Response: Report to Parliament on Canada’s ODA
October 9, 2009 The report falls short Engineers Without Borders is disappointed with the calibre of the “Report to Parliament on the Government of Canada’s Official Development Assistance”. While we commend the new statistics included in this report and acknowledge that it is a difficult task to synthesize a volume of information and summarize the complexity of development, we believe that a much more comprehensive report should be required in 2010. This report is a laundry list of Canada’s ODA related programming, filled with vague statements. For instance, the CIDA section of the report, accounting for $3.75 billion, comprises only 6 pages. That means for each page, $600 million is being accounted for – which translates to $2.5 million per word! While these are our general impressions, shared by many other civil society groups, we’d like to share some more specific recommendations on how to improve things in the future. Comparison between Canada’s ODA reporting and UK’s ODA reporting reveals Canadian approach is incomplete Similar to Canada, the UK’s DFID presents annual reports to Parliament. DFID produces in-depth analyses of its programs for Parliament – including the amount of money invested and the outcomes achieved for each of its focus areas, and specific examples to add more context. For instance, in DFID’s section on “Delivering Clean Water and Sanitation”, they document their initiatives in Kenya: supporting school-based sanitation programs that will benefit 600,000 children across 4,500 schools, in addition to constructing new toilet facilities in 2,652 public schools. This is the level of detail we expect from Canada. Comparatively, in the CIDA section of Canada’s report all that we know about our health initiatives – representing an investment of $783 million – is that CIDA focused on 4 sub-sectors: communicable diseases, health systems, food security and reproductive health. This information gives the reader no idea about the details of our programs, the impact they have had, how we performed in those areas, or even where the programs took place! Canada should adopt a more robust reporting style that better outlines performance. We recommend that our reporting be based on the following three broad areas (used by other donor groups like the International Fund for Agricultural Development - IFAD): Relevance: Are Canada’s mandate and operations pertinent in the context of the changing framework of international development assistance?
Development effectiveness: Are Canada-financed programs generating results “on the ground” that support, with evidence, national and global efforts to reduce poverty? Organizational efficiency: Is Canada proficient in delivering results through improved internal performance management?
The next report should document institutional improvement We would expect a report to not only indicate results on the ground, but also to analyse and indicate how things are changing within the institution. We would hope that a report would answer the following: What is different in how CIDA is operating? What are they doing differently next year as a result of what they learned this past year? For example, CIDA currently has 5 decentralized country offices, meaning those officials have greater decision-making power and flexibility with resource allocation. This is in line with international best practices. What has the impact of this decision been on CIDA programs? Has this different approach resulted in improved impact? Are they planning to expand this to other countries?
Canada should commission external reviews that are reported directly to Parliament, and we should support programs that allow for innovation, accepting risk-taking and failure: Parliamentarians should be given adequate information that will allow them to make an informed appraisal of our ODA programs, as opposed to needing to make assumptions in order to fill in the gaps. We encourage an audit process by which 10 CIDA projects are selected at random, followed by a review by an external body. The results of these audits should be presented to Parliament as an accountability measure, providing non-partial assessments of our successes and failures, giving Parliamentarians the information needed to ask informed questions and help improve our ODA programs. Canada should position itself as an innovator that finds new solutions to complex challenges. For instance, Canada can create a $50 million fund dedicated to testing out innovative ideas in developing countries. This fund should be a partnership of different departments and stakeholders, infusing venture capital and private-sector ideas with public development approaches. In doing so, we must be prepared to accept some degree of failure and commit to long-term time frames that allow for learning and provide the flexibility needed to bear lasting positive results. We’ll never be a “top donor” in terms of dollars spent, so let us be an incubator of good ideas. o This report should ask CIDA specifically how they are removing some of the regularly identified constraints to creativity and flexibility, and how they are supporting innovative ideas – some of which involve risk.
**We reviewed reports from the UK’s DFID and IFAD – please find the links to these reports below** http://www.ifad.org/gbdocs/eb/95/e/EB-2008-95-R-8-Rev-1.pdf
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Documents/publications/departmental-report/2009/volume1.pdf