SVI has contributed an input paper to The Impact Taskforce’s new report to the G7. It identifies key developments and collective progress towards an accounting system for wellbeing and proposes a consortium approach to bring a harmonized system into existence.

On 7 December 2023, The Impact Taskforce (ITF), the independent, industry-led taskforce run by the GSG and supported by the UK G7 Presidency, released State of Play 2023.

State of Play assesses the progress made since the Taskforce made its first recommendations in the 2021 flagship report Time to Deliver, on the critical question of how of how to accelerate the volume and effectiveness of private capital looking to make a positive impact on the SDGs, especially in emerging markets and developing economies.

SVI was invited to contribute an input paper to The Impact Taskforce. Titled “Impact Transparency in Public Sector Accounting”, this paper was written by our current and former CEOs, Ben Carpenter and Jeremy Nicholls, and it explores:

1. how to advance a call to action in the original ITF report to “Adopt the necessary public sector accounting practices so that government expenditure meets demands for transparency, harmonisation and integrity of impact, and governments gain a better understanding of impacts and dependencies related to the national economy”

2. what scope there is for integrating developments in national accounting and wellbeing accounting in the public sectors.

Promising developments and opportunities for convergence

The paper identifies key developments that show a collective advancement towards an accounting system for wellbeing, namely:

• multi-national approaches to wellbeing accounting

• national and regional approaches to wellbeing accounting

• organisational approaches to wellbeing accounting (including SVI’s work in developing standards of practise for optimising wellbeing and the UNDP SDG Impact Standards reference to wellbeing as the basic unit of account)

• public sector approaches to service performance reporting.

Ben comments that, “Producing the report was an inspirational exercise in that we were able to see exciting developments in public sector accounting from across the world. We are grateful to all of our members who contributed to the research and look forward to more collaboration to build an accounting system for wellbeing.”

The paper indicates a collective progress and suggests that there is now an opportunity to pull all of these threads together and adopt the necessary public sector accounting and reporting practices so that government expenditure meets demands for transparency, accountability and integrity of impact.

Such a harmonized system for wellbeing accounting would provide governments a better understanding of impacts and dependencies related to the national economy. It would be the basis for management accountants, company and public sector reporting and national accounts.

The paper proposes a consortium approach to develop a wellbeing accounting system, building from, and integrated with, double entry accounting and bookkeeping.

This would provide information that would incentivise human creativity and entrepreneurialism towards creating and improving wellbeing for all, reducing unintended consequences and duplication of effort between public and private sectors, and supporting a more equitable, effective and efficient allocation of resources. 

About The Impact Taskforce

The Impact Taskforce (ITF) is run by GSG (the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment) and founded with the support of the UK Presidency of the G7 in 2021. It focuses on the critical question of how to accelerate the volume and effectiveness of private capital looking to make a positive impact on the Sustainable Development Goals, especially in emerging markets and developing economies. It brings together leaders from the worlds of private investment , enterprise, development finance, public policy, standard setting and multilateral institutions. This forum of global leaders is connected to the GSG network of impact partnerships in over 40 countries around the world, nearly half of which are in emerging markets and developing economies. The Taskforce argues for impact transparency and a transformation in the supply of opportunities to invest for impact.  It looks to turn differentiated insight into coalitions of practical action.