Comments

Thanks Sharon. Yes I can only imagine the amount of manual work it took to pull out this data! It would be good if this information was more transparently and accessibly shared. Some of the requirements around national interest etc feel like they are drawn from the broader APS requirements on procurement, rather than specifically for DFAT, so I'm not sure how much weight they have. Others would probably know more than me. But it would be harder to make the argument of national interest without any Australian 'base', for example. And in my own comment, just clarifying I meant large aid management companies/'Global North' companies based outside Australia in my remark on Pacific expertise, of course there are many highly experienced Pacific-based companies of various sizes.

Thank you 'Ofa. A wake up call.

Margaret Mead an American anthropologist once said “arm chair theorists are dangerous”. They don’t listen to the national inhabitants and have no idea how to deliver information at the grassroots level. They lack the skills and ability to deliver and disburse information that is culturally appropriate. They have the finances and resources to provide assistance and aid but they are only guests to your islands, and all too often you have to clean up the mess guests leave behind. Where international intervention in the Pacific has succeeded, it has been to the detriment of many island countries and people who are slowly loosing their cultural identities and cultural values. Your people know how much you’ve achieved. Don’t let Tonga be coerced into giving into the multinationals.

Hopefully your voice will be heard in many places around the world. Truth is the path - speaking up is crucial. Wish you all the best. Greetings from Switzerland coming from Central America. I am so glad you shared your experience.

Hello Jane. Thank you for the explanations. I agree that the entire contract value does not just go to the pocket of one contractor, but the value would to some extent reflect a major contractor's strong negotiation power and significance in the aid program. I understand your concerns and I tried to make it clear in notes and text when I wrote the blog. Unfortunately, only total contract values are available for analysis, and I have to stay with that. I do hope DFAT will publish subcontracting data. That would definitely help the analysis to tell a more comprehensive story. Also it is good to know that DFAT has put in those monitoring procedures. It would be very helpful if the documents are public and processable.

Hello Huiyuan, thank you for posting your interesting analysis. As CEO of the International Development Contractors' Community (IDCC), I'll make a couple of observations. 1. DFAT’s use of managing contractors enables the aid program to deliver resources through a broad range of implementing partners, including local experts and companies, local and international NGOs, and other companies and individual consultants. As noted in the article, DFAT took deliberate steps several years ago to reduce the transaction costs associated with directly contracting a multitude of smaller projects, and instead opted for larger programs (and so-called facilities) contracted to companies who would manage a range of smaller activities within larger programs. 2. The contract values can be misleading, as these amounts represent the entire value of the program (or facility), and include large amounts of funds that are “passed through” to subcontractors, either as grants or sub-contractor payments. 3. The “pass-through” of funds to grant recipients and sub-contractors is managed by the managing contractors in a way that ensures DFAT’s compliance, risk and safeguard measures and accountability requirements are met. This is critical in protecting the integrity of the aid program. The contractors are subject to a rolling program of audits and due-diligence compliance checks by DFAT to ensure these integrity measures are upheld all the way down the supply chain. The IDCC represents small, medium and large organisations with an interest in the Australian aid program, as well as individual consultants/sole traders.

Thank you Ruth. I agree. And there remains much work to be done to improve our understanding.

Thank you Ryan. The topic definitely deserves more exploration.

And thank you Thomas. As mentioned in my reply to Darian, I added a note and hopefully this would clear up doubts. It is very hard to go through the contracts to check if similar funding structures apply. Aid contracting market is an important topic. I do hope that as the new government places more emphasis on transparency, we will see more information and data being made public.

Hi Darian. Thank you. That's an important point. I've double-checked with my colleague Cameron Hill. And I've added the following note to the table "Note that contract value also includes funds transferred to NGOs through contractors. For example, Alinea transferred a large amount of funds to NGOs under the Australian Humanitarian Partnership (AHP) and its AHP contracts have a total value of 191.8 million AUD in 2021-22." Thank you for the comment. We'll consider that as we go further into the analysis.

Touche and bravo Ofa! Speaking truth to power in the development, humanitarian 'industries' is critically important.

Thank you Ashlee for your information. That's another transparency issue, again. There's very limited information on the contractor selection criteria. I wonder how much weight it put onto national interest, localisation and inclusion of experts. It would be interesting to see how the adjustments in selection criteria affect project outcomes. I agree that a comparison between the Pacific and S&SE Asia could provide some useful insights. I haven't done that yet as there is a lot of manual work required to find out the location of contract implementation. I updated AECOM to AECOM (now DT Global) and Scope Global to Scope Global (now Palladium). Thank you for pointing that out. Cardno and DT Global are treated as separate because we think they are still competing with each other for the contracts before the acquisition. Same rule applies to other companies.