NEWS

Open Society Institute extends time@work from Central Asia to New York

The Open Society Institute (OSI) disburses funds on behalf of the Soros Foundation and other charities, such as USAID, all over the world. In order to ensure accountability to each sponsor for the costs incurred in disbursement OSI chose time@work in 2003 as a way of tracking time spent by administrators in the disbursement of funds in the Central Asian Republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Based on a central server located in Hungary the system enables administrators to record the time they spend on each project, using e-mailed timesheets or browser-based entry. Using this information project managers can ensure that budgets and estimates are tracked and adhered to. Following the success of this Central Asian project OSI have decided to extend the system to record the time spent on projects by their New York staff.

Ilonka Alexandrova, Regional Finance Director of the OSI Network, comments:

'During the 1990s OSI developed specific expertise in the management of projects sponsored by the Soros Foundation in the fledgling democracies of Central and Eastern Europe. This expertise is now employed by other charities such as USAID but in tandem with the broadening of its activities comes a greater demand for accountability. Charities such as USAID need to ensure that administrative costs are minimised and always justified. We need to keep a close eye on the time our administrators spend on each project to ensure that costs are kept low. time@work, with its multi-lingual, multi-company, multi-national functionality enables us to do just that, whatever the location and currency.'