European Union external assistance, which accounts for half of development aid, must demonstrate that development policy achieves results. A recent workshop in Brussels looked at how a results-based approach that considers desired outcomes from the beginning can improve development cooperation.
“We have decided to organise a high-level workshop on results because we felt that it was time to really confront the work that has been done in EuropeAid so far with a range of other issues,” explained Franco Conzato, Deputy Head of Unit for Quality and Results. “Both in terms of policy [...] but also looking at the experience of mainly multi-lateral organisations who were in the forefront to introduce results frameworks.”
European Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs gave the keynote address at the workshop, which can be seen in the video below.
EuropeAid, in collaboration with the European External Action Service (EEAS), is currently setting up its own EU Results framework, which will report on the EU’s contribution to development results achieved in partner countries.
The workshop, with the tagline Change is possible, organised by the European Commission, united development policy decision makers, senior donor representatives, researchers and development practitioners, as they shared their views on key policy challenges. The aim was to discuss and share recent experiences on new approaches to making external assistance more accountable to citizens in donor and development partner countries.
Capacity4dev.eu spoke to two of the panellists about the work that they’re doing on results.
The DFID Approach
“Since becoming International Development Secretary I’ve been determined to ensure that every pound we spend has the biggest possible impact on the ground,” wrote Justine Greening in a policy paper published earlier this year. Ms Greening, the Secretary of State for International Development in the United Kingdom (UK), brought in new financial controls to give ministers more oversight of spending decisions and greater transparency so the taxpayer can see exactly where money is spent. “We are pioneers of ‘Results Based Aid’ which incentivises partner governments to demonstrably transform peoples’ lives.”
The move towards a results-based approach in the UK really came into force after the government committed to spend 0.7% of the gross national income on aid. In order to justify this to the general public, at a time when other departments were receiving spending cuts, it was important for the Department for International Development (DFID) to show how this money would be spent.
A few years down the line and the DFID results-based approach is now seen by many as an exemplary model. Anthony Smith, travelled to Brussels earlier this year to present the model at the workshop. At the time he was working as the Director for International Development at DFID.
Changing the way we work
“We had to change our culture in DFID,” explained Mr Smith. “There has been a lot of focus in the past on designing programmes and starting programmes and less focus relatively on implementing programmes and ensuring that they delivered specific results.” DFID also needed to increase transparency in order to show the taxpayer “what we’re planning to achieve and how we’re doing that work.”
This meant that staff needed to change their way of thinking and working by considering results and outputs of a project from the beginning and being open to criticism:
“Instead of saying we were going to contribute X million pounds to Mozambique in the health sector, we would say we were contributing to programmes in order to reduce the level of maternal mortality by X number of women and children,” said Mr Smith.
Communication and data for development
Storytelling is very important for development. Human nature shows that people tend to empathise more with a family or a village that needs assistance, rather than with a whole country. However, the significance of data is increasing: “it’s also important to have good evidence so that you get the right policies and approaches to issues,” said Mr Smith.
Subsequently the change in working culture at DFID includes an increased focus on research and data.
“I think one of the most successful communications periods for DFID in recent years was when we had the GAVI replenishment in the UK. It was possible to have very clear stories which were essentially about data: the number of vaccinations that we would be able to provide with the funding that we were given, the number of lives we’d be able to save. But of course we complemented that with some examples of individual communities, individual families where it would make a real difference,” said Mr Smith.
Avoiding the easy results
One of the most frequent questions that arises in relation to a results-based approach is how to address the challenge of difficult results. “The assumption is that if you’re only interested in achieving a high proportion of results you’ll go for the easy ones and leave the difficult ones behind,” explained Mr Smith. “Our overall approach was never to go for the easy targets.”
DFID addressed this by identifying the challenges first: “Before getting to the question of the specific results we looked at where it is that the biggest challenges were and where the UK needed to make the most effort in order to achieve the objectives that we were interested in around stability and prosperity.”
They found that they needed to work in fragile countries and, in order to make a difference within these, to focus on tough topics such as governance, peace and stability. Once they had identified these, they could focus on achieving and measuring results to check progress.
“So results is what you need, but that comes once you’ve decided on what it is that you need to do, not by looking for easy results first,” concluded Mr Smith.
Feedback Labs: A Citizen Feedback Mechanism
Jean-Louis Sarbib is the CEO at the non-profit organisation Development Gateway. They believe that “there can be no culture of results without a proper citizen feedback mechanism that not only seeks their views, but hears their voices and allows them to make changes.”
Subsequently Development Gateway has partnered with eight other organisations to develop: Feedback Labs. Mr Sarbib described this project as ‘Yelp* for development’: “the idea is to do for development what so many of us do for a hotel, or a restaurant or a movie.”
Feedback Labs engages citizens in developing countries in the results process, by providing them with a voice to comment on whether projects are working. They are the ones who will really see whether the intended results are achieved therefore they can say “whether there is medicine in the health centre, whether the teacher comes [to work], whether the road is being fixed after the last rain, whether the bridge is being fixed after the last earthquake,” explained Mr Sarbib.
If project managers listen and react to the feedback by fixing these problems, then the feedback loop is closed and citizens will have played a role in improving results of projects in their local communities.
“It’s a very new and very difficult field in international development,” said Mr Sarbib. In the long-term they are hoping that the Feedback Labs will turn into a knowledge space, a ‘Feedback Commons’ where citizens and development practitioners can exchange information.
* Yelp is a website that is used for searching for local businesses.
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The European Commission is currently piloting its results framework. Join the Results and Accountability Group on capacity4dev.eu to be kept up to date with the latest developments. Mr Sarbib also spoke about the importance of data for development and the challenges for data. You can view the full interview here. |
This collaborative piece was drafted with input from Andrea Alfieri and with support from the capacity4dev.eu Coordination Team.
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