Comments

"there is widespread evidence of donors continuing to recruit public servants to implement their projects, which undermines national capacities, especially in contexts where they are particularly weak." This depends on your viewpoint, of course. If you think that a govt dept is the place for highly educated professionally qualified people, mired in bureaucracy and political influence peddling, then you would take this view. From my perspective I would say that taking this demographic cohort out of that context and introducing it to the private sector context of projects, deadlines, measured outputs etc. is a valuable life skill training intervention. The national capability is not just public servants - the broader economy of that country benefits from autonomous professionals who can be mobilised into all sorts of useful activities, rather than attending interminable meetings and industrial tourism visits to irrelevant work environments, as is frequently the case for tenure protected bureaucrats.

The agreement (p. 11) commits funding for only the first two years of the five-year agreement period, with further funding subject to a review that was to be undertaken in 2012. I could find no indication that further funding had in fact been agreed on either the relevant pages of the DFAT web site (<a href="http://aid.dfat.gov.au/publications/Pages/aus-gov-ilo-partnership-agreement.aspx" rel="nofollow">here</a>) and the ILO web site (<a href="http://www.ilo.org/asia/WCMS_159330/lang--en/index.htm" rel="nofollow">here</a>). However, on poking around a bit more I found <a href="http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---exrel/documents/genericdocument/wcms_172445.pdf" rel="nofollow">this </a>mid-2013 publication from the ILO's Better Work Programme which does refer to fresh funding for years 3-5 of the agreement. It specifies the amount allocated to the Better Work Programme (just under $13 million), though not the amounts allocated to other programs. The additional funding for years 3-5 would have required an agreement specifying the allocation of the funds to programs and various other things. The agreement doesn't seem to be publicly available so I can't be sure what sort of escape clause it might have contained. The words 'subject to annual budget appropriations' are common in such agreements. This formula provides plenty of scope to stop paying when appropriations are dramatically reduced, as in 2013-14. Whatever the escape clause was, it might have been activated. If that's the case, it tends to reinforce my view that the government, contra Sheridan, could and have would have cut other multilateral allocations if it wanted to. The fact that it didn't do so suggests there has been a welcome recognition that most of those allocations are entirely appropriate. As for the case of the ILO, it's unfortunate that it is and always has been a political football. The government, and the UK government, should look at the organisation on its merits after reflecting on the fact that it's a tripartite body and not some sort of multilateral council of trade unions. The cut to the Better Work Programme, if it is a cut, is particularly disappointing.

I am confused about the statement. Perhaps, as Sheridan claims, the multilateral slashing will commence once existing funding agreements expire (the contribution obligations under the ILO agreement had already expired). The agreement link shows an agreement period 2010 - 2015 and expiring in June 2015. The government in 2013 committed to 3 years of ongoing support and transferred a payment in the 2012/2013 financial year to the ILO. There appears to be no transfer of funds in the current financial year 2013/2014. Your understanding of the situation would be greatly appreciated.

I agree with Chris that there are signs of DFAT working with these approaches in the areas that he has referenced. As part of the push for more value for money within the aid programme I would like to see how DFAT can improve its knowledge management practices so that the lessons learned by PLP/DLP (and others many of whom are not 'in' the aid programme as such) can be really shared across the programme - putting things on a website is a really good first step but there is much more to be done besides.

Neil I couldn't agree more. It strikes me that DFAT are already attempting to do some of this both at a practical level through the Pacific Leadership Program (http://www.plp.org.fj/), and at a research and theory level through the Developmental Leadership Program (http://www.dlprog.org/). Perhaps it could be drawing lessons from these experiences to help shape and inform DFAT's policy and practice?

Great blog, thanks Neil. (And I hope you got to read the Mockingjay in the end - an excellent read.) Your summary, and Diana's comment, reminded me of all the work going on in the area of complexity thinking and development. Duncan Green had a <a href="https://devpolicy.crawford.anu.edu.au/department-news/2553/duncan-green-devpolicy" rel="nofollow">great presentation</a> at the Development Policy Centre last year, with a good set of slides offering ideas about how to work with complexity. And over on the Poverty to Power blog there are <a href="http://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/tag/complexity/" rel="nofollow">regular posts</a> about complexity. Lots to think about. Actors seem to play the leading role in the Asia Foundation's case studies, with a lesser role for ideas. I'm guessing institutions are an important component in the mix, too. We need many more case studies such as those you summarise here. And more conversations about how to actually implement these findings, working with complexity in ways that doesn't always involve providing money (which has its own impact within a system) and figuring out which actors are the best ones to support - a reason for knowing the history and context as well as possible.

Just a quick note to flag that Tony Hughes has made a contribution to this discussion on political settlements, which we have posted as an 'In Brief' on the blog <a href="https://devpolicy.org/in-brief/political-settlements-implies-an-unrealistic-permanence-20140212/" rel="nofollow">here</a>. Ashlee

Neil, thank you for this really helpful summary. Your article, and second (I think most important) point about "development entrepreneurs" reminds me of AusAID's interest many years ago on the political economy of change. There were reports called "Drivers of Change" which tried to identify how policy change happened - and invariably they pointed to a champion, or a champion organisation, that cajoled, advocated, and acted to make the change happen. My personal experience is likewise that change requires champions, or "development entrepreneurs," and that we need to follow these champions (requiring flexibility of programming) and support their efforts because ultimately they will be more successful than stand-alone, self-initiated programs. There's other theory that supports this "follow the champion" approach - "hot hands" is a well known phenomena in the investment community, for example. Of course, sometimes champions will fail (your acceptance of failure point), but their average will be better than otherwise and my experience suggests there is greater potential for real, long-lasting change than may otherwise be the case. It's a shame the system almost mitigates against this approach. I wonder how we could work to address this?

While I agree with your conclusions with regard to renewable energy as a solution for Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) of the Pacific, the argument is different. One of the key barriers to electrification, especially rural electrification in the Solomon Islands is land and land ownership. It is only in areas adjacent to the main population centres where there is an effective cadastre, while the remaining land is in customary ownership. As an opinion the existing land in customary ownership will always remain in customary ownership which makes developing any large scale infrastructure difficult. The issue then becomes how you align traditional land ownership patterns with electrification; there are several options that come to mind. One is the Pelena Energy model whereby the scale of electrification, such as mini hydro, is aligned with the geography of a community or adjacent communities. Another is individual electrification solutions such as solar home systems, which have minimal impacts on communal land and the traditional urban approach whereby a diesel genset is installed on alienated land and the associated distribution network is run in a defined road reserve. This is perhaps one of the reasons why diesel gensets have historically been the default solution in parts of Pacific, i.e. they occupy a small area of leaseable alienated land. I also acknowledge that diesel gensets have a low capital cost and were, but no longer, cheap to run.

Just a quick comment from outside looking back in. I was previously employed by AusAID when the charter was first talked about. Interestingly in your results, Vanuatu comes out with the most impressive record. This is not surprising given that it was one of the three priority countries to pilot the information roll-out (in addition to Philippines and another I can't remember). To give AusAID a little credit, it is not easy to simply collect and dump materials online. The government has posting protocols (disability requirements) and materials have to be prepared. There is no doubt that the process was slow and cumbersome, but the intention and policy was good and the three pilot countries had pretty impressive information available. I am not sure where this will go given recent changes, but I hope it is not dropped as I continue to use Australian aid materials in my work and was happy to champion the transparency charter amongst colleagues here in Washington. I think this kind of analysis is great, but I also think understanding 'process' can shine a light on the legitimacy of the data. I am also pretty sure that discussing this is the kind of conversation that public servants are still allowed to have with researchers - as it certainly was in my day! Keep up the good work. (Chris Nelson - World Bank DC)

I was interested to read about the work you've been doing on checking document availability. This complements our work at Publish What You Fund on assessing the transparency of the world's largest donors, including Australia. Our annual Aid Transparency Index includes an overall score, analysis and recommendations for each donor assessed based on what current information items we can find, both for the organisation in general but also for individual projects. In 2013, Australia scored 43%, ranking 24th out of 69, placing it towards the bottom of the 'fair' category. The analysis and recommendations are available <a href="http://ati.publishwhatyoufund.org/donor/australia/" rel="nofollow">here</a>. We're interested to see if Australia's score will improve this year (we'll be assessing DFAT for the first time, rather than AusAID). We're looking for researchers to help us with assessing the data we collect so please get in touch if you're interested.

Do you know more about the pharmaceuticals that were removed from the funding list? Was this a matter of drugs issued without regulation?