Advice from an aid transparency novice: Why donors need to publish their aid

After spending years advising various governments in developing countries in Africa, Rupert Simons last week officially took over the reins of leadership at Publish What You Fund. From the outside, this role seems to be in an entirely new space for Simons. But while the campaign’s new CEO humbly admits “there’s a lot more that I have to know from them, than they could ever know from me,” he also offered some fresh insights that even veteran aid transparency advocates can learn from. In his years working closely with heads of states of aid recipient countries like Liberia, he saw how lack of aid data and accountability — despite all the good will — has led to poor program management. “We wait years for programs to be implemented. We frequently find donors working in the same field not talking to each other, or the same donor with country offices in Liberia and Sierra Leone [for example] not talking to each other,” he told Devex in an exclusive interview. The consequences of this are deadly, as he had witnessed in Ebola-hit Sierra Leone, where at some point in October, patient cases reach 500 per week, exceeding the number of beds available. While in Liberia, he learned that although there are 10 times as many beds in a country where the caseload is not as high, these resources couldn’t be moved across the border. “I find that hard to understand, because people in Sierra Leone were dying, and there were beds … in Liberia that could have helped them,” he said. The case for aid transparency Simons admitted understanding needs isn’t easy. Aid givers — including not just donor governments but also private foundations — need to spend a lot of time on the ground engaging deeply with governments and the beneficiaries to really understand their needs. But here’s why he argued making aid publicly available to recipient governments and beneficiaries is crucial: Governments in developing countries need to plan so they need to know what and how much aid they should be expecting. If a donor pledges to build a hospital, they need to plan on how to staff that hospital. Simons’ comments come from years of working alongside these aid recipient governments. For a long time, he observed that aid is “delivered like a Christmas present. You don’t necessarily get what you asked for, but you still have to be grateful for it because you hope that you would get more next time.” The new chief executive said there’s a need for the aid community to move away from that to viewing aid as more of a contract between responsible adults. “Governments in recipient countries are also politicians. They have difficult constituencies to manage, coalitions to balance, interests to navigate. Let’s approach development partnerships as equals, not as [some sort of] gift giving,” he said. Keeping beneficiaries informed also puts tensions at bay. “People are often concerned, and they are right to be concerned, that aid money can be wasted and in some cases can be stolen. And although in my view only a tiny portion of aid money is in fact stolen, the perception that it might be is really dangerous. Citizens of these countries need that information to be able to make sure that their governments are providing the right services with the money that’s being given to them,” he said. Big year for transparency 2015 means a lot of things for the international development community: the end of the Millennium Development Goals, the birth of a new set of goals, a new year to discuss financing for development, and even new definitions for how donors can classify official development assistance. But it is also an important year for Publish What You Fund, as the campaign expects to make a big push for donors to meet the transparency commitments they made in Busan in 2011 to publish all their aid activities in a common, open standard; the deadline to meet these commitments is by the end of this year. Simons said there’s been a lot of progress, giving due credit to the global campaign, but he agrees the battle toward a more transparent aid system hasn’t reached the finish line yet. “Change is difficult,” he argued, but there are a few things the industry can do to motivate organizations to meet their commitments. One is by monitoring donors’ aid activities and making sure the commitments they made are actually being implemented. To some extent, Publish What You Fund is already doing this with its annual Aid Transparency Index. And then by encouraging a bit of competition, which donor countries can do themselves through peer pressure. “A little bit of competition and a little bit of looking over your shoulder on what you have been doing can be a very powerful motivator at helping people make changes,” Simons said. And then work directly with people who deal with publishing all these aid data information online. “Because frequently, people want to publish their information, want to make it available, but they struggle to access the technology or navigate the systems to make that possible,” he explained. Simons hinted at another type of motivation — recipient governments applying pressure to their donors, although he didn’t elaborate, just saying that the campaign will be talking more about it later in the year. He did admit that this won’t be easy, especially since recipient governments are often expected to be just grateful and uncriticizing of their donors. “It’s very difficult as recipients of aid to get donors to change things, because you are dependent on donors. You need them to be well disposed and generous to you. So often you’ll get finance officials who in private would be critical of donors, but in public are very grateful … because it’s human nature,” he said. “We cannot expect people who receive a large amount of aid, and then turn around and criticize the hand that feeds them. Publish What You Fund can say in public what many others are saying in private.” Check out more insights and analysis provided to hundreds of Executive Members worldwide, and subscribe to the Development Insider to receive the latest news, trends and policies that influence your organization.