Comments

Thanks Chris, I definitely agree with you here. Better information flows are only necessary and not sufficient for improved accountability. And much more work also needs to be done in the areas that you suggest. Thanks for providing links to what sound like a range of very interesting activities and organisations. The particular frustration I have, which provoked this post, is that providing better information on aid to recipients is both a sina qua non for accountability (which everyone is supposedly into these days); and something that ought to be very easy for government aid agencies to do. And yet it remains way down the list of priorities of most government aid agencies. For the life of me I can't figure out why this is the case...

Another good reason to be concerned with high levels of inequality is that they seem to lead to worse economic performance (economic underdevelopment). Or, at least, that's the conclusion of a pretty good empirical study by William Easterly: http://tinyurl.com/427r23l (the link's to a PDF of the paper on Easterly's website).

If anyone's interested the Centre for Global Development has a good podcast where Pritchett is interviewed on on the topic: http://tinyurl.com/3nl8v66

Thanks for this post Terence. I think the challenge is to join the formal more top down processes and the informal process more bottom up and emergent processes which are already working on this issue. There is some great work going on for example in Kenya of NGOs supporting ongoing monitoring of MDGs (see http://www.devex.com/en/articles/5-months-after-mdg-summit-citizen-tracking-mechanism-is-launched-in-kenya) in this case supported by the UN Millenium Campaign. Civil society groups like Twaweza (http://twaweza.org/) are playing a key intermediary role in supporting 'citizen agency' by providing people with information between communities and official agenceies and in so doing enhancing their ability to hold governments to account. In PNG the National Economic and Fiscal Commission (http://www.nefc.gov.pg/) is doing a great job in providing the public with information on provincial income and what it would cost for provinces to provide basic health & education services - and the discrepancy between the two. Australian NGOs have been also trying to share learning about how they are trying to encourage feedback from the communities they seek to benefit (see http://www.acfid.asn.au/resources/promoting-voice-and-choice), and how they might do this better. As you suggest the challenge is to make the join between transparently reported aid provided by aid agencies - directly or through governments - with community based feedback systems which provide some assessment of whether that aid is leading to more drugs in clinics, more books in schools and better provision of services. Some of the pieces of the jigsaw are already in place at different levels, we now need some imagination and creativity in putting those pieces together. The general push to improve feedback to aid agencies (see http://ngoperformance.org/related-initiatives/feedback-examples/ or http://www.owen.org/blog/4018 or http://www.keystoneaccountability.org/services/feedbacksystems) is an important part of this agenda. So yes lets get all donors - including NGOs - to be more transparent but lets also support at the same time those processes that are already in place to provide that information to those that aid agencies seek to benefit, as well as strengthening their voice in assessing how effective that aid is. Chris

I am a citizen of this country and I really feel bad when our so call leaders in the Government are not really complying with the country's constituation. The Constituation really talks about the security of the Indigenous people and their land be the rigthful property of the owner and what ever happens the benefits be shared fairly equal without leaving out any indigenous of the share. But as I see,even though the constituation is there right in front of them as a GUIDE to these leaders,they turned to be BLIND or we could say these leaders do not really understand what ROLE they should play while they are there in that DECISSION making HOUSE. These PUPPETS will be dealt with in our way as their are our people and they knew our way too well. This Special Agriculture Business Lease (SABL) are being proposed by Foreigners and are imposed on the Puppets in our Government who then without any awareness or consultations with Rightful Land/Resource owners which our Constituation Recognised, went ahead and start buldozzing the intention on the Peoples Land, as if it were their's, what a shame that is if they come to their right mind. We are not blind and I believe the World is watching too. These Foreigners I refer to, we do know you and we want you out of our Land. We want you to know that we are not POOR as you are and struggling every inch to convince our people to buy into your idea. Look at you how many homeless you have that go without food. We ask you go back and help feed your people and comfort them if you are RICH enough. We eat every day we sleep in good shalter we don't need your AID. We would kindly ask you to take whatever your AID are go home and start getting your back yard up to the STANDARD you require please.

Hi Matt, I agree - donors themselves may not be the best people to get info to aid recipients. That's why I suggest working with civil society and using the media. I also agree that - first things first - donors need to be more timely in reporting aid data. It drives me nuts that, here in 2011, the most recent aid data I can get is only provisional 2009 data. Having said that, I'm not sure that DFiD's monthly data releases (as opposed to timely annual or biannual releases) really adds anything. Actually, I'm inclined to think they may have gone over the apex of the 'aid transparency laffer curve'. And might be better investing resources currently devoted to monthly reporting in areas that means that aid recipients can access their data better. Hi Jennifer, Thanks for the link...

You may be interested to know about The Listening Project (http://www.cdainc.com/cdawww/project_profile.php?pid=LISTEN&pname=Listening%20Project). It's a systematic exploration of the ideas and insights of people who live in societies that have been on the recipient end of international assistance efforts. Since 2005, 130 international and local organizations have participated and contributed more than 400 staff members to the Listening Teams that held conversations with nearly 6,000 people. You can read a summary of their key findings here: http://www.how-matters.org/2010/09/02/initial-findings-listening-project/

@devpolicy hmm, yes. And if its not transparent aid, don't acknowledge it. An incentive for Aid transparency.

Terence, Thanks for a great post. You are right to highlight the importance of getting aid information to recipients, and elsewhere at Virtual Economics (<a href="http://virtualeconomics.com/the-future-of-aid-beckons/" rel="nofollow">here</a>, <a href="http://virtualeconomics.com/how-can-beneficiaries-monitor-aid-projects/" rel="nofollow">here</a> and <a href="http://virtualeconomics.com/how-can-donors-use-the-crowd-to-monitor-projects/" rel="nofollow">here</a>) there are illustrations of how better information could improve aid effectiveness. But we may also be getting ahead of ourselves on the aid transparency chain. You are right that more data is available, but it is often old data and for commitments rather than disbursements. So the first thing is to get aid agencies to share up to date information, based upon an international standard--for example DFID now publishes monthly data and many donors have signed up to IATI. In terms of getting this information to recipients, I agree that donors have a responsibility to be transparent. But it is not clear that aid agencies are always the best information intermediaries. This might be a function that civil society organizations play, by mashing (collating) data and using a variety of networks and forms of media. Another reason why it is important for civil society to play this role is because aid flows are only one funding source, for example governments' own spending is often much larger. If we are concerned about improving accountability more generally and putting service delivery on a sustainable footing, then perhaps public expenditure transparency this is the bigger prize. School funding in Uganda is the oft-cited example. Nigeria's OPEN initiative, which actively involved NGOs in monitoring the spending of debt relief gains is another. Donors can help by setting an example on aid transparency, encouraging governments to be more open and supporting (funding) civil society organizations as infomediaries. Matt

Hi again Robert, You write: “The potential to really damage the generosity of taxpayers and donors is not media negativity, but the incompetence and corruption of both ‘givers’ and ‘receivers’ in the wider aid industry.” I think this point illustrates the essence of that disagreement which lies between us. I agree that the best way to make aid popular is to make aid work. Yet, when it comes to aid failures, it is not just "incompetence and corruption of both ‘givers’ and ‘receivers’" that causes aid to fail. Part of the problem (quite possibly the major part) is that development happens to be very difficult. If it wasn't, the problems of the developing world would have been solved years ago. This means that even the best aid programmes are going to fail at times. Money will be lost to corruption, mistakes will be made, and unintended consequences will blight even well-designed projects. Some aid will still work, despite all this. And the difficulties of development can be overcome within aid agencies (up to a point) if they are open about failures and if they take the time to learn from them. The trouble is, as the latest 'scandal' in the Murdoch press illustrates nicely, that the current media environment creates strong incentives for aid agencies <i>not</i> to be open about failure. On top of this, an ongoing obsession with low overheads, which I blogged about a week or so ago, means that aid agency staffers are often too busy to learn from mistakes. What can be done: 1. Scandals still need to be reported on. But please, let's stick to the real scandals when doing this. 2. Development successes need to be promoted. And promoted via some sort of mechanism that's more effective than aid agency reports. 3. Aid agencies need to find a way of being open about failure that doesn't lead to media crucifixion. 4. Aid agencies need to devote time and staff to learning and doing things better. cheers Terence

This is music to my ears. This blog highlights papers which expose the folly of forcing western “best practise” models on systems that are barely operating, and could never hope to attain even “good enough” practise. How often have we borne witness to development consultants and agencies exhorting countries to adopt best practice organisational forms and applying pressure to encourage the hasty introduction of changes, overloading the fragile systems, and causing local structures to fail to cope? In my experience – slow and steady wins the race. There are no silver bullets. In our paper “Working together for a better future”, soon to be published in the PNG Medical Journal, Maxine Whittaker and I suggest that home grown solutions need to be given time to emerge and a stronger focus on getting the basics in place is a better bet than creating organisational forms that look good but don’t deliver.

There is a wider discussion here about how these complex issues of fraud and corruption get communicated to the Australian public, as it can lead to an impression that the entire enterprise is not valid. For what it is worth - here is a letter to the editor from ACFID that did not get a run in either the Herald Sun or Daily Telegraph, nor did our interview with Steve Lewis get quoted. LETTER TO THE EDITOR Friday 25 March, 2011 If you read Steve Lewis’ article ‘Millions lost in AusAID foreign aid scam’ (24/03) you would be forgiven for asking if any of the money the Australian Government gives to poor nations is actually reaching its intended destination. Contrary to the claim that Australia’s aid program is ‘plagued’ by ‘widespread’ fraud, over the past five years, cases of fraud represented less than two cents in every $100 of the AusAID program. Of course, no level of fraud is acceptable and AusAID has a zero tolerance of fraud. The fact that cases are being discovered and pursued shows there are safeguards in place and that these are working. But we should never be complacent. We need to always work hard to ensure that our aid, like all other government programs, is spent as effectively as possible. But to imply that aid isn’t making a difference to those in need ignores the facts such as UN research which has found that the incremental increases in aid over the past 20 years account for an extra 14,000 lives saved per day, or that polio has been eradicated in the Pacific. Australia’s investment in foreign aid, whether it be funded through the Australian Government’s aid program, or public donations, is vital. It saves lives and helps some of the poorest people in the world. Co-signed by: Marc Purcell Executive Director, ACFID Julia Newton-Howes CEO, CARE Australia Jack de Groot CEO, Caritas Australia Andrew Hewitt Executive Director, Oxfam Australia Ian Wishart CEO, Plan Australia Tim Costello CEO, World Vision Australia