DAD Community of Practice Meeting, Yerevan, 5 October 2009 Aidan Cox, Aid Effectiveness Adviser UNDP Regional Centre, Bangkok

Outline of presentation Why were DAD’s brought in as part of response to Tsunami? What did they offer? What lessons did we learn? Slide 2

National desire to demonstrate accountability: to affected populations to donor partners Better planning: reducing overlap & gaps Quality and Quantity: delivery against promises? are the funds being spent? what are the results? – output level what about impact? – partnership with departments of planning, statistics boards, DevInfo, etc value for money – partnership with INTOSAI, SAIs Tsunami Aid Tracking: why?

DAD, RAN, e-DIMS: practical tools to support aid effectiveness Ownership Mutual Accountability Managing for Results Harmonisation Alignment

Accessible to Everyone Full Transparency Ownership

How Much has been Promised? Mutual Accountability 4 DADs tracked over US$8.5 billion of tsunami assistance

Which parts of my country have receiving funding? Alignment

Who is Active in my District? Mutual Accountability

What is happening at sector level? What sectors face gaps? Is their duplication? Recovery Aceh-Nias (RAN) Database Alignment

What are they doing? Are there any Results? Will it benefit me? How we unblock Bottlenecks? Managing for Results

Supporting better decision- making Decision makers need to know: how are needs evolving? are development indicators shifting the right way? ie – are our joint efforts (policy and investments) having the desired results? are there differences between and within districts? do we need to adjust our policies, programmes & projects so they do a better job of meeting needs?

Aid Effectiveness through Capacity Development Not just systems, but people, skills, services – mutual understanding

But… What did we learn?

Lessons learned: Know what you need There was no clear statement of needs against which you can align supply Maldives was alone in having a quantified National Recovery & Reconstruction Plan Needs were not well quantified or geographically disaggregated (Lesson for the needs assessment teams – donor and government) Hard to align aid supply with need, if there is no consensus on needs per location 1 2

Lessons learned: Get in Fast and Tell a Story AIMS and teams should already be in place as part of (a) disaster preparedness; (b) integrating aid in national planning and budgeting Systems & people need to be in place fast – else donors/implementers push ahead independently – and data has little impact on aligning allocations with need: Post-disaster and reconstruction programmes were designed fast; monies were quickly allocated. Data matters only when it helps tell a story: We get excited about data collection – and ask for updates too often Much more emphasis needed on analysis/packaging – implications for decision-makers 3 4

Lessons learned: Living & breathing data: make it matter Data & analysis counts for little unless strongly linked to dialogue mechanisms and decision-making processes of government & donors RAN had advantages – embedded concept note approval process (but some CNs caught up with facts on ground; approval process not without flaws) Sectoral dialogue mechanisms weak Mostly show & tell – little space to support evidence-based decision-making Ideally, use your AIMS to prepare sector investment programmes and your national budget – these things have to be done – much else does not. 5 6

Lessons learned: Keep it simple National authorities, often advised by inexperienced international consultants, wanted bells and whistles RAN was user un-friendly Updating was burdensome (and too frequent) Push back and advise “no, phase it, go to the next level once you’ve proved core competence and relevance” Slide 18

Lessons learned: Politics can make or break DAD Maldives – more buy-in and impact than DAD Sri Lanka Maldives: MoF, MoFA, Planning ministries didn’t like each other much, but each got something out of DAD – shared resource. Sri Lanka: Government created TAFREN (stand alone Tsunami response institution) – seemed powerful, but lacked legal mandate, disliked by others (eg MoF), and great work by DAD team had reduced impact Collaboration across government agencies (eg through joint oversight of system) is make or break Slide 19

Conclusion Government, UNDP and Synergy’s tsunami response: first time governments, donors and citizens had quick access to aid data in a multi-country disaster Aid transparency was higher than perhaps any other major disaster Slide 20

Conclusions But we needed to be far quicker Governments need to invest before a disaster – as part of a commitment to regular aid effectiveness We need to tell a story that has the power to change how business is done Keep it simple Aid systems and data need to help regular people get their regular work done Understand – and use – the politics Vital: Collaboration across government, anchored in policy, and showing measurable results Slide 21