Download or read book Department for International Development Annual Report and Accounts 2013 14 written by Great Britain. Department for International Development and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Department for International Development annual report and resource accounts 2010 11 and business plan 2011 15 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-03-09 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While DFID's total budget is increasing, the Department will both restrict operating costs to 2% by 2014-15 and reduce its administrative costs by a third in real terms, from £128 million in 2010-11 to £94 million by 2014-15. This report warns that capping operational costs and staff numbers may not reduce overall costs or improve effective delivery of development assistance. The International Development Committee also raises concerns that cost pressures are driving DFID to use consultants to deliver its programmes, rather than in-house expertise. The Department spends £450 million on technical cooperation per year. Much of this is good work, yet it was unclear exactly what this money was spent on, or how effective it was and the extent to which external providers were used. DFID needs to improve its assessment of which projects and services it should use consultants for; and assess more carefully the use of consultants to manage the Department's own delivery programmes. In its efforts to reduce administrative spending DFID might be 'exporting' these costs to other organisations, including NGOs and multilateral aid organisations, with higher real administration costs. The Department should assess the best and most effective way to deliver development assistance as it may be able to do it more cheaply and effectively than external organisations. The report recommends that the Department improves its tracking of and reporting on the total cost of administering its aid programme with the aim of quantifying how much aid actually ends up reaching recipients.

Download or read book Department for International Development s Annual Report and Accounts 2011 12 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About two-thirds of DFID's expenditure in 2011-12, including nearly 40% of its bilateral spending, went through multilateral organisations even though they have higher administrative costs. This represents a major change in recent years and has been accompanied by a decline in direct aid to recipient Governments. DFID argues that the change is not a reflection of its need to spend money quickly, but a result of the reduced need for budget support in countries with rising tax bases and improved financial management, as well as its focus on fragile states. The DFID needs to ensure that it has thoroughly examined other options such as greater use of local NGOs and sector budget support. DFID has switched expenditure from low income to middle income countries, in part because several countries with a large number of poor people have recently graduated to middle-income status. Policy towards middle income countries varies and DFID needs establish and make public the criteria it will use to inform decisions of when and how it should cease to provide aid. DFID should also consider establishing a Development Bank - that could offer concessional loans alongside grant aid and would free from the constraint of having to ensure that cash was spent by the end of the financial year. Staffing also may still not be sufficient to oversee the huge expenditure of UK taxpayers' money undertaken by multilaterals. MPs remain concerned that DFID's has ended its bilateral programme in one of the world's poorest countries, Burundi, and is urging the new Secretary of State to re-instate it.

Download or read book Department for International Development annual report resource accounts 2009 10 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-02-03 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 2010 Comprehensive Spending Review the Coalition Government announced its decision to achieve the internationally agreed target of providing 0.7 percent of Gross National Income as ODA from 2013. This will involve spending an additional 2.5 billion pounds in 2013-14 to make the total DFID budget 11.3 billion pounds in that year. There will be a large increase in spending on fragile and conflict affected states and it will be difficult to ensure that every pound is well spent in such war-torn environments. When scrutinising DFID's accounts the MPs were also surprised to discover that the Pope's visit was paid for in part by money supposed to be for overseas development aid (ODA). The Committee expects a response from the Government as to what the £1.85 million, transferred to the Foreign Office for the papal visit, was spent on and an explanation as to how this was ODA compliant. The Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) announced reductions in DFID's running costs to 2% of the total budget. If achieved, this would make DFID the most cost-efficient development organisation in the world.This is to be achieved by a large reduction in back office administration costs (which excludes front-line staff) of £34 million over the CSR period. The International Development Committee supports the proposals to make savings in back office staff, but the MPs are warning that Ministers must ensure that reduced administration budgets do not affect the ability to deliver aid programmes on the ground. While declining as a share of total costs, running costs will increase in real terms over the next four years because the total budget will rise so much.

Download or read book HC 750 Department for International Development s Performance in 2013 2014 The Departmental Annual Report 2013 14 written by Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. International Development Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2015 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Government response to HC 693, 2013-14 (ISBN 9780215071750). DFID's annual report for 2012-13 published as HC 12, session 2013-14 (ISBN 9780102983241)

Download or read book Department for International Development s Performance In 2012 13 written by Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. International Development Committee and published by . This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 11 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Government response to HC 693, 2013-14 (ISBN 9780215071750). DFID's annual report for 2012-13 published as HC 12, session 2013-14 (ISBN 9780102983241)

Download or read book Department for International Development s Performance In 2013 2014 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee and published by . This book was released on 2015-09-14 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Committee's fourteenth report should read thirteenth. Government response to HC 750, session 2014-15 (ISBN 9780215084545)

Download or read book Department for International Development s Performance in 2012 13 Departmental Annual Report 2012 13 HC 693 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-04-30 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report is the International Development Committee's annual review of UK aid programmes and the administration of the Department for International Development (DFID). The Committee finds that field work overseas should be given greater priority and Ministers must explain UK spending on humanitarian projects more clearly. DFID should not provide funds to support disasters in middle income countries by raiding bilateral development programmes in low income countries. Other wealthy OECD countries must play their part in providing humanitarian assistance. DFID should set out annually its provisional budget for humanitarian relief, what is held as contingencies for unpredictable events and how it will be deployed if not called upon. There has also been a decline in DFID's spending on budget support, the consequences of which should be assessed. £1,075 million of DFID's bilateral expenditure is spent through multilaterals and private contractors. DFID has put in place a number of changes to improve the value for money provided by spending through and should report on their effectiveness. The Committee is also worried that the Department actually spends 40% of its budget in the last two months of the year, which raises questions about the smooth running of management and planning processes. DFID staff should have longer postings overseas (normally a minimum of four years) so that they can develop a deeper understanding of the culture and politics of the country they are working in and engage more effectively with the country's politicians.

Download or read book House of Commons International Development Committee The Independent Commission for Aid Impact s Annual Report 2012 13 Volume I HC 566 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Independent Commission on Aid Impact (ICAI) was established in May 2011 with a strategic aim to provide independent scrutiny of UK aid spending, to promote the delivery of value for money for British taxpayers and the maximisation of the impact of aid. ICAI reports directly to Parliament through the International Development Committee, which established a sub-Committee on the work of ICAI in October 2012. This has worked well, and has helped foster closer working arrangements that promote the sharing of ideas between IDC inquires and the evaluations that ICAI undertakes. ICAI's Annual Report 2012-13 was generally well-received, as was the Commission's overall performance over the past year. The Annual Report published ICAI's budget for the first time and another excellent innovation was a section following up recommendations made in ICAI's Year 1 reports. ICAI should include a more detailed assessment of the impact of UK aid, including overarching lessons for DFID and should do more to promote lesson-learning across evaluations. This could be done by seminars and outreach events following each evaluation, which would help improve knowledge dissemination, both to DFID and the wider development community. A clear message this year was that DFID must think more strategically about its management of large contracts, especially those with multilateral agencies, nongovernmental organisations and contractors. This seems a fundamental criticism of the Department given the significance of these relationships. DFID should pay closer attention to how it selects external agencies as implementing bodies, and how much it pays for their services.

Download or read book House of Commons International Development Committee Implications for Development in the Event of Scotland Becoming and Independent Country HC 692 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The UK's aid programme, much of which is delivered from Scotland, is genuinely transformational. The UK provided £8.7 billion of aid in 2012/13, but it is the quality of this aid - not just its quantity - which sets the UK apart. As part of the UK, Scotland makes a tremendous contribution to all this. If Scotland were to become an independent country, its development agency would inevitably be a much smaller player. From 2013 onwards, the UK Government plans to spend 0.7% of Gross National Income on Official Development Assistance. If Scotland were to become independent, the UK's overall GNI - and the amount of money it spends on ODA - would fall. "Scotland has 8.3% of the UK's population share, so we estimate that the UK's ODA would fall by around 8.3%, or £1 billion. DFID's work - either its bilateral programmes or its funding to multilateral organisations - would inevitably then be subject to cuts. MPs are also concerned that during any transitional period, the restructuring of DFID and the setup of an independent Scottish development agency would divert management attention towards restructuring and away from frontline delivery by both agencies. In addition, a significant proportion of DFID's workforce is based at its Scottish office in East Kilbride, including a number of senior staff. By contrast, the number of jobs available with an independent Scottish development agency is likely to be relatively few (or the new Scottish development agency would be heavily overstaffed). The impact on jobs would therefore be substantial.

Download or read book HC 663 The Future of UK Development Co operation Phase 2 Beyond Aid written by Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. International Development Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2015 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The number of low income countries is falling. At the same time, the importance of global issues - conflict, climate, migration, trade, tax, financial stability, youth unemployment, urbanisation economic development, and infectious disease - is rising. The Committee argues that aid remains vital for addressing poverty in poor countries, for encouraging economic development, for providing global goods such as tackling climate change, combating diseases such as Ebola and providing humanitarian assistance, but new forms of co-operation have to be developed in order to meet these challenges. This will include new financial mechanisms and facilitating links with UK institutions in a wide range of areas, including health, education, culture, law, culture and science. This will require the Department for International Development (DFID) to put more emphasis on working with small organisations and less on programme management.As the focus moves away from aid, policy coherence for development must be at the heart of a new approach. This means working across Government in the UK, and with global partners in the multilateral system, to maximise the impact on development of all the UK's actions. This approach and changes will require DFID staff to develop different skills.

Download or read book Evaluation Systems in Development Co operation 2016 Review written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-30 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evaluation is widely recognised as an important component for learning and improving development effectiveness. Evaluation responds to public and taxpayer demands for credible information and independent assessment of development co-operation activities.

Download or read book EFA Global Monitoring Report 2013 2014 Teaching and Learning Achieving quality for all written by UNESCO and published by UNESCO. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2013/2014 Education for All Global Monitoring Report shows that a lack of attention to education quality and a failure to reach the marginalized have contributed to a learning crisis that needs urgent attention. Worldwide, 250 million children many of them from disadvantaged backgrounds are not learning the basics. Teaching and Learning: Achieving Quality for All describes how policy-makers can support and sustain a quality education system for all children, regardless of background, by providing the best teachers. The Report also documents global progress in achieving Education for All goals and provides lessons for setting a new education agenda post-2015. In addition, the Report identifies that insufficient financing is hindering advances in education.

Download or read book Fighting Fraud and Corruption in the Humanitarian and Global Development Sector written by Oliver May and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-12 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are an estimated 40,000 international Non-Government Organisations (NGOs), working in an enormous global aid industry; official development assistance alone reached £90bn in 2014. This is supplemented by huge voluntary giving – the UK public, for example, give around £1bn a year to overseas causes. These organisations face a unique challenge from fraud and corruption. Operating in the world’s most under-developed and fragile environments, with minimal infrastructure and trust-based cultures, the risk is high. And, being wholly reliant on donors and supporters for income, so are the stakes. Researchers make different estimates of the scale of the problem facing the sector. Some research implies that losses to the global aid budget caused by occupational fraud and abuse may be in the billions of pounds, while those to the British public's voluntary overseas donations could be in the tens of millions. For many sector professionals working in the developing world, these estimates are readily believable. Fighting Fraud and Corruption in the Humanitarian and Global Development Sector by Oliver May is a timely, accessible and relevant how-to guide, which explores the scale and nature of the threat, debunks pervasive myths, and shows readers how to help their NGOs to better deter, prevent, detect and respond to fraud and corruption.

Download or read book Global food security written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee and published by Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The International Development Committee calls for concerted action to curb food wastage in the UK and for expansion of DFID's bilateral nutrition programmes with a particular focus on pregnancy and early years, as part of wider efforts to improve global food security. There is scope for the Government to launch a national consumer campaign to reduce domestic food waste, also setting national targets to curb food waste within the UK food production and retail sectors. Agriculturally-produced biofuels are having a major detrimental impact on global food security by driving higher and more volatile food prices. EU targets requiring 10 per cent of transport energy to be drawn from renewable sources by 2020 are likely to cause dramatic food price increases, and the Government should revise its domestic Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation to specifically exclude agriculturally-produced biofuels. Looking at the impact of rising world population, the Committee praises DFID's significant efforts to meet the considerable unmet need for contraception in many developing nations and urges the UK government to maintain a keen focus on women's reproductive rights within its development assistance programmes. MPs also flag the longer term barriers to development posed by systematic undernutrition. The Committee expresses concern that large corporations are buying up large areas of land in many developing countries previously farmed by smallholders. UK-domiciled corporations should be required to be transparent about land deals. Lastly, MPs focus on the key role that smallholder farmers will play in feeding a growing global population and in reducing rural poverty.

Download or read book Anti Corruption in International Development written by Ingrida Kerusauskaite and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Corruption is linked to a wide range of developmental issues, including undermining democratic institutions, slowing economic development and contributing to government instability, poverty and inequality. It is estimated that corruption costs more than 5 per cent of global GDP, and that more than one trillion US dollars are paid in bribes each year. This book unpacks the concept of corruption, its political and ethical influences, its measurement, commitments to combat corruption and ways that this is being attempted. Building on the research on the nature, causes and consequences of corruption, this book analyses international anti-corruption interventions in particular. It discusses approaches to focus efforts to tackle corruption in developing countries on where they are most likely to be successful. The efforts of the UK are considered as a detailed case study, with comparisons brought in as necessary from other countries’ and multilateral institutions’ anti-corruption efforts. Bridging a range of disciplines, Anti-Corruption in International Development will be of interest to students and scholars of international development, public administration, management, international relations, politics and criminal justice.

Download or read book HC 605 The FCO s Performance and Finances in 2013 14 written by Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Foreign Affairs Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2015 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cuts imposed on the FCO since 2010 have been severe and have gone beyond just trimming fat: capacity now appears to be being damaged. If further cuts are imposed, the UK's diplomatic imprint and influence would probably reduce, and the Government would need to roll back some of its foreign policy objectives. The FCO's budget is a tiny element of Government expenditure, but the FCO makes disproportionate contribution to policy making at the highest level, including decisions on whether to commit to military action. The next Government needs to protect future FCO budgets under the next Spending Review.