148 Trial Monitoring: A Reference Manual for Practitioners equipment and accessories (local SIM cards, mobile Internet modems, etc.) should be budgeted for and procured. • Making records of proceedings. It is necessary to establish whether monitors will be taking handwritten notes of proceedings or whether laptops and audio-recorders may be used. If laptops and audio recorders are available to the monitors and allowed in the courtroom, the files produced can be more easily shared with the team leader and colleagues for the purposes of verifying information, analysis and drafting. • Information technology for storing and managing monitoring data.226 An elaborate informationmanagement system in the form of a database may be unnecessary for an ad hoc project of limited scope and duration. However, if the monitoring of a large number of cases is foreseen, prompt establishment of such a system can facilitate the organization and processing of monitoring findings, efficient division of work and effective management of all tasks. • Payment methods. Bank transfers are widely used to complete payments internationally, while a field operation may also assist in making payments locally. However, challenges may arise where monitoring takes place in a location where no field operation exists and, for whatever reason, bank transfers are not possible. Security concerns involved in cash handling should be considered in the planning process. The preparatory phase in ad hoc trial monitoring may need to be completed quickly. Experience shows that there is often a short interval between the events occurring and the corresponding criminal proceedings taking place. This accentuates the need for standby systems to be in place and for good practices and lessons learned from previous programmes to be at the disposal of project managers. 226 See Chapter 5, “Establishment of an Information-management System.”