Fed up, not fed back

In lots of ways, going round the feedback loop is getting faster and faster.

• Get Satisfaction gives you real-time feedback from customers on their experience with your products.
• Five Second Test gives you real-time feedback from the public on how they interact with your designs.
• Twitter gives you real-time feedback from your friends, co-workers, customers and stakeholders on all your actions and your thoughts.

But what's happening to the feedback loop in development?

William Easterly rightly says:

We need to be getting more and more creative about systems of decentralized evaluation and more informal kinds of feedback on aid projects, taking into account the real challenges such systems face so that they are accurate and representative of beneficiaries. The internet and cell phones make such systems much more feasible now. Some NGOs are already experimenting, like my pals at globalgiving.com.