Comments

Thanks for writing a good analysis of the current 'crises'. I only have three comments to add. The first is that supreme court's defense of constitution is uneven: for example, they ignored references from Morauta when he was in opposition, failed to hold Somare to account on getting parliament to sit for the required number of days, and failed to take action over leadership doubts when Somare was silent and sick in Singapore. Secondly, there's been a lot of misleading conflation of the charges against chief justice and East Sepik reference. As Prime Minister O'Neill points out, the reference has already been heard and the tribunal wouldn't stop supreme court handing down decision on 9 December. Thirdly, the judiciary needs to model impeccable standards of integrity. The charges against the chief justice are serious and should be considered through the proper process that is laid down in the constitution. That the Chief Justice is avoiding this process by laying contempt charges and staying NEC decisions is very worrying.

Madam Sri, you are my personal hero. We are very very proud of you. We are hold your promise: you will be back.

I think that fundraising and media have a duty to educate, not just increase income/profile. So we are obliged to help people understand the reality behind the simplistic images. Yes, images of suffering or "triumph" are powerful, but if they reinforce people in poor countries as passive recipients of aid then we are doing the opposite of development. The medium is the message. So let's start describing work we are doing but let's also help people engage with the reality of what is keeping people poor.

Publishing states allocation in national dailies was one of the achievemnt of Dr. Iweala during her first outing as minister. In her second coming, the trend is continuing with different noble policies she is implementing including the ports refors.

I am so much proud of Ibu Sri Mulyani. She surely is capable of any crucial position in worldbank. But we need Ibu Sri to come back to Indonesia, lead and educate some more Indonesian quality future-economists, then there will be more 'Ibu Sri' ready to build and develop not only Indonesia, G20, but the world.

I think the answer is quite simple, actually: paris and accra bye bye, seems to be the mantra many at post repeat in silence, holding their breath, while pretending to do the service delivery the government of recipient countries should, with the help of post, do.

Satish and Tess, Thanks for your comments on my blog. On Tess's point, ODE does a good job in terms of being transparent about which questions it is asking. For some of its evaluations (I noticed rural development and civil society) you can see their terms of reference up on the ODE website. On Satish's point, its not the case that ODE was modelled on the Bank's Evaluation Department (now called the Independent Evaluation Group or IEG). IEG reports to the Bank's Board, not to its President, and so is able to maintain its independence. There is no such protection for ODE, since it reports to the head of AusAID. I don't see the Independent Evaluation Committee as another layer of bureaucracy, but as a mechanism for ensuring independence and timeliness. Which take's me back to Tess's question. The IEG produces a lot more output then ODE, but then it's a much bigger outfit. In fact, it does a brief review of every completed Bank project, not to mention a number of country evaluations, thematic reports, and an annual aid effectiveness review. A more relevant comparison is on timeliness. I don't have the details, but, as far as I can tell, IEG manages to avoid long delays around the release of its reports. It certainly manages to get its annual review out every year, something ODE has struggled with.

I can't help feeling that evaluating the delivery of aid is a bit like the old story of tourists asking for directions in Ireland to be told "Well I wouldn't be starting from here if I were you". It is often hard to be sure that the fundamental questions have been framed properly before the "busy work" of evaluating has begun. It would be good to know how ODE compares with similar outfits such as the World Bank's Evaluation Department referenced by Satish in terms of output, timeliness, etc.

Thanks to Stephen for seeking explanations for the silence of ODE. I mused at the creation of ODE, as I do now, on whether this function should be housed within AusAID rather than in the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO). The merits of placing ODE within AusAID were to allow access to in-house data. ODE’s independence was to be protected through and organisational structure modelled on the World Bank's Evaluation Department. With Stephen's thoughts now, is it time to fold ODE into ANAO? ANAO, after all, is independent, reports directly to parliament, and is mandated to provide: "independent assessment of selected areas of public administration, and assurance about public sector financial reporting, administration, and accountability". This may be a superior strategy to the creation of yet another layer of bureaucracy, in the form of an Independent Evaluations Committee, to oversee the functions of ODE.

Development work is often focused on unanswered questions, something very well known by the religious. To be an effective aid worker, is in and of itself a leap of faith. See: http://www.how-matters.org/2011/09/28/a-matter-of-faith/

Thanks for this piece which I found very interesting and hopefully there will be more to come by way of research in this area. I wonder whether there are any significant differences between the established players (e.g. Catholic and Anglican derived entities) and those who are newer on the scene (e.g. LDS & SDA based groupings). My examples are based on the Pacific experience but I imagine that elsewhere in the world there are similar divides between FBOs and FBDOs that have been around for a long time and others that are new on the block.

Thanks for that Sharon. It was only 'officially' opened this month, I will change that in the text.