Comments

Hi Ashlee, Great piece and it is critical that we respond to these suggestions before they get too much momentum. Some colleagues did some analysis of this in the African context and found that US food aid (buying US grain/maize, shipping on US carriers, paying for US NGOs to distribute) cost US$670 per ton. Local purchasing (in neighbouring countries or regions) cost US$240 per ton and supporting farmers with seed and fertiliser to grow their own food cost about US$77 per ton. So there is a strong cost-effectiveness/wastage argument as well as the others you have made. Joel

Great review Terence -- I really want to read this now, whenever I find the time! While not fiction, a book in the aid 'storytelling' genre that I enjoyed was 'The Ponds of Kalambayi' by Mike Tidwell. It's basically a Peace Corps memoir (there's a few around in this genre) but it really reflects the challenges of community development and making sustainable change. There's also 'Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures' -- once again not fiction, but certainly an interesting insight into the UN system and working in fragile environments.

Sina Retzlaff is a great leader, she did a very good job when dealing with a private sector, something that every leader should do. During her leadership, she had made some major changes.

Yes ratio is important. In a shared taxi after a meeting I once heard the representative of one of the current contractors suggest that government contracts are all about banging numbers into place and taking the money without concern for the quality "bullshit" we had been discussing that day. It was a while ago, and I thought things may have changed, but perhaps not. It may also be about the age of the volunteer and perhaps we might be led to believe that the idea Alexander Downer apparently had in the shower one morning has never been properly assessed. Maybe it's time to really consider how many Australian youth actually have the maturity to manage being ambassadors in cultures and communities so vastly different from their own. And if they don't have the maturity are we not just a little irresponsible thinking it can be done with minimal preparation?

I don’t think this blog goes far enough. I am a mid-level manager with strong experience and credentials in project management. I was in Timor for most of 2012 as a volunteer on the AVID program. From my perspective, Austraining’s implementation of AVID was possibly negligent due to changing ICM’s and a lack of support staff. I should start by saying, I like the mission, vision and values of Austraining and I never met a person who worked for them that I didn’t like or respect. While I was there, the ICM ratio to volunteer was three times the ratio of any other volunteer organisation. At the same time, they had less staff than the other volunteer organisations. Contributing to this overloading, the ICM position had split responsibilities and in general AYAD’s have more issues than volunteers in other organisations. For example, I’m a middle aged and average looking, yet, I had 3 security incidents linked to unwanted male attention during my year assignment. I think that 25 year old blonds generally have more. When I say that I don’t think Austraining had enough support staff, I’m not talking about holding hands, I’m talking about the ability to support their volunteers in emergency situations and ensure that their volunteers were okay. I think they are lucky the did not have to evacuate during the elections. Because the couldn't satisfy the above, I don’t think they had the bandwidth to make sure that volunteers were working well with their host organisations and host country and that their roles were useful and defined. I’m sure that there were successful volunteer assignments during this period but I think that is due to luck and the perseverance of the individual volunteers, rather than good management. I just don’t believe they look after their people enough. Caring for staff is not mentioned in any of their key statements. I think the AVID program is a brilliant initiative by Australia and I have seen it implemented very well by AVI and Red Cross. I’ve seen some amazing things with lasting impact delivered by volunteers from all the providers. I was part of AVI on this assignment and believe I was effective. I also believe that the staff in the Austraining Timor office worked themselves to exhaustion. It was not from lack of will and intent from the people in that office but the ratio of volunteers to staff was against them. I've thought long on this and I wonder if the overall culture of Austraining lends itself to being a bit too proud at running so many volunteers on the smell of an oily rag. I think risk management and the effectiveness of their volunteers got lost during 2012 in Timor. Less volunteers to ‘in country’ staff, better risk management and more effective implementation of assignments is the way forward.

As a dedicated reader of the Development Policy Website and, perhaps more usefully, as the former Vice President for the East Asia Region in the World Bank (from 2007 through 2011), I felt I should comment on the Fiji debate. To begin, I would underline the Bank's note that a range of Bank work on Fiji continued throughout my tenure and until today. My comments will be limited, however, to the time I was working on Fiji. During my tenure a regular dialogue was conducted on economic developments in Fiji and the Government's efforts to develop more effective economic policies. It was the position of the Bank during my period as Vice President that improved economic policies would be essential to facilitate higher economic growth and achieve meaningful poverty reduction in the country. In all the discussions with the Government we noted that a sensible macroeconomic framework would be central to making serious inroads on poverty and that agreement on appropriate policies would be essential to return to an active Bank lending program. While there were times when progress on reform appeared possible, I regret that during my time the Government was not able to endorse a set of economic policies that offered a credible prospect for sustained growth and meaningful poverty reduction. Second, while the Board member for your region was certainly interested in and briefed on the work we were doing in Fiji, I would underline the comments that others have made - no single constituency can determine Bank decisions on lending. Interestingly, I would add that the East Asia Region had the support of your Board member for all the efforts we undertook on working with the Government to improve economic policies in Fiji. Jim Adams Thanks again for the interesting and informative website.

Thanks for the post Stephen. The evaluation of the Capacity Building Service Centre in PNG may also assist in thinking through the value of community mobilisation as a strategy. In particular, the evaluation identified the importance of ‘a sense of responsibility for service outcomes’ as a key mediating variable between capacity (or skills and motivation) and discretionary behaviour, persistence, innovation and ultimately, performance by service providers in constrained settings. These findings were published in a Health Systems Strengthening focus issue of the PNG Medical Journal in 2009. Also of relevance, is the work of Alice Street who looks at governance in PNG from an anthropological perspective. The article: Seen by the state: Bureaucracy, visibility and governmentality in a Papua New Guinean hospital suggests that as a result of the ‘absent state’ and the particular PNG social construction, instruments of governance do not operate as we would anticipate – connecting providers as a ‘second tier’ expression of government, but rather as a means to make the providers visible to those that govern. I think this is a very apt insight – and would bolster an argument for the potentially efficacy of community mobilisation as a means of reorienting this focus, improving governance and resiliently improving health.

I agree with you, Stephen, that a new approach is worth trying. Perhaps, however, the evidence for doing so might be stronger than you suggest. Do the 2 studies you cite (as others have done) - from Uganda and India - really cast any major doubt on what you are proposing? Were the respective interventions similar enough to warrant comparison? Is the Indian context really comparable to that in Uganda, and are comparisons across sectors valid? At least some of these seem open to question. For example, Pritchett has drawn attention to the fuzzy lines of accountability of VECs in India, which typically oversee more than one school. Yet in the intervention in India, according to the authors of the study 'no attempt was made to introduce new institutions' - even though VECs seem to have some significant flaws as institutions able to provide accountability. Further, in the Indian intervention, as far as I can see, no attempt was made to value local knowledge about why schools were failing. Apart from the different contexts, the Indian intervention in fact had a series of quite major differences with that in Uganda, not least in terms of how accountability and transparency worked, and the types of agencies involved. One of these is particularly important, in my view. In the Uganda intervention, it seems that local knowledge about health service failure was valued in a variety of ways, and used to effect health reforms. A recent study has showed that development outcomes from this intervention have been sustained some years later. As you say, mobilisation is not guaranteed to succeed. However, the comparison between these 2 studies seems wide open to question. What do you think?

Stephen I think you are absolutely right to note the potential of transparency and social mobilisation to address some of these issues in PNG. However I think it is also worth noting the conclusions of the <a href="http://www.institutions-africa.org/filestream/20121024-appp-synthesis-report-development-as-a-collective-action-problem" rel="nofollow">Africa Power and Politics research</a> (see especially pages 68-71) which suggests that social accountability of this type rarely works unless there is also 'top-down' pressure for change, and that such initiatives 'go with the grain' of local politics. This also suggests that donors and NGOs need to be very careful how they are involved if they are not to inadvertently undermine the very changes they wish to encourage by depoliticising the process, or by turning them into 'projects'.

This is detailed and well elaborated, i do appreciate the effort put. I also want to highlight the challenges faced by particularly govt entities in tracking performance over time. Despite the several mechanisms in place to try and link different institutions M & E systems, i personally realize that there is still a lot of wastage of resources in terms of duplication of systems. Needless to mention the overlaps in mandates of different entities/ institutions, which in my view is rather political, the technical wing has also resorted to experiments, trail and error in a bid to re-invent the M &E phenomenon ignoring the other more effective and efficient alternatives of building synergies and working with what is in place. This is an issue that still requires urgent attention.

I totally agree with marie mondu. The church run institutions in health services are doing well in providing maternal/child health care, immunisation etc.. despite limited funds, however government run health services are failing in providing services to most of the rural population. When funds run dry up they slow down services. Rachy B (PMGH) PNG.

Just a Quick Point: I have just come back from my first time working in a middle income country, having previously worked only in LDCs. It is immediately obvious that that gap between our resources and theirs was smaller than in LDCs. But the gap between our knowledge and theirs is even smaller.