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The
development community is recently concerned with reduced
effectiveness of development assistance. For example,
the UNDP's ongoing inititiatve Reforming
Technical Cooperation for Capacity Development explores
the fundamentals of capacity development and how technical
cooperation in particular can best contribute to the
development of lasting indigenous capacities.
There
could be four broad reasons for reduced development effectiveness:
that the messages of donor assistance - i.e. the knowledge
that donors wish to impart - are either substantively
wrong, or are too costly to deliver, or are delivered
in an ineffective way, or are not to the liking of their
recipients.
First,
the content of the message is wrong. There is strong
evidence of this if only because the messages of donor
assistance can be contradictory and confusing. Indeed,
theories of public sector reform do not enjoy the consensus
that theories of physics enjoy. They do not even enjoy
the consensus of macroeconomic or trade theories. Since
public sector reform has no agreed canon, it is no wonder
that reform advice will differ from one "expert"
to the next.
Second,
the messages are too expensive to deliver, not only
in their immediate cost (for instance, the high cost
of expatriate human resources), but also in their indirect
costs (for instance, the claim that external assistance
can undermine local capacity, disrupt local labor markets,
and tie clients to high-cost suppliers). This proposition,
however well founded, is valid for all foreign assistance
and not specific to the area of public sector reform.
Nonetheless, it is now getting a lot of play because
of the apparent promise of information and communications
technology (ICT) to dramatically lower these costs.
Third,
the messages are poorly delivered. They are not
being absorbed - not getting "owned" - presumably
because people learn in other ways than simply being
told (by experts or by reports). Because of this perception,
the World Bank is now championing the idea of having
reports done by the client county rather than the Bank
(for example the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers)
or being prepared through more participatory processes
(for example the Public Expenditure Reviews).
Fourth,
the messages are not welcome. Even if messages are
substantively good and effectively delivered, their
recipients may not have the incentives to "own"
them and act on them. Providing more effective services
to the poor may simply not be in the interests of some
politicians. The donors may also be driven by incentives,
such as promoting domestic political agenda or economic
interests, that are not conducive to effective assistance.
This page has been developed from a note by Geoffrey
Shepherd, an advisor to this program
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