Value for Money: How are other donors approaching ‘value for money’ in their aid programming?

….A question posed to the Research Helpdesk of the Governance and Social Development Resource Centre

“Key findings: DFID appears to have gone the furthest among aid agencies in developing the concept of ‘value for money’ (VFM). It is the only agency that explicitly uses the terminology frequently in its policies and procedures and has a Value for Money department. DFID’s approach to VFM involves assessing whether level of results achieved represent good value for money against the costs incurred. Processes include the use of logframes, economic appraisals and portfolio reviews. Newer initiatives include the adoption of a business case model for project approval and the development of unit cost metrics in key sectors. Other donors, while not explicitly adopting ‘value for money’ terminology, aim to achieve VFM through rigorous economic analysis and results-based management.

The ‘value for money’ agenda has also been linked to efforts to improve accountability and transparency. This requires strengthening audit bodies, parliaments, media, civil societies and independent watchdogs such that they can hold government to account for spending. It also involves greater transparency, in particular publishing information on projects and allocation of funds.”

Full response: http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/HD712.pdf

Does Research Reduce Poverty? Assessing the welfare impact of policy-orientated research in agriculture

ALINe publication: Sumner, A., Masset, E. and Mulmi, R. (2010) IDS Practice Paper, under review. Available online

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In the current context of the global financial crisis and its aftermath, development resources are likely to be getting scarcer. Resources for development research are too. The set of circumstances generating the resource scarcity is also putting pressure on development gains. More than ever before, every dollar spent on development will have to count towards sustainable poverty reduction as will every dollar spent on development research. However, understanding the impacts of development research on policy change and on poverty is weak at best, with agriculture being no different.

The area of research impact is not a new area of enquiry but an emergent one. Our paper seeks to build on the work of others, notably, IFPRI, CGIAR, IDRC, ODI RAPID, GDN, NR International and ECDPM. In our paper we survey the literature and identify different ways of assessing the impact of ‘policy-oriented’ research. We then take the available literature on agriculture as a specific focus to survey.

Our paper surveys the different types of ‘policy-oriented’ research; the literature on the ‘theories of change’ for policy research in international development; methodologies for analysing the impact of policy-oriented research; the relevant agriculture literature and outlines the types indicators that can be used for impact assessment of research with examples.

The key findings are:

  • There is no standard practice for the evaluation of research projects and every evaluation strategy should be designed on a case-by-case basis.
  • Provided we are willing to accept some assumptions, it is possible to test research project impacts along some dimensions of social welfare (agricultural output, income or poverty) by finding the appropriate indicators (and methodology). The overall goal – welfare impacts of research – is highly desirable but not always feasible (especially so due to time-lags).
  • When a welfare assessment of research projects is not feasible, it is recommended that evaluators test intermediate project outcomes. The articulation of the theory of change of the project allows testing critical links in the causal chain running from research to welfare.


Review of Impact and Effectiveness of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives

[from the IDS website]
McGee,R. and Gaventa, J. – 23-Nov-10
Download this publication free of charge

Transparency and accountability have emerged over the past decade as key ways to address both developmental failures and democratic deficits. In the development context, the argument is that through greater accountability, ‘leaky pipes’ of corruption and inefficiency will be repaired, aid will be channelled more effectively, and in turn development initiatives will produce greater and more visible results. For scholars and practitioners of democracy, a parallel argument holds that following the twentieth-century wave of democratisation, democracy now has to ‘deliver the goods’, especially in terms of material outcomes, and that new forms of democratic accountability can help it do so. While traditional forms of state-led accountability are increasingly found to be inadequate, thousands of multi-stakeholder and citizen-led approaches have come to the fore, to supplement or supplant them.Despite their rapid growth, and the growing donor support they receive, little attention has been paid to the impact and effectiveness of these new transparency and accountability initiatives. Responding to this gap, this report, based on a review of literature and experience across the field with special focus on five sectors of transparency and accountability work, aims to improve understanding among policy-makers and practitioners of the available evidence and identify gaps in knowledge to inform a longer-term research agenda. Commissioned by the Policy Research Fund of the UK Department of International Development (DFID), this project also hopes to inform the Transparency and Accountability Initiative, a new donor collaborative that includes the Ford Foundation, Hivos, the International Budget Partnership, the Omidyar Network, the Open Society Institute, the Revenue Watch Institute, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Download Review of Impact and Effectiveness of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives – Executive summary

Review of Impact and Effectiveness of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives – Service delivery

Review of Impact and Effectiveness of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives – Budget processes

Review of Impact and Effectiveness of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives – Freedom of information

Review of Impact and Effectiveness of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives – Natural resource governance

Review of Impact and Effectiveness of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives – Aid transparency

Review of Impact and Effectiveness of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives – Abstracts

House of Commons International Development Committee interviews DFID

…specifically, Nemat (Minouche) Shafik, Permanent Secretary, Department for International Development, and her colleagues, on Tuesday 16 November at 10.30am, on the subject of DFID in 2009-10 and the Resource Accounts 2009-10. The proceedings can be viewed here on Parliament TV

Some of the questions asked:

  • You have a sharply rising budget yet your core administration budget is being cut…
  • We have expressed concerns about how well can you deliver a rising budget in that situation..
  • How are these cuts being applied?…
  • How do you differentiate between running costs and core administration costs?
  • Will you have to spend more money through multilaterals?
  • Will you be taking advantage of DFID staff commitments to their work by placing additional demands on them?
  • What are the most important risks with this reduction? And how are you seeking to mitigate them?
  • People are going to ask, how come they could make such big changes, surely there must have been some  bad management in the past…
  • There is a concern that costs cutting is the driving force, before you have even decided what you are trying to do,… when more of your budget is in fragile states. Our concern is does it compromise your program? Our concern is that you cant say yet because you don’t know what your program is yet.
  • How are you considering bring more work in-house, from external consultants who are doing it now?
  • Do you expect some multilaterals to be rated “poor” in your assessment exercise, and that we would then stop funding such multilaterals?
  • and much more…

Some of the replies given:

  • DFID is cutting its core administration costs by a third…
  • Total operating costs will be going down from 6% to 2% …
  • The average amongst the DAC donors is 4.3% for admin costs
  • Admin costs have been going down about 5% a year for the last 4-5 years
  • Budget has doubled since 2003 but staff numbers have dropped by 20%
  • Peak staff numbers were 3000+ , but now below 2000 for some years now
  • In the past 1 in 3 were doing corporate work, now it is more like 1 in 5/6 doing corporate work
  • We have closed 35 of the smaller offices over the last 5 years
  • Focusing now on a smaller number of high priority countries
  • We will be asking CSOs we fund to be more transparent about their costs
  • Our spending on consultants will be much lower this year, from £19 million last year.
  • We have looked at 43 multilaterals, at their performance, scoring them on a 4 point scale, with the aim of funding those at the top of the scale [there are 11 different criteria being used]
  • We have not yet taken a view about what to do with poorly performing multilaterals. There may need to be case by case decisions
  • The spend on research will go up from 2.6% to 3% in the next budget period
  • and much more…

See also the HoC Public Accounts Committee meeting on Wednesday 10 November, discussing DFID’s Bilateral support to primary education (covered by a NAO report)

Witnesses: Minouche Shafik, Permanent Secretary, Jo Bourne, Acting Head of Profession, and Liz Ditchburn, Director, Value for Money, Department for International Development.  Questions they asked:

  • How do you know that it is DFID’s spending that is making the difference? (when its contribution to the overall education budget is so small in countries like India)
  • Have you done any work at all to assess the impact? Our money, invested through you?
  • You cant say “DFID got 5 million into school”
  • Where is the evidence that you have made a difference? How do you know that DFID expenditure increased enrollment in Kenya?
  • A billion pounds has gone into education,…you have to know where it is making a difference.
  • and much more,…some tough questions, many on attribution…

Re the questions about costs and efficiency, readers may be interested in my blog posting titled:  “The Worst Question to Ask About Charity”

AusAID media release: Independent Review of Aid Effectiveness

(from ACFID website)

16 November 2010

The Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd today announced an independent review of Australia’s aid and development program. This is the first review undertaken since 1996.

The Independent Review of Aid Effectiveness, to be completed by April 2011, will build on existing measures to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the aid program as Australia increases its Official Development Assistance to 0.5 per cent of Gross National Income by 2015-16.

Mr Rudd said

‘The recommendations that come out of this review will improve the structure and delivery of our aid as we work with the international community to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).’

The Review will be conducted by an external panel, chaired by Mr Sandy Hollway AO, former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

The panel will also include:

  • Dr Stephen Howes, Director of International and Development Economics, Crawford School of Economics and Government at the ANU
  • Ms Margaret Reid AO, former President of the Senate and former President of ACFID’s Executive Committee
  • Mr Bill Farmer AO, former senior diplomat and former Deputy Permanent Representative of Australia to the United Nations
  • Mr John Denton, CEO and Partner at Corrs Chambers Westgarth, Chairman of Australia for United Nations High Commission for Refugees Australia

The panel will consult with key stakeholders, relevant Australian government departments, partner governments in our region and bilateral and multilateral donors.

For the Terms of Reference and further information, see the AusAID website.

Current discussions on aid effectiveness: An ad hoc list

If you have any other related and recent posts, please let me know, via the Comment facility below, or by email

Indices, Benchmarks, and Indicators: Planning and Evaluating Human Rights Dialogues

Anna Würth, Frauke Lisa Seidensticker, German Institute for Human Rights, 2005. Available as pdf

“In September 2001, the Swiss Government accepted a postulate by the Commission for Foreign Policy of the Federal Parliament. The postulate asked the government to develop the instrument of human rights dialogues within the human rights foreign policy. In 2004, the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) issued an internal briefing paper for this policy. To further develop the instrument, the Human Rights Policy Section of the DFA asked the German Institute for Human Rights in early 2005 to elaborate a study on this comparably recent instrument of foreign policy with special attention to measurement of impact.

A commitment to the universal validity of human rights does not lead to a predetermined, uniform pattern of bilateral human rights policy towards all countries. A different approach is possible and necessary: Depending on the context of the respective country, the implementation of human rights concerns requires a set of instruments that follows different goals and strategies and sets different thematic priorities. In my opinion, this applies for human rights dialogues as well.

The present study elaborates the instrument of the institutionalized or formalized human rights dialogue. It focuses on the measurement of impact of human rights dialogues, an area that has not yet received sufficient attention. For states conducting human rights dialogues the study contains valuable recommendations for the planning, design, implementation and evaluation of future dialogues”

Contents
1  Impact of Human Rights Norms  . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Planning Human Rights Dialogues  . . . . . . . . 16
3 Measuring Impact: Forms and Methods  . . . . 21
4 The Practice of Impact Assessment  . . . . . . . . 27
5 Recommendations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Results, risk assessment and management in development cooperation – Towards a Common Approach

Date: 25 – 26 November 2010
Venue: Nordatlantens Brygge, Strandgade 91, Copenhagen

(From ODI website)

“The conference is organised by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and co-hosted by The Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute and the OECD/DAC International Network on Conflict and Fragility (INCAF).

Development cooperation is political in nature. This is particularly true in high-risk environments, where engagement impacts the behaviours, priorities, influence and power of different groups. High-risk environments could provide tremendous opportunities to deliver positive results, as long as international actors are prepared to take informed political and programmatic risks to facilitate the necessary change. However, current approaches are not always appropriate given the nature of the contexts concerned. There is also a difference between situations of fragility, humanitarian crises, or in other development contexts. Hence, risk analysis needs to take into account the specificities of each situation.

The international community lacks a concerted and agreed upon way to manage and mitigate risks. This conference will take stock on where we are now and what could be the path forward, and come up with a set of practical recommendations.

At the conference, key note speakers representing prominent international actors will discuss how they deal with risk and results management and participants will be provided with an opportunity to discuss lessons learnt from different country contexts in a set of work-shops and, looking ahead, suggest practical recommendations for follow up.

For further information regarding the conference, please click here.

To register please send your contact details to: riskconf@um.dk.  Please indicate which of the three working groups you would like to participate in. Deadline for registration is November 5, 2010.”

Helpdesk Research Report: Participatory M&E and Beneficiary Feedback

from the Governance and Social Development Resource Centre

Date: 03.09.2010 Available as a pdf

Query: Please identify the existing literature on participatory monitoring and evaluation, with a particular emphasis on gaining wide-ranging beneficiary feedback. Comment on the coverage, scalability, risks, benefits and applicability. Enquirer: Aid Effectiveness Team, DFID

Contents
1. Overview
2. General Literature on PM&E
3. Beneficiary Feedback
4. The Use of New Technologies in PM&E
5. Additional Information
Continue reading “Helpdesk Research Report: Participatory M&E and Beneficiary Feedback”

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