Last week, DFAT released a whole bunch of reports that had probably been sitting in a dark corner somewhere for far longer than they should have been.
These included the Aid Program Performance Reports (APPRs) for 2012-13 each of the major countries and regions in the aid program. You can download them here. Based on historical precedent, they should have been released in the second half of last year, but no doubt got caught up in the DFAT integration.
The Office of Development Effectiveness (ODE) released its quality review [pdf] of the APPRs as well, which finds that the quality of the APPRs are improving, but that more could be done to better assess whole-of-government performance needs.
ODE also released its first Lessons From Australian Aid report [pdf], which synthesises ODE’s evaluations and examines the aid programs reporting systems from 2013. As reported earlier, it also released its volunteer evaluation. These were the first ODE evaluations released since April of last year. The ODE lessons reports on another nine evaluations currently underway, so we look forward to an active publishing year from ODE.
(On an aside, remember when ODE used to have independent branding to AusAID? It’s all gone DFAT blue now and the helpful policymaker-friendly ODE briefs that accompanied evaluations seem to be a thing of the past.)
It’s reassuring to see normal reporting resume. The next publishing test will be when and whether the 2012-2013 Annual Review of Aid Effectiveness is released (the 2011-2012 one came out on 25 January 2013).
Leave a Comment