Accountability is about responsiveness to your key stakeholders. Many civil society organisations (CSOs) subscribe to this but few have figured out the why, how and what of establishing both mechanisms and a culture of responsiveness to feedback and using stakeholder data (including feedback) to enhance decision making. Many CSOs use data to inform their strategies but getting real-time data to improve global decision making and to have this as part of their daily operations is the real challenge. How to filter data and push-it up the organisational hierarchy is not only a systems issue but a behavioural one too. CSOs have piles of data but their accuracy is questioned; they are under-used and they are in many cases in siloes. The bigger the organisation is, the more difficult the journey will be, but some have started to find a way.

Representatives of 16 CSOs – both members and non-members of Accountable Now, met for one and a-half-days at Greenpeace Netherlands to address this challenge.