PACP Committee Report
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INTRODUCTION The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) administers the bulk of Canada’s official development assistance. CIDA usually does not deliver aid itself but instead funds other organizations, such as non-government aid organizations, international organizations, or directly funds the governments of recipient countries. While CIDA does not have governing legislation defining its role and mandate, the Agency identifies its mission as leading Canada’s international effort to help people living in poverty. Moreover, in its 2002 Policy Statement on Strengthening Aid Effectiveness, CIDA declared aid effectiveness to be its overarching priority. In this regard, the Agency has committed to aligning its efforts with recipient countries’ needs and priorities; to harmonize its activities with those of other donors; and to use new forms of aid known as program-based approaches.[1] The Agency has also recognized that its programming is widely dispersed, and since February 2009 has moved to focusing its aid on 20 countries. In its Fall 2009 Report, the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) included a performance audit on CIDA, titled “Strengthening Aid Effectiveness.”[2] The audit examined how CIDA is implementing its effectiveness commitments concerning alignment, harmonization, program-based approaches, and focusing of its resources. It also looked at the management processes in place at its head office to guide and sustain implementation of the commitments. As well, the OAG examined how CIDA plans its activities, selects projects for funding, and monitors project risks in five countries: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, and Vietnam. Given the importance of providing effective aid to developing countries, the Public Accounts Committee (the Committee) held a hearing on this audit on 9 December 2009.[3] From the Office of the Auditor General, the Committee met with Richard Flageole, Assistant Auditor General; John Reed, Principal; and Dušan Duvnjak, Director. The Canadian International Development Agency was represented by Margaret Biggs, President and David Moloney, Executive Vice-President. As the first hearing had to be suspended early, the Committee held another meeting on 25 May 2010 to allow members the opportunity to fully examine the issue.[4] The Committee met with the same members from CIDA as the first hearing, while the OAG was represented by Sheila Fraser, Auditor General and John Reed, Principal. STATUS REPORTS AND PROGRESS TO DATE
The OAG made seven recommendations, with which CIDA fully agreed and has since made significant strides in addressing. In her opening statement to the Committee, CIDA’s President asserted that “all the major milestones in CIDA’s action plan in response to the Auditor General’s report have been met.”[6] The Auditor General acknowledged the agency’s progress, stating that she “was very pleased to see that the commitments have been met and much has been done in the last six months.”[7] In particular, based on its 2009 Aid Effectiveness Action Plan, the Agency says that it has taken steps to: 1) bring greater focus to CIDA programming; 2) ensure stronger management and sustained implementation; and 3) streamline business processes. For instance, CIDA has met its target to concentrate 80 % of bilateral aid in its 20 countries of focus, with country strategies for all of these areas of geographic focus approved and available on CIDA’s website. The Agency has also completed Country Program Development Frameworks on schedule and has determined its three thematic priorities. Strategies for two of the priorities, increasing food security and securing a future for children and youth, have been developed and are posted on CIDA’s website. However, the strategy for the third priority of stimulating sustainable economic growth has yet to be made public and many of the actions taken by CIDA to address the OAG’s recommendations are ongoing in nature. Moreover, according to the action plan, the target date for CIDA’s Human Resources Plan to be operationalized, with recruitment and retention strategies in place, is March 2011. While the Committee commends the progress that CIDA has made thus far in implementing its action plan and addressing the recommendations of the OAG, it is important for the Committee to continue to monitor the Agency’s progress to ensure that the current momentum is sustained. As a result, the Committee recommends:
ADMNISTRATIVE AND DECISION MAKING PROCESS A 2007 internal study to improve the efficiency of business processes found that, on average, a project needed 28 different documents to take it from conception to the completion stage of the implementation plan. At times, the staff even created their own tools to navigate through a process that took, on average, 43 months to get project approval. Such lengthy approval times mean that staff will have moved, policy shifts will have occurred, and plans could have also changed. Since the audit, the Agency has made progress in cutting down the length of the approval process by undertaking a complete re-engineering of the Agency’s business model and processing times. According to CIDA’s President, in the Agency’s countries of focus, the aim is now an average of 12 months, and a maximum of 15 months, from initiation to execution of a project. The President also indicated that while a 15 month timeframe is competitive, “we can always do better than that.”[9] The Committee was informed that CIDA has successfully piloted its new business process and is now mainstreaming it throughout the organization. Although the OAG did not include a recommendation with regards to this issue in the audit report, it did “strongly encourage” CIDA to “implement appropriate actions to streamline its business processes.”[10] Therefore, given the importance of monitoring CIDA’s implementation of its business streamlining projects, the Committee recommends:
DECENTRALIZATION CIDA expects the impact to be significant, with a “substantial portion of the functions” to be moved out of headquarters and into the field.[13] According to the Executive Vice-President, who is leading the work on decentralization, the “ratio will shift noticeably in terms of a smaller proportion of the total staff at headquarters and a larger proportion in the field.”[14] The exact number of staff that will be moved to the field was not specified and it was not clear whether the Agency would be moving existing employees overseas, hiring new ones, using locally engaged staff in its countries of focus, or a combination of all three.
THEMATIC PRIORITIES As previously mentioned, CIDA has prepared strategy papers for its thematic priorities of increasing food security and securing a future for children and youth, with the third paper on stimulating sustainable economic growth currently in the works. However, the Committee notes that neither of these strategy papers address the first part of the OAG’s recommendation to: “clarify, for each of its priority sectors, the specific programming areas that [CIDA] will support in the future as well as those it will not.”[15] In order to ensure that CIDA is sufficiently narrowing its focus, the Committee recommends:
LEGISLATIVE MANDATE
However, despite its size and importance, CIDA does not have an independent or fully stated legislative mandate. Other countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, have a legislative basis for either their development agencies, for their development assistance, or for both. The lack of a legislative mandate has resulted in an Agency with no long-term vision for its development assistance, which was identified by the OAG as a root cause of many of CIDA’s problems. Therefore, the Committee strongly encourages the government to make amendments to the existing ODAA Act, or consider implementing new legislation, that will clearly set out CIDA’s mandate and role. CONCLUSION In addition, the Committee notes that while CIDA has made progress in narrowing its focus, the Agency did not clarify in its strategy papers which specific programming areas would be included under each of the three thematic priorities. CIDA’s ability to deliver aid effectively has also been hampered by its lack of a legislative mandate, which contributes to the Agency’s difficulty in setting a long-term orientation. [1] In contrast to the traditional approach to aid that is characterized by individual standalone projects, in a program-based approach donors coordinate support to the budgets of recipient governments or local organizations for a development program delivered using local systems and procedures. [2] Auditor General of Canada, Fall 2009 Report, Chapter 8 – Strengthening Aid Effectiveness – Canadian International Development Agency. [3] House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts, 40th Parliament, 2nd Session, Meeting 46. [4] House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts, 40th Parliament, 3rd Session, Meeting 16. [5] Meeting 46, 15:30. [6] Meeting 16, 9:00. [7] Meeting 16, 10:15. [8] Canadian International Development Agency, Policy Statement on Strengthening Aid Effectiveness (2002), http://www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/INET/IMAGES.NSF/vLUImages/pdf/$file/SAE-ENG.pdf. [9] Meeting 46, 17:10. [10] Chapter 8, paragraph 8.70. [11] United States Agency for International Development, FY 2010 Congressional Budget Justification – Foreign Assistance Summary Tables, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/124295.pdf. [12] Meeting 16, 9:05. [13] Meeting 16, 10:15. [14] Ibid. [15] Chapter 8, recommendation 8.54. [16] Official Development Assistance Accountability Act, S.C. 2008, c. 17, http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/laws/stat/sc-2008-c-17/latest/sc-2008-c-17.html. |