Comments

While I appreciated the somewhat retro colours that were used to organise documents in the old AusAID page above, my main reason for suggesting a return to this is that it makes it easy for both DFAT staff and external readers to identify the state of documentation for an activity and also easier to find a document than in the somewhat quirky ordering on the DFID site.

I appreciate the well presented information and also the comments. I suggest the People using the Facebook must register to the government in a social media act so that their identity is known. Unregistered pages shall be blocked as per the act. This will erase the abuse on social media. Filtering can be done.

Very true, At Green Fresh we sell fruit and onions that "market ladies" resell around the city. their main risk is police stealing their produce and/or money. Also the NCDC chased them off of the streets during the SP games and during any visits by high profile people. We are supposed to be encouraging small level business activity, but seems NCDC do the opposite

A new emerging threat to women economic empowerment which has become a huge deterrent for women in small markets, residential markets, is policing. Police, continue, to raid these small markets and remove items sold by women on our streets. In the pretext of searching for banned items such as buai, police, especially in NCD remove other items which women sell, often, targeting them until they are no longer able to sell, completely shutting their markets down. This issue with policing is sanctioned by NCDC, as regulator, is not providing supporting infrastructure for women to sell their food items. Police brutality may one day, put, an end to small markets run by our women folks.

Please do undertake the transparency audit. It is very important. DFAT's response is disingenuous - as your blog shows, transparency is certainly no better and almost certainly worse now than it was. They should provide a blog to attempt to prove that their transparency is the same or better - rather than tweeting that they don't accept the argument.

Also, <a href="https://twitter.com/stephenrhowes/status/742878948095201281?lang=en" rel="nofollow">on Twitter</a> DFAT has responded that "we don't accept devpolicy claim on transparency. No major difference between what was on AusAID's website and DFAT's now" Great to get a response, but this misunderstands my argument which is that the Coalition has promised but not delivered more aid transparency. We seem to more or less have stood still while other donors have moved ahead quickly. Given the interest the blog has generated, we're going to proceed with another transparency audit, similar to the one we did <a href="https://devpolicy.org/what-happened-to-aid-transparency-under-labor-20140207/">three years ago</a>. We'll put the results up as soon as we have them.

Mel, you make a very good point. Sometimes the documents are on the web, but not where most people would look for them. For example, the procurement site which you point to has the draft design document for the PNG Governance Facility from April 2015. The final design was released with the tender for this document last year. Yet neither the draft nor the final design for this facility is listed or linked to under the PNG aid for governance section - more than a year later, and even though it is such a critical change for the sector. The Transport Sector Support Program website is another interesting example of how other websites can be more or less helpful. I've now gone back to see what it looked like in 2013 (again using web.archive.org), and it is full of up-to-date annual plans and performance reports. It is a pity that that tradition has not been maintained, with the current TSSP website focused more on announceables and much less on information. Garth, I'm not so sure that we need to go back to the way in which AusAID categorized documents. We just need more and more timely documents on the web.

It would be great to also go back to the document organisation provided on the 2013 website (the four coloured headings) which was designed to show the progress of a project and its documentation.

As Simon reminds us above, the sustainability of behavioural and organisational change is difficult to achieve. That is true whether we are working in Australia or in Indonesia. However, I think that there are some approaches that can increase the chance of success. The first is for sustainability to be systematically addressed in designs and annual plans, and be a focus of monitoring and evaluation. Leaving the serious thinking on sustainability to the exit report stage (as happens) is too late. Some people take the view that an activity will be sustainable just because it aligns with the recipient government's priorities, and has a senior-level steering committee. If that was the case, every planned educational change in Australia would have been sustainable and that has not been the case. Local ownership is necessary but not sufficient; and ownership at Secretary General level is not the same as ownership at district level. AusGuideline 6.4 Promoting Practical Sustainability may be dated (2005), but it remains a useful and relevant guide and checklist for planning, management and monitoring. The second factor is for a gradual handover of financing. It is common for donor financing to continue at 100% until the last day, then stop. It would not be surprising if the activity gradually disappeared into the machinations of the budget cycle. A better approach would be for a staged withdrawal that has the recipient government funding some activities, but still with ongoing support. (Bob has noted the need for this above.) This stage would occur once benefits start to become clear and the credibility of the activity is established - not less than 3 years. Dan notes the need for time for the development to occur. Another reason for time, and flexibility, is for cultural issues to emerge and be addressed. It is unlikely that they can all be identified at the design stage. Finally, we are concerned about sustainaining organisational change. There is a considerable body of management literature on the management of change, which people working in development could be utilising -and change models are consistent with the sustainability principles. For example, a plan to develop 'champions of change' is a plan to develop local ownership. Perhaps a design could be specifically structured as change model; and perhaps the most important technical assistance may be on the management of change, rather than, for example, on school management.

Hi Connor, Great comment. I'm mulling over how one might test it exactly as you have it phrased. In the meantime we have a survey in the field in Australia at present (a postal survey so no results until this time next year) in which we ask some questions about general knowledge about development, with the plan being to examine relationships between knowledge and support. In the NZ survey we had one question (not covered above) that was in part a basic test of development knowledge. We will report on it and its relationships with support for aid once we've run the regressions. Thanks for commenting Terence

Such an interesting study. I do wonder however, if it could be coupled with the question "how informed are you toward the direction of governmental spending on foreign aid" (very informed, down to uninformed), or something along those lines. I just wonder if people are more or less likely to support foreign aid spending when they know what the funds are actually going toward. On one hand, informed people are more aware of the corruption and huge expenditures on bureaucratic processes in foreign aid; but can also see the direct positive impact of ongoing projects and campaigns. Just a thought 🙂

Finance for climate change is desperately needed. Let's hope it is well spent with some real outcomes.