Harmonized Approach for Cash Transfer (HACT)

Harmonized Approach for Cash Transfer to Implementing Partners
The Harmonized Approach to Cash Transfers to a framework that applies to UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF
Implementing Partners – introduces a new way of managing the process of transferring cash to our implementing partners.

As we all know, the United Nations is changing the way it does business both in programme and operations to keep pace with the changes in world of development cooperation. To meet the challenges mapped out in the Millennium Declaration, national partners will have to focus all their energies on removing barriers to progress and building local capacity to respond to development challenges.

In the implementation of their development assistance the agencies of the United Nations Development system transfer funds to the partners with whom they work. When United Nations funds and programmes use different (sometimes complex) systems to transfer cash to implementing partners, they impose a high transaction burden on those partners. Government and implementing partners spend time and money negotiating and responding to the different requirements of the agencies. If regulations were harmonised then that time and money could be refocused to more productive end. The framework for cash transfers to implementing partners is a first step toward accomplishing this. The framework fits within the common country programming process.
The United Nations Development system is also committed to increasing the ability of national partners to determine and manage their own development processes. The harmonised framework will help to make this happen by increasing national ownership, and by using national systems and national institutions wherever possible.

I've developed a simple add-on Solution in SAP to incorporate this HACT process. Here is the overview of the solution: