Friday, August 14, 2009
August Break
We're going to be taking a break from blogging for the rest of August. Enjoy the rest of the month and see you in September.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
A bi-partisan change to USAID
by Matt Gyory
On July 28, a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators, including Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Richard Lugar of Indiana, introduced a bill to improve U.S. development efforts by updating the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for the 21st century. The introduction of this bill was part of a larger effort to improve USAID and increase its role in U.S. development efforts.
Senator Lugar has been particularly vocal in his support of changing the way USAID conducts business. He has written an op-ed in which he outlines many of the features to be found in the bi-partisan bill, including the need for increased staff and tracking project outputs to determine successes and best practices. Recently, Senator Lugar wrote a letter to the editors of the Washington Post to highlight the difficulty the Obama administration has had in finding a USAID Administrator.
In addition to the bi-partisan support and momentum this bill represents, it is a new commitment of USAID to the goals of transparent data and the measurement of its activities. Both Sections five (page nine of the bill in particular) and section six of the bill highlight the need for USAID to collect data and perform monitoring and evaluation assessments on their programs. These sections of the bill will improve the effectiveness of USAID’s efforts and possibly provide the development community as a whole with best practices and certainly with a surfeit of data on USAID’s activities.
To ensure that the information USAID will now collect will be used, Section 10 of the bill recommends that the U.S. fully engage and comply with the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). IATI was one of the outcomes of last year’s high level forum in Accra. The type of transparent information IATI compliance would entail will give U.S. and international aid practitioners a greater wealth of information to ensure more effective aid.
The two parts of the bill highlighted here are clearly related. There is little point in collecting all of information USAID will be required to collect if no one will ever see it. The two major points are also key issues for Development Gateway. Aid effectiveness has been a key point of our work and we have begun to emphasize the possibilities that more transparent information can offer. We look forward to the progression of this bill and hope that whatever final version is submitted to President Obama for his signature contains these provisions to ensure more transparent, effective aid.
The full text of the legislation is available here.
On July 28, a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators, including Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Richard Lugar of Indiana, introduced a bill to improve U.S. development efforts by updating the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for the 21st century. The introduction of this bill was part of a larger effort to improve USAID and increase its role in U.S. development efforts.
Senator Lugar has been particularly vocal in his support of changing the way USAID conducts business. He has written an op-ed in which he outlines many of the features to be found in the bi-partisan bill, including the need for increased staff and tracking project outputs to determine successes and best practices. Recently, Senator Lugar wrote a letter to the editors of the Washington Post to highlight the difficulty the Obama administration has had in finding a USAID Administrator.
In addition to the bi-partisan support and momentum this bill represents, it is a new commitment of USAID to the goals of transparent data and the measurement of its activities. Both Sections five (page nine of the bill in particular) and section six of the bill highlight the need for USAID to collect data and perform monitoring and evaluation assessments on their programs. These sections of the bill will improve the effectiveness of USAID’s efforts and possibly provide the development community as a whole with best practices and certainly with a surfeit of data on USAID’s activities.
To ensure that the information USAID will now collect will be used, Section 10 of the bill recommends that the U.S. fully engage and comply with the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). IATI was one of the outcomes of last year’s high level forum in Accra. The type of transparent information IATI compliance would entail will give U.S. and international aid practitioners a greater wealth of information to ensure more effective aid.
The two parts of the bill highlighted here are clearly related. There is little point in collecting all of information USAID will be required to collect if no one will ever see it. The two major points are also key issues for Development Gateway. Aid effectiveness has been a key point of our work and we have begun to emphasize the possibilities that more transparent information can offer. We look forward to the progression of this bill and hope that whatever final version is submitted to President Obama for his signature contains these provisions to ensure more transparent, effective aid.
The full text of the legislation is available here.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Comparing Aid Agencies
by Emily Kallaur
Ariel BenYishay and Franck S. Wiebe of the Millennium Challenge Corporation have just written a paper entitled “Can Aid Agencies Follow Best Practices?: An Assessment of the MCC’s Aid Practices Based on Easterly and Pfutze (2008)”. The paper assesses the MCC’s performance according to indicators of aid agency “best practice” as determined by Easterly and Pfutze.
In the original paper by Easterly and Pfutze, all U.S. agencies providing aid were evaluated in the aggregate. Although (to date) the MCC disburses only a small fraction of total U.S. development assistance, its approach and policies are quite innovative and contrast sharply with other U.S. agencies which follow a more traditional approach, making the MCC a compelling individual case study. When applying the Easterly and Pfutze evaluation criteria solely to the MCC rather than U.S. aid agencies as a whole, BenYishay and Wiebe find that it ranks 8th out of 40 donors, compared to 16th out of 39 for U.S. assistance as a whole.
It’s certainly debatable whether there are universal “best practices” for aid agencies, and if so whether Easterly and Pfutze have correctly identified them. In any case, this result for the MCC is an interesting contribution to the debate.
Ariel BenYishay and Franck S. Wiebe of the Millennium Challenge Corporation have just written a paper entitled “Can Aid Agencies Follow Best Practices?: An Assessment of the MCC’s Aid Practices Based on Easterly and Pfutze (2008)”. The paper assesses the MCC’s performance according to indicators of aid agency “best practice” as determined by Easterly and Pfutze.
In the original paper by Easterly and Pfutze, all U.S. agencies providing aid were evaluated in the aggregate. Although (to date) the MCC disburses only a small fraction of total U.S. development assistance, its approach and policies are quite innovative and contrast sharply with other U.S. agencies which follow a more traditional approach, making the MCC a compelling individual case study. When applying the Easterly and Pfutze evaluation criteria solely to the MCC rather than U.S. aid agencies as a whole, BenYishay and Wiebe find that it ranks 8th out of 40 donors, compared to 16th out of 39 for U.S. assistance as a whole.
It’s certainly debatable whether there are universal “best practices” for aid agencies, and if so whether Easterly and Pfutze have correctly identified them. In any case, this result for the MCC is an interesting contribution to the debate.
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