some MPs were abusing the system.
If our aim is to increase the accountability of public services to the intended beneficiaries, and to drive out corruption and waste, we must be vigilant to ensure that the transparency we advocate challenges, and does not entrench, existing power relationships. We should be sceptical when we hear that publishing the details would be 'too much information' to be useful, or that it would be 'disproportionately expensive'. These are precisely the arguments that vested interests use to try to limit transparency, to try to control the narrative, and to slow down the shift in power and accountability which greater transparency brings about. If donor organisations claim that publishing this information is 'too expensive' the burden of proof should be on them to demonstrate that this is true.
I am all in favour of donor agencies summarising information to tell an accessible, compelling story about what they are achieving. But they are not entitled to maintain monopoly control of the information. The same information should be available to everyone, to enable others to examine the evidence and to construct a competing narrative if they wish.
Our existing arrangements for publishing aid information risk reinforcing, rather than challenging, existing power relationships. Donors provide information through the DAC databases, which are designed for donors to share information with each other about their efforts. Less reliably, they also provide information to country-level aid management systems, which are designed to enable developing country governments to manage their relationships with donors and which are, for the most part, unpublished. Aid transparency in the future must be designed to allows citizens and civil society groups from both donor countries and developing countries to access this information in a meaningful way, to enable them to hold both governments and donors to account.
The aid industry is falling over itself to point out that transparency by itself is not enough. For example, Duncan Green says:
Don't just throw money at transparency and accountability initiatives and expect a revolution. Unless the domestic politics is right, especially linking state and civil society actors into accountability coalitions, it may not make that much difference.
In a technical sense, it must be true that greater transparency is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for greater accountability. But while I do not claim that transparency alone will bring about an accountability revolution, I have a lot more confidence in the ability of people of developing countries to use information to change their own lives.
I dislike and distrust the argument we hear from the aid industry that it is not enough simply to give people access to information, for five reasons:
first, it is clearly the responsibility of donors to be transparent about what they do, and nobody else can publish this information for them. Donors should focus first on the parts of the problem that are their problems to solve.
second, the possible need for complementary interventions is used as an excuse to move slowly on transparency (on the grounds that transparency will not make a difference unless those other institutions are in place). This is a classic case of the best becoming the enemy of the good.
third, the burden of proof should be on those who advocate secrecy. We have a compelling business case for transparency, despite the uncertainties. But there is no business case for secrecy and nobody has ever asked for one. The uncertainties would be just as great in either case, so why is the uncertainty allowed to count against transparency but not against secrecy?
fourth, the evidence suggests that transparency does work surprisingly well. We should give the resourceful people of developing countries the benefit of the doubt. Consider the example of transparency of school budgets in Uganda – there was no civil society capacity building programme, or any of the other stuff that NGOs say might be required, yet the amount of money reaching schools went from 13% to over 80% in a few years. There is not yet a rich enough evidence base, but there do seem to be quite a few cases in which, once people have access to information they are able to use it to improve the services they receive without (shock! horror!) a logframe, an end-to-end theory of change or capacity building support from international NGOs.
fifth, this concern seems nakedly self-serving. Much of the aid industry's core business is "capacity building", "linking state and civil society actors into accountability coalitions", "stakeholder analysis", "empowering marginalised communities", "civil society support programmes" and so on. Just as journalists don't like the idea of people using the internet to share information without it being intermediated by media organisations, because it undermines their sense of identity and self-worth and jeopardises their livelihoods, the aid industry doesn't like the idea that simply giving people access to information might be enough to enable them to change their world.
I'm enthusiastic about organistions working to help communities in developing countries to access and use information as it becomes available, and especially to help them to add value to it by mixing it with information from other sources, and using it to demand better service and advocate change. I'm proud to be on the board of Twaweza, and I think donors should allocate a modest budget to supporting this kind of work. But I remain more optimistic than many of the vested interests in the aid business that, even if this kind of international support is not as forthcoming as they would like, transparency by itself will still make a big difference. My belief, which is supported by the (admittedly rather sketchy) evidence so far, is that once you liberate the information people will find ways to use it.
I've spent the last three years working on how greater transparency and accountability can improve the way aid works, and my thinking about these issues has changed. In this blog post I've tried to explain why. We have, for the very first time, found out what information people want and what they would do with it. We have thought about how they could get access to it. We have more and more evidence about the impact of transparency and accountability. And more people have begun to think about this and work on it than ever before. We have, collectively, come a long way.
In a later post I'll reflect on the (very impressive) progress that has been made on this agenda, and on the next steps.
To conclude, here is a recap of the 8 most important things I have learned:
31 thoughts on "Eight lessons from three years working on transparency"
Kien February 23, 2011 at 3:44 am
Owen – all the best to your know role, and thank you for this great post and sharing your insights.
Perhaps another reason to add to your list is that transparency and citizen accountability directly contributes to the development of democracy by public discussion (as well as at the voting box) which is part of the local community's wellbeing. It is also instrumentally valuable to the extent the NGOs and aid agencies set an example for the local government and demonstrate how transparency and citizen accountability can work in practice notwithstanding considerable waste and inefficiency.
Alan Hudson February 23, 2011 at 9:51 am
Thanks Owen – very helpful and interesting to see the evolution of your thinking/views.
As you know, much of this chimes with my work, which focuses more on accountability than on transparency. In particular, I am currently quite taken with the idea that the role of donors in enhancing governance in developing countries should not be to promote specific models of governance, but to nurture the environment of transparency and accountability out of which locally-appropriate solutions can emerge.
See for instance:
http://www.alanhudson.info/2011/02/governance-and-aid-effectiveness-towards-busan/
http://www.alanhudson.info/2010/12/development-3-0-disempowering-donors/
I'm intending to spend quite a bit of time over the next few months/years listening and learning and thinking about exactly what that might mean and how it might be done.
I do have a quick question, but an important one I think: In your key point 6 when you talk about increased accountability to citizens/beneficiaries, do you mean donors being accountable to those citizens, or governments in developing countries being accountable to those citizens, or both?
What's the priority and are there any trade-offs? And how can those trade-offs be handled?
Owen Barder February 23, 2011 at 11:34 am
@Alan Good question. I was thinking that services should be accountable to beneficiaries, whether delivered by governments, the private sector or NGOs.
As I said in the post, I think it is hard to make aid directly accountable to beneficiaries, because in the end aid must be accountable to the people who pay for it. But since the people who pay for it are in fact concerned about the welfare of the beneficiaries, we can close the loop by providing information from the intended beneficiaries which enables the people who pay for aid to demand better performance from the organisations who manage it on their behalf.
Alan Hudson February 23, 2011 at 2:16 pm
Thanks for your response Owen. That sounds reasonably clear. Has parallels I guess with discussions in the UK as to how accountability will work in a Big Society …
On a slightly different note, I've just been re-reading the excellent Till Bruckner article that Owen mentions and I think it bears a bit of emphasis, not least because it puts rather more forcefully the very important point that you were making Owen in distinguishing between transparency as not zero-sum and accountability as potentially zero-sum.
[I have in the past been annoyed at some transparency-enthusiasts when they have appeared to neglect the fact that transparency and still more accountability, have political dimensions]
Bruckner says: –
"The world of donor speak is a happy world in which donors, NGOs, host governments, parliamentarians and a myriad of interest groups are all united in the single-handed pursuit of global poverty reduction. The real world is different. Accountability is power. Making an aid programme more accountable to one stakeholder will make it less responsive to the demands of rival stakeholders with competing expectations. More accountability does not always lead to win-win outcomes."
It's well worth a read.
When we're talking about multiple accountabilities and trade-offs, I wonder whether it would be more useful/honest to use the words politics and power, rather than/as well as talking about games that are not zero sum and games that might be zero sum. Amongst other things, it would be good practice for talking to the people who pay for aid.
More constructively and to build a bridge to thinking about donors' role in enhancing governance, the point seems to be that if different stakeholders are interested in different results, or even have different ideas about how best to achieve the same results (perhaps because some of them – donors? – don't understand the local context very well), it will not be at all straightforward to align muliple competing accountabilities.
Can someone remind me or point me to something which answers: how does cash-on-delivery aid claim to align accountabilities (or avoid the challenge), and does/would it?
Owen Barder February 23, 2011 at 6:40 pm
@Alan
Thanks. I agree that Till's article is a useful reminder that accountability is about politics and power. (I assume you are not thinking of me when you say people avoid these terms – I write about them all the time.)
But I'm not sure where that caution takes us, in practice; other than to say that we should try to make sure that moves towards transparency are of a kind which builds the kind of accountability we want to see more of, and do not entrench existing power asymmetries. I am concerned that talking about the fact that accountability is all very complicated is a way of making an excuse for not moving as far or as fast as we should on transparency. (I'm sure that is not what you, or Till, intends; but donors do seize on this argument about complexity and use it to throw sand in the face of transparency advocates.) In other words, once again, don't let the best be the enemy of the good.
The point about politics is real; and there are trade-offs in accountability. But I think that reinforces the view (which I also hold for other reasons) that transparency should be as detailed and comprehensive as possible. It is the vested interests who benefit most from secrecy. Greater transparency alone will not change politics and power relationships, but it is hard to imagine the circumstances in which maximum transparency won't help, rather than hinder, the least powerful.
MJ February 23, 2011 at 2:40 pm
Thanks for this great overview. I'm 100% with you on the need for donors (and the wider aid industry) to clean up its act before lecturing others. I'm also optimistic that people in developing counties can put this information to good use. Isn't that what the recent revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East tell us? I despair when elites suggest that some how people aren't ready for more openness.
One minor quibble: although I cannot speak at all for the situation with regards to clinic building in Malawi, I've come across the ignorance complaint from recipient governments before, and think it is somewhat dubious. In the natural resource sector, at least, most if not all NGOs make the effort to liaise with government. Any data or report they ask for we send them. That the government then does not have the data to hand is their fault not ours, and is related to chronic data mismanagement (a barrier that sooner or later the aid transparency will presumably smack into head-on), misaligned incentives etc etc. However, I do understand these problems are much greater in other sectors – especially health where there is much more DIY aid – and so perhaps the blame for this should be shared.
Unfortunately we are far too low down the food chain to initiate anything comprehensive, but if initiatives such as Aid Info were to provide a framework into which we could report standardised results and budgets we, and I suspect many other NGOs (though perhaps not a majority?), would be delighted to cooperate. Interestingly this might imply a certain harmonisation of budget controls and procedures which might make our life a bit easier! Do you think something like this might at some point emerge from the push for aid transparency?
@MJ
Thanks. You are pre-empting my forthcoming blog post on what is happening, but the good news is that a data standard HAS been agreed by donors, partner countries and civil society representatives. So there is a framework (the details are here) into which you, and other NGOs who want to, can report.
Some donors are going to make it a requirement that NGOs which receive money from them will have to comply with this standard.
So you are exactly right: the logical conclusion of all this is harmonised framework and that is what is now emerging.
Doug Hadden February 23, 2011 at 3:31 pm
Owen,
Comprehensive, passionate and rational. Many in the aid world are saddled with traditional thinking modes and fail to recognize the network effects of machine-readable transparency aid information. It's hard for them to conceptualize given the cause-effect/ROI/"value for money" paradigms.
A lot of the technical aid issues may be resolved thanks to IATI.
1.Aid is "fungible" – aid leakage will be reduced through traceability and auditability.
2."value for money" aid reporting does not improve aid – the ceremony of reporting to donors follows what donors believe to be effective measurements. When aid execution and outcomes can be measured in aggregate, effective metrics will emerge.
3.Low support for foreign aid in developed countries – no wonder, there are no established and effective ways to track aid and determine effectiveness, so foreign aid is a convenient political crutch.
4.High aid transaction cost – IATI can reduce the burden of reporting to a single standard instead of multiple standards and can be automated – including from donor financial system through government financial systems (which I've written about at http://www.freebalance.com/blog/?p=1598)
@Doug – Thanks. I think it is extremely inspiring that Freebalance will be able to use the IATI standard automatically to transfer information from donor financial systems into government financial systems (and vice versa). That seems a good example of how information is most useful and powerful when it is presented to users in context (rather than separately in a PDF file on a donor website).
I hope my headstone says "passionate and rational".
Graham Rawlinson February 24, 2011 at 11:35 am
This is an inspiring piece of work, and it made me wonder, are the basic principles not applicable to all Government operations, and, for that matter, to all good corporate operations, whether for good causes or not?
The Government contracts to build schools, improve roads, provide software infrastructures and so on, they all end up with only a little going on the cost of the final project and most on intermediary agencies, consultancies and subcontracting fees. But big companies are the same. A friend said he knew it was time to leave when he was made to fill in a requisition form for a pencil. This is the result of the application of evidence based systems being driven by people who have no interest in what real evidence is or who have a vested interest in generating false evidence. Transparency only needs to ensure that all people can see how the intent relates to the outcome, this is not about blame, this is just about, did you get the job done?
Pingback: Aid & development: A few good posts « Peace Dividend Trust Blog
Pingback: Development Digest – 25/02/11 « What am I doing here?
Pingback: Interesting articles and posts – February 2011 | Good Intentions Are Not Enough
Pingback: Owen Barder on Aid Transparency « Marc F. Bellemare
Pingback: The hidden obligations of transparency « Aid Thoughts
Alex Jacobs February 28, 2011 at 6:59 pm
Thanks for another terrific blog, Owen: gold dust – first hand, super well informed reflection from three years at the coal face.
I couldn't agree more about transparency improving performance. It feels to me part of a battle to be won at the highest level – providing the most senior decision makers with different ways of thinking about aid, so they are more likely to make good decisions about how their organisations can contribute most to other people's efforts.
Until we move away from the idea that "we can solve their problems", we'll be swimming against the tide. I wrote about this in relation to NGOs at http://www.ngoperformance.org which includes ideas about what else we need alongside transparency, particularly feedback systems, which I think we've agreed about before.
It feels relevant to Alan's question on Cash on Delivery. There's a real head of steam about this in the UK government, which is likely to keep the pressure on DFID – e.g. the new No. 10 Head of Policy Development Paul Kirby's report "Payment for Success" (published by KPMG). Read it and gasp.
Back in aid, we urgently need new and better ways of measuring 'results' – which could possibly be done on a sector basis (e.g. look at microfinance) – and could potentially include real citizen feedback. 'Who measures success?' is THE crucial question. How are we answering it?
Pingback: More on Transparency « Aid Thoughts
wegene mulugeta March 3, 2011 at 3:04 pm
without tansparency there is no transformation
Pingback: Development policy buzz | Development Policy blog
Pingback: Weekly round-up – aid effectiveness (efficiency) and more | development6057
Pingback: EWB MUN » Blog Archive » EWB Days (March 14-18, 2011)
Pingback: Links for week ending 18 March 2011 | The Barefoot Technologist
Pingback: A New Aid Transparency Standard – What Will We Learn From It? | Aid Watch
Pingback: Eight lessons from three years working on transparency | Aid Watch
La Vuelta al Mundo de Asun y Ricardo April 6, 2011 at 6:01 pm
Congratulations on The BOB's nomination. Last year, our blog was awarded the Best Blog in Spanish Award, and the truth, the award ceremony is an event that will always remain a happy memory in our lives.
Congratulations for your good work and good luck !
Maps April 14, 2011 at 9:55 pm
As part of the World Bank – IMF Spring Meetings, we would like to invite you to a session on "Democratizing Development through Open Data" organized by the World Bank and AidInfo. Open Data and innovative visualization such as the Mapping for Results Initiative are a powerful tool for civil society organizations and citizens. These new approaches can increase government responsiveness, transform the way public services are delivered to citizens, and enhance transparency and accountability of development assistance. Open data combined with social media and new technologies have the potential to empower citizens to communicate directly with governments and service providers. The event will take place on:
Friday, April 15, 2011, 12:15-2:00 pm,
Please join us to the event live online:
http://wbi.worldbank.org/wbi/event/democratizing-development
Pingback: International Health Policies » IHPNews #106 FR
Pingback: Unit 6: Emerging Issues in development « blogcbae
Pingback: Our Short Wish List for the Busan High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness | Nancy Birdsall | Global Development: Views from the Center
Pingback: Aid transparency: are we nearly there? - Owen abroad
Pingback: Aid transparency: are we nearly there? – Humanitarian Web


text:
Home » Health News » Researchers present advance in re-treatment with CAR T therapy
Researchers present advance in re-treatment with CAR T therapy
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Center presented preliminary results of an ongoing Phase I clinical trial demonstrating successful re-treatment with CAR T cell therapy for patients whose cancers relapsed after previous CAR T therapy at the 2022 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting.
CAR T therapies have revolutionized blood cancer treatment over the last decade, providing hope for patients who have run out of conventional treatment options, but patients whose cancers return or stop responding to CAR T therapy have limited options for further treatment.
The first-in-human study (NCT04684563) evaluated a novel fourth-generation CAR T therapy in patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) who had previously received CAR T therapy that failed to stop their cancer. The study is the first clinical trial in the United States with anti-CD19 CAR T cells secreting interleukin 18 (IL 18). The early results show this combination approach is safe and did not result in new or increased side effects compared to other commercially available CAR T therapies.
Senior author and CAR T pioneer Carl June, MD, led the preclinical research that demonstrated IL18 could enhance CAR T activity. "We designed an 'armored' CAR that secretes IL18 and tested it in mice, where we found it to have potent antitumor efficacy in our preclinical studies," said June, who is the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine and director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at Penn's Abramson Cancer Center.
Among the first seven patients who received huCART19-IL18—including those who previously did not respond to or relapsed following treatment with commercial CAR T cell therapies—all responded to the therapy (four patients had a complete response and three patients had a partial response). None of the four patients whose cancers completely responded to treatment at month three have seen their disease return, and all patients are alive at a median follow-up of eight months.
"Patients whose cancers don't respond or become refractory to CAR T therapy tend to have poor outcomes, so we are very motivated to find new options for them," said lead author Jakub Svoboda, MD, an associate professor of Hematology-Oncology at Penn. "Although these are preliminary results, it's encouraging to see how well these patients have done. Our team at Penn is very excited about this ongoing project and these early results continue to motivate us."
The study enrolled patients with CD19+ relapsed/refractory NHL or chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), who had received at least two lines of therapy, including CAR T therapy. The study is continuing to increase the dose of huCART19-IL18 and will enroll patients one at a time until the appropriate dose is determined.
Toxicities related to huCART19-IL18 were temporary and similar to those which have been observed with other CAR T products. Cytokine release syndrome occurred in four patients and neurotoxicity occurred in two patients. No grade four adverse events or study-related deaths have occurred.
Stress in America 2020 survey reveals mental health of young adults as most at risk
The sexual symptom of high cholesterol that you should never ignore
Researchers link brain memory signals to blood sugar levels
How To Get The Most Out Of Your Workouts By Optimising Recovery
'Bracing for the worst' in Florida's COVID-19 hot zone
Fatty liver disease: Condition can interfere with your brain – signs include 'agitation'
Tippi Hedren: Alfred Hitchcock star's 'crippling' chronic headaches after 'shock' injury


Conventional clocks can be boring. So grab a dynamic new timepiece featuring the logo of your favorite team! College, NBA, NHL and more. Or pick one up with the logo of a preferred beer, soft drink or sports car brand: Coca-Cola, Coors or Corvette? Your choice!
These logo-covered clocks are perfect for a pool hall, a man cave, a dorm room or anywhere the spirit of casual fun is welcome. Some of these include a docking station for iPod and iPhones while others feature cool attributes like neon lighting.
Browse our clocks with logos collection for neon and art glass styles: they light up at night and are decorative by day, too. Clocks with logos add style and color in home and office spaces so that in no time at all you'll have a decorative accent ticking away.
Let the lights of Vegas shine with a classic welcome sign or snag a large-scale billiard-themed accent complete with full-sized ball markers. Hockey fans will love our wide selection of team colors and graphics, and fans of retro collectibles wil love the Corvette emblems and Coca-Cola logos.


text:
Success Realized
AU Tools
AU_WPing
AU_Slideshow
AU_Calendar
AU_ModPostsList
Lessons Learned from The World Cup 2014
18 July 2014 . Mark Simchock
It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's big. Bigger than the Super Bowl big. The it is The World Cup. Perhaps you've heard of it?
I believe that football / futbol / soccer is much like life itself. You're not always moving forward to reach the goal. Sometimes you're on the defensive. Sometime things are slow, sometimes fast. Sometimes what looks like bad news suddenly turns good. It challenges both the body and the mind. In short, football is fluid. It's like a chess match. A thinking man's / woman's sport. A creative man's / woman's sport.
As you probably already know, this year's winner was Germany. And while it's too early to declare a dynasty there are some well known "tricks" that went into Germany's process for achieving this massively difficult milestone.
You need a plan. Accidents rarely result in victory—on or off the pitch.
You need a team. Be mindful of the fact that a collection of individual players does not necessarily mean you have a team. As Jim Collins said in the classic Good To Great: "Get the right people on the bus."
Don't be star struck. Germany has some serious footballers but none draw the same level of media attention as some of the sport's (individual) superstars. It's worth mentioning that Spain—the winner of the 2010 World Cup—had a very similar approach in terms of team development.
Good things come to those who wait. There's no such thing as an overnight success. In order to be successful you have to be willing to grind it out. Germany's 1-0 win over Argentina for The World Cup 2014 was 14 years in the making. Yes, 14 years!
Be humble. From the three articles listed below if nothing else please be sure to read: "Mesut Özil donates World Cup winnings to 23 children's surgeries in Brazil." You'll be touched, impressed, and ideally also inspired.
Businessweek.com: How Germany's 14-Year Plan Destroyed Brazil
Bloomberg.com: Germany's 14-Year World Cup Plan Destroyed Brazil (Video)
Telegraph.co.uk: Mesut Özil donates World Cup winnings to 23 children's surgeries in Brazil
Categories Business Fundamentals . Inspiration . Leadership & Management . Off The Clock . Project Management
Tags Good to Great . Jim Collins . World Cup .
Business Fundamentals
Clearing The Editors' Hurdle
E-commerce & Internet
Information Consumption
SEO, SEM & Emailing
Social Networks & Online Communities
The Guest Experience
Tips, Tricks, Resources & How Tos
To Who It May Concern
Copyright © 2020 Alchemy United | Your vision . Our passion . Success realized | All Rights Reserved
Powered by WordPress | Written, Produced & Directed by Alchemy United | Theme customization & Design by NxT LvL MrktnG | Original theme is Atahualpa by BytesForAll