Performeks LLC is dedicated to improving the performance of public and private agencies that deliver basic services to our society in the water, electricity, environmental, public health and education sectors. We help organizations to monitor and evaluate their performance and motivate them to share the results with the public.
Shakeb Afsah
Monitoring & Evaluation, and Public Disclosure Specialist
Mr. Afsah founded Performeks LLC in 2003, and specializes in executing performance measurement and information-based strategies to manage environmental and social issues for public agencies and private corporations. He is best known for implementing the environmental ratings and public disclosure system for the Government of Indonesia in 1995 (see World Bank press release). This path breaking work continues to be a model for such environmental programs adopted by many countries including China, India, the Philippines, Egypt, Ghana, Ukraine and Vietnam. Most recently, he helped the Government of Ghana launch their disclosure program, making it the first country in Africa to integrate transparency into its environmental regulations.
He worked at the World Bank for more than six years (1991-97), and served as resident adviser to the Ministers of Environment in Indonesia and the Philippines. He continues to advise senior public officials, CEOs and the senior management of private corporations on transparency and public disclosure strategies.
After his engineering, he worked for four years at the Society for Development Alternatives in New Delhi, India where he designed appropriate technologies for rural development, organized micro-enterprises in villages, and conducted research to understand the needs rural markets. He also specializes in database architecture, is a developer of several computer models for performance monitoring and evaluation, and holds a US patent on a methodology for measuring environmental performance. He also leads the popular CO2 Scorecard initiative, and his current research with his business partner Eric Ness focuses on applications of natural language processing to understand public perception and sentiment on key policy issues expressed in tweets, blogs and news reports.
He has lectured and co-authored papers with researchers from leading academic and research organizations including the World Bank, Resources for the Future, University of Gothenburg, Harvard University, and other organizations.
He is also a research associate with the Environment for Development initiative, run by the Environmental Economics Unit, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Mr. Afsah has a Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, and Master of Public Policy (MPP) from Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Eric Ness
Lead Programmer and Web Communications Specialist
Eric Ness specializes in developing web strategies and applications for statistical analysis, data visualization and online communication. He is best known for running a popular blog "Richardness.org" to defend his father in the high profile environmental litigation case in Indonesia. He also conducts media reviews and develops trend analytics to track reputational risks of organizations in cyber space. He conducts IT readiness analysis for organizations and advises them on cost-effective information strategies and solutions.
Eric has developed several web tools that apply techniques from multivariate statistics and natural language processing to visualize complex numerical and textual databases, and display the results on a user-friendly web interface. He research efforts are available for discussions at http://eric.ness.net. His cutting edge work on data dashboards, including user-driven MyDashboard feature is available at the USAID supported public website http://dashboard.healthsystemsdatabase.org.
He is also the developer of the CO2 Scorecard website, a popular destination for policy analysts, researchers, journalist and bloggers interested in country-level data on CO2 emissions and energy use.
Eric was also a reporter for a DC based company that produced radio news covering agriculture. He held press credentials for the U.S. Capitol, U.S. Department of Labor, and U.S. department of Commerce, and conducted numerous interviews with dozens of U.S. Senators and Congressman.
He has a number of hobbies that include creating and maintaining two Linux live operating systems. Eric is also a musician and an avid rubik's cube solver. Eric brings his multi-disciplinary experiences to develop innovative web solutions for clients.
Ted Burns
Infrastructure and Green Finance Specialist
Ted Burns has advised companies on mergers and acquisitions, capital raising and restructuring in a wide range of industries including power, mining, cement, financial services, hospitality, life sciences, software and telecom. He also specializes in corporate
performance management, including the use of the Balanced Scorecard. Mr.
Burns has lived in India, Indonesia and South Korea to execute
national-level power sector reform programs. He has successfully
implemented various high-impact consulting assignments such as the
development of financial plans to raise capital for Infrastructure
Development and Finance Company (IDFC) in India. He previously worked as
a management consultant with IBM Corporation and PricewaterhouseCoopers
(PwC), holds an MBA in finance from Columbia University and is a CPA.
Mr. Burns serves as the Treasurer and CFO of the CO2Scorecard Group, overseeing the finances and internal management of the
company as well as contributing his expertise to the design and
presentation of the Group's benchmarking and scorecard services. He is
also a principal at Orlando, FL based Vesta Capital Inc.