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High volume transactions, group solidarity lending, and field operations in poor rural locations all make Microfinance a difficult market niche to support with commercial portfolio management and accounting products. At the same time, the grassroots philosophy, low margins, and innovative tendencies of the emerging microfinance industry make it a good match for Open Source Systems development. Moreover, the lack of data standards makes long term financing more difficult and prevents necessary collaboration within the sector for credit checks, securitization, and poverty impact assessment.
The Microfinance Open Architecture Project (MOAP) is a volunteer initiative dedicated to developing an open-source architecture for microfinance management and information systems (MIS). It consists of three components: 1) software architecture specifications – detailed guidelines suitable for system implementers regarding the design and implementation of MIS systems for microfinance; 2) a reference implementation – a prototype software system that can be modified and used directly by micro-finance institutions, or which can serve as a model from which to develop their own systems; and 3) data standards – standards that can be used internally within the system to allow for modularity and loosely-coupled system components, and externally as an interface to exchange data with other systems, institutions and on-line data clearinghouses.
These three components would give micro-finance institutions a flexible baseline from which to develop their own MIS systems, and allow for more consistency, inter-operability and reliability in information management and exchange across the microfinance industry.
-- JamesDailey - 23 Jan 2004
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