I. INTRODUCTION: PLACING AND ACCOUNTING
FOR DFID
1. The Department for International Development's
(DFID) aim is the elimination of world poverty.[1]
DFID's activities cover all stages of the cycle of development
policy and practice, from people's experiences of poverty ("the
grassroots"), through statistics and other data, to development
models and theories, through policies and objectives, to—with
the addition of resources—actions or interventions, and
back to people's experience of poverty (see figure 1). The injection
of resources is somewhat outside the cycle of development policy
and practice, in part as it is subject to the demands of competing
interests—money for education, health, defence and tax-cuts
in the UK for instance. Nevertheless, it is influenced by models
and theories of development.
Figure 1: The Cycle of Development Policy and Practice
2. All development agencies, including DFID, are
part of this cycle of development policy and practice. DFID contributes
to, and learns from, the international donor community's collective
understanding of development. The cycle is not peculiar to DFID,
but the ways in which the stages are practised and linked together
do vary between different donor agencies. An effective and strategic
development agency must integrate this cycle of development policy
and practice, learn from its mistakes, and use evidence carefully
to build models and theories which inform development actions
and interventions. As the Public Accounts Committee put it in
their recent report about DFID: "Knowing what is effective
in reducing poverty; understanding the conditions which help aid
to succeed; setting appropriate targets which motivate those involved
in development; and being able to identify progress or the lack
of it are therefore important factors in the fight against poverty".[2]
3. In pursuit of its goal, DFID aims to act in partnership
with a range of organisations including other bilateral and multilateral
donors, governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and
local communities.[3]
DFID's actions link the global, regional, national and local grassroots
levels, encouraging the local ownership of, and responsibility
for, development strategies, whilst seeking to ensure that the
wider policy-environment is appropriate and supportive. This approach
of working in partnership to support locally-owned development
strategies limits the control which development agencies in general,
and any single development agency in particular, can have over
development outcomes.
4. DFID is a small but important cog in an extremely
complex system of international development. This—along
with the impossibility of identifying DFID's specific contribution
to poverty reduction, as opposed to that of the international
development community as a whole—makes it difficult for
DFID to be accountable for its actions. Nevertheless, an effective
and sustainable development agency must make itself accountable
to external stakeholders, demonstrating to them the extent to
which it has successfully integrated the cycle of policy and practice,
and is pursuing a coherent strategy as part of the collective
international effort. The Departmental Report is an opportunity
for DFID to demonstrate how it integrates the cycle of development
policy and practice, and to account for its spending in pursuit
of its aims and objectives. As DFID puts it, the Departmental
Report "is intended to provide Parliament, members of the
public, our development partners and others interested in development
issues with a comprehensive account of how we have been spending,
and plan to spend, public funds".[4]
5. The 2002 Departmental Report differs significantly
from the Department's previous annual Reports. Over the course
of the last Parliament the Departmental Report had grown in size
and, in addition to containing information which was available
elsewhere, it offered an explanation of policy and future plans
as well as listing DFID's achievements. Along with other Government
departments, the 2002 Report has reverted to the core purpose
of setting out what DFID has achieved. Some information which
was provided in previous Departmental Reports has been omitted.
For example the Main Estimates for all Government Departments
are now presented to Parliament in a single document, which also
contains some of the more technical tables which formerly appeared
in the analysis of Departmental plans in the annual Departmental
Report.
6. The new-style Report provides a comprehensive
account of DFID's responsibilities, the ways in which it works,
progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), DFID's
spending, and its organisation. Though concise, it gives the reader
an overview of the work of the Department and its development
priorities. In particular, we welcome the analysis of the DFID's
achievements and progress towards meeting the Millennium Development
Goals.
7. Our report examines DFID's Departmental Report
for 2002, commenting on the picture it paints of DFID's activities,
and suggesting ways in which it—and the activities which
it reports on—might be improved in subsequent years. We
cannot possibly discuss the whole cycle of development policy
and practice in this report, but the cycle does provide a useful
framework for the issues which we do discuss. Taking its lead
from DFID's Departmental Report, we focus on DFID's translation
of policy into action through the injection and allocation of
resources. We begin in chapter two by considering DFID's use of
the MDGs, and the role of the Public Service Agreement (PSA) in
organising and orientating DFID, its activities and relationships.
In chapter three we examine DFID's resource allocation processes,
and the potential tension which exists as a result of DFID having
primarily sectoral targets and primarily geographically-structured
processes for resource allocation. In chapter four we look in
some detail at DFID's new PSA and the new mechanism for country-based
planning, Country Assistance Plans. In chapter five we consider
DFID's portfolio of countries, including the ways in which DFID
decides which countries to be involved in, and the nature of DFID
involvement. In particular, we consider the increasing emphasis
given to the provision of direct budget support. In chapter six
we examine the monitoring of progress towards the MDGs, and the
ways in which DFID's activities are evaluated. In conclusion we
urge DFID to make its strategy—the ways in which it integrates
the cycle of development policy and practice, and the role it
sees itself as playing as part of the collective international
effort—more explicit. We believe that in doing this, DFID
will make itself more accountable, and, by facilitating learning
and improving organisational performance, become a more effective
development agency. Future Departmental Reports must make further
progress in this direction.
1 DFID Departmental Report 2002, page 9. See-http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Pubs/files/dr2002_report.pdf Back
2
Forty-Eighth Report from the Public Accounts Committee, Session
2001-2002, Department for International Development: Performance
management-helping to reduce world poverty, HC793, paragraph
1.
See- http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmpubacc/793/793.pdf Back
3
DFID Departmental Report 2002, chapter 2. See footnote 1 for
web-site. Back
4
DFID Departmental Report 2002, page 6. See footnote 1 for web-site. Back
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