Regardless of the form of the government that moves into Downing Street after the general election, there will still be disagreements over how the British government’s international aid and development budget is spent. Which countries need more help? What are the priorities for funding streams? The list goes on.
While those arguments continue, however, the British government – and the governments of other donor countries – have an obligation to make sure that the public funds they are sending overseas are spent efficiently, effectively and legitimately. To achieve this, governments often turn to the independent judgment and perspective provided by third party monitoring agents. Some critics of development spending may argue that this is unnecessary or overly expensive. So why do we carry out third party monitoring?
1. Donor mandate: Third party monitoring (TPM) is not always an obligation, but often it is. According to DFID’s Results Framework, they may be required to prove the impact of a certain project to the British public as a condition of receiving the funding for it. The 2002 Act states that the secretary of state for international development may only provide development assistance if she or he ‘is satisfied that the provision of the assistance is likely to contribute to a reduction in poverty’ [International Development Act 2002, Section 1(1)]. Third party monitoring is then written into the project specification or an accompanying contract.
2. Impartiality, transparency and integrity: Having a third party, outside both the implementers and the clients, is a way to guarantee an unbiased – or much less biased – review of a project or programme. It can assess the true impact of a project, while not over-claiming what’s happening and provide public information on what’s being done, what’s being spent and what impact it’s having.
3. Inaccessibility: TPM is particularly prevalent in fragile and conflict affected states (FCAS) – places that are considered ‘no go’ areas for many governments and organisations. TPM is put out to tender to third party companies and the security and risk is transferred to them – an area where we at Crown Agents have much experience. In Afghanistan, for example, we are the Monitoring Agent for the DFID-funded Comprehensive Agriculture and Rural Development Facility (CARD-F), and in Somalia we carried out a fiduciary risk assessment of the local development fund of the UN’s Joint Programme on Local Governance. We’ve been able to contribute existing relationships and experience in these countries and also our agility to adapt to sudden shifts in security or governance.
4. Lesson learning and evidence gathering: This is particularly important for ‘innovative’ methods that are being tested. For example, we know that consistent condom use leads to reduced infection rates for HIV/Aids – it is a commonly accepted theory that doesn’t need testing. However, if the behavioural change for increased condom use is obtained through an unusual method, such as a mobile app campaign, then that is worth testing. Our independent parallel bid evaluation work with the Ugandan National Roads Authority (UNRA) is providing the Ugandan government with a benchmark for their own evaluations and embedding value for money, accountability, transparency and fairness into their tendering process.
5. Accountability: There is a great amount of money spent in aid, and there is a responsibility to the taxpayer that the money – or as much of it as possible – is being spent responsibly and that processes are being followed. Additionally, anti-terrorism legislation in the UK means that there is a legal obligation to make sure that resources are not being diverted to terrorist activities. Recent progress on the journey towards tackling illicit financial flows has seen the financial action task force – the international standard setter on anti-money laundering and counter financing of terrorism – publish a new methodology for assessing countries’ anti-money laundering and counter financing of terrorism regimes.
6. Capacity: Sometimes it simply comes down to staffing. Third party monitoring is unique for every situation and it may be more effective for a donor to tender for contractors for a particular monitoring assignment rather than keeping people on staff, which can be expensive or limited by capacity. In 2014, under a Dfid-funded contract with Unops, we carried out a review of the fund management office and fund board of Myanmar’s livelihoods and food security trust fund, to determine the fitness of its governance structures and its management arrangement. It was a short-term contract where we were able to mobilise quickly, had the expertise and experience to be able to swiftly get on with the work, and then wrapped it up efficiently and productively, generating action-orientated recommendations, many of which are currently being implemented.
Heidi Ober has over a decade of experience in the design of participatory monitoring and evaluation in fragile and conflict affected states. She has carried out numerous evaluations of development, peacebuilding and security programmes and has managed multi-country, multi-agency projects.
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