Comments

Thank you for examining this very important issue of transparency. I think your summary effectively shows that the Australian aid program is only around half the way to meeting its transparency charter. However I would not characterise it as a "a one-off rather than a sustained effort". In addition to the web pages that you reviewed, AusAID reestablished the Statistical Summary (Green Book), provided this information in Excel form, and was, at least in my experience, much more open to meeting information requests. In addition AusAID uploaded detailed activity level data to the IATI database - the last upload was in April 2013. Certainly not the comprehensive quarterly upload required, and provided by some other donors, but more than a one-off effort. The Australian aid program has come a long way in the last few years in improving transparency but it clearly has further to go. Hopefully the Government's concern about greater accountability will expedite this effort.

Mark Dreyfus has <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-07/an-australia2c-nz-urged-to-put-pressure-on-nauru-during-joint-/5244596?section=australianetworknews" rel="nofollow">exhorted</a> the governments of Australia and NZ to work together to call for a return to legal normality in Nauru. All well and good but what about the Pacific Islands Forum? The situation in Nauru almost certainly renders it in breach of the Biketawa declaration and there are a number of options open to the Forum as to actions that can be taken in this type of circumstance. So...

Certainly the reallocation will have been constrained by some lock-ins. However, official aid contracts and agreements (including most of those with multilateral organisations) generally contain rather powerful escape clauses, and it's hard to imagine that aid to Africa, in particular, could be reduced by the amount indicated without disturbing commitments that various partners might have imagined to be unshakeable. The Africa cuts were clearly large for policy reasons, not because commitments were softer there. In short, lock-ins would have played a part in determining the allocation of the cuts, but policy considerations would also have been important in many cases.

If you don't have time to read the book the author recently participated in an hour long interview with econtalk that is an excellent summary of her work. You can listen to it <a href="http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/01/nina_munk_on_po.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+econtalk/xmOW+(Econ+Talk) rel="nofollow">here</a>.

Yesterday Bruce Hill <a href="http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/radio/program/pacific-beat/australia-says-no-megaphone-diplomacy-over-nauru-legal-sitiation/1259910" rel="nofollow">spoke with</a> Senator Brett Mason who said there would be no recourse to 'megaphone diplomacy' in relation to the Nauru situation. But the senator did not really seem to appreciate the lack of capacity within the legal sector of Nauru and how that was affecting all legal processes, not just those associated with asylum claims.

If Sachs and Easterly are still going at it, maybe they need an intervention, or a referee. When the debate has come up, I've often referenced this article by Amartya Sen from Foreign Affairs in 2006: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61525/amartya-sen/the-man-without-a-plan

Thanks Robin You note: "Generally their allocations are reduced by no more than 10 per cent and in some cases allocations have increased where, on development grounds, there was no evident need. Indonesia, for example, grows by 10 per cent (compared to Labor’s planned 22 per cent) and Fiji grows by 25 per cent (compared to Labor’s 35 per cent)." I suspect (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that these figures probably represent forward commitments such as already agreed bilateral programs or expenditure under existing contracts programmed earlier in the cycle when growth was expected. Therefore one can't derive too much information about future strategy from the 2013-14 final allocations, and the countries that suffered the biggest cuts are probably those with more projects in the pipeline or design stage.

Jiesheng, Unlikely, I think. You'll recall the Treasurer said of the aid program just before the 2013 election, "You’ll see a focus more on support for non-government organisations than investment in multilaterals". And that the Coalition's foreign affairs policy, released the same day, said "The Coalition supports multilateral institutions that serve a clear national purpose. We support the G20 ..., the established regional Asia Pacific bodies, the Commonwealth of Nations, and various organisations of the United Nations, including the World Trade Organisation." (Never mind that the WTO is not in fact part of the UN system, and that the Commonwealth serves a very unclear "national purpose".) Thus the message was one of greater selectivity and less money overall. I think what we are seeing in practice is a realisation that the case for funding the largest recipients of multilateral funding is in fact very strong, that cutting the other recipients won't save much, and that the gain involved in cutting even the poorest performers isn't actually worth the procedural and diplomatic pain. I suspect in the end that the government might point to its reversal of two Labor decisions -- to join the African Development Bank and to rejoin the International Fund for Agricultural Development -- as giving effect to its pre-election commitments, even though the related savings are only savings relative to forward estimates that by now are a fading memory.

You say that "Aside from Devpolicy’s in-brief article on the day of the announcement, there has been little other analysis." That may be the case in Australia, but there's certainly been a lot of attention paid in the Pacific, which has seen significant cuts, even though the islands region is a core area for Australian policy. The old meme about "deputy sheriff" has already been <a href="http://www.islandsbusiness.com/2014/1/cover-story/new-sheriff-in-town/" rel="nofollow">revived in the Pacific media</a>. You highlight that "the smallest and most vulnerable states do badly. The smaller Pacific island countries are collectively cut by 22 per cent" - pity that they don't have a booming LNG industry like Papua New Guinea, with plenty of opportunities for infrastructure projects!

Jonathan, I would like to elaborate on why I think there is a criteria disjuncture. Give Well does not seem to distinguish between welfare and development very well. They note they preferred to keep handing out bed nets rather than putting sustainable market for them in place. Thus the sustainability of the program comes into question. There is strong bias towards technical evidence as against qualitative methods. From GiveWell's website: “Anecdotes and stories – often of individuals directly affected by charities’ activities – are the most common kind of evidence provided by charities we examine. We put essentially no weight on these”. This represents a huge bias towards technical programs and away from social change programs, and a poor understanding of qualitative methods. Their example of economic empowerment is a case in point: rather than looking at changes in power relations or agency (which can be done in a defensible manner), they narrowed it down to changes income, which says little about empowerment. The AMF ‘success’: Give Well notes that they did not interact with partners as well as they should. This was given a lighter weighting, but for OAGDS (the report of which is on AMFs website) this criteria was given much greater weighting as was sustainability. I think my point is that a debate with regard GiveWell and the OAGDS criteria (which are not opaque), the 140 Code criteria, and the Accreditation criteria would be valuable. I still think there is a large criteria disjuncture, with the various Australian assessment criteria giving greater weight to sustainability, partnership, and qualitative evidence than Give Well - but that may be the subject for a different blog..

Thanks Jon, this is great- particularly loving the screengrab of the FP piece- do you promise that's real and not photoshopped?! (I have a copy of last week's FT on my desk right now,with yet another letter from Sachs to Easterly on the correspondence pages...). I agree with you that the debate is a little reductive at this point and the rest of us have probably moved on...However, I think perhaps it's less for Sachs and Easterly to step out of the limelight- as Henry says, they've earned their position there by writing compelling and readable books- and perhaps for those of us who want a more nuanced argument in the public space, to make sure that these more nuanced arguments are equally as readable and relevant to others (nobody mention complexity theory!). Perhaps we need to focus a bit more on getting the real facts about aid and aid effectiveness- what we know and what we don't know, possibly through sheer lack of data- out there. I also think we could do a lot, by not having quite such siloed discussions about aid, in relation to other resources available to developing countries: FDI, tax revenues, private development assistance from large foundations, other official flows, etc. In that respect I can see Easterly's point about aid being small in comparison; though I don't think it necessarily follows that it's worthless to continue giving it. Actually I think it means it's all the more valuable a resource, and therefore important to understand better its relative advantages, and recognise where it does have impact- perhaps to meet Sachs in the middle here. Meanwhile, these other flows and how they interface with ODA are definitely where the development community could benefit from better understanding (and donors could be having more cross- government-department conversations about policy coherence in relation to these impacts)? So, how do those of us working in devpolicy comms support a more nuanced argument to emerge in the public domain? And more importantly how do we build a more representative discourse- which can move us away from some of the most prominent and authoritative voices on aid and development, being white people [men] from the developed world? (not just thinking of Sachs and Easterly here!) Personally, therefore, I'd suggest asking someone other than Jeff Sachs (despite his very kind offer above me) to write something on the issues you rightly raise in your last paragraph... "we know some aid works and some doesn’t, but we need to work harder on figuring out why. That is where the real aid discussion should be."?... (though I suspect there's no way you would turn him down!). This could be a very useful starting point for a exchange of views that can take us into a different space.... Thanks again guys and keep up the good work, with best wishes from the UK. Best, Cordelia PS. I have always liked Roving Bandit's <a href="http://www.rovingbandit.com/2013/01/does-policy-work.html" rel="nofollow">comment on the matter</a>: "Next time you hear "does aid work?" think "does policy work?". It's a silly question, and obvious when you put it like that." PPS. (This is a personal note from me- without representing any corporate views!)

It's interesting that there's no drop in multilateral commitments (yet). Could it be the case that, in the chase for austerity, aid through multilaterals is seen as providing a bigger value for money?