Slide 1

Civil Society in a changing landscape -Presentation to the University of Sussex

Roy Trivedy,Head Civil Society Department8 March 2012

Slide 2

Objectives

• Key changes landscape of international development - how are these affecting civil society?

• How CSOs are responding to challenges and opportunities?

• Flag some areas where researchers and academia could assist more effectively

Slide 3

Changing Global Context• 3 Years to 2015 - review of MDGs • Economic downturn • Climate and environment challenges

• Rise of emerging powers• Poverty in MICs and countries affected by

conflict

• Humanitarian work –Pakistan floods, East Africa famine, changes in MENA global economic downturn

• Poor facing: Food, fuel and financial crises • Impact at home and overseas.. cuts in public

spending, pressure on public giving, aid flows and remittances

Slide 4

UK Government response• Dealing with the budget deficit

• Structural Reform Plan

• Push for more efficient public services

• Stronger Commercial ethos

• ‘Big Society’ not ‘Big Government’

• Bribery Act 2010• Commitment to meet UN aid

target of 0.7 of GNI in 2013

DFID

• BAR, MAR & HERR • Focus on:

Results, Outcomes and Impact Evidence based work Value for Money Transparency Women and Girls Learning ..better practice

• Independent Commission on Aid Impact (ICAI)

Slide 5

Why work with Civil Society?

“CSOs help relieve poverty by reaching disadvantaged groups and geographical areas that governments often fail to reach”

“CSOs can respond quickly and flexibly to humanitarian needs and are often better at supporting particular groups of poor”

• Important to protect ‘space’ for vibrant civil society

• But limited evidence of: (i) CSOs (individually or collectively) enabling chronically poor to

organise and do things for themselves;(ii) CSOs consistently performing more effectively than other aid

modalities

Slide 6

Objectives for DFID’s work with civil society

1. Deliver goods and services2. Empower citizens to be more effective in holding

governments to account and to do things for themselves

3. Influence policies at national, regional and international levels including on aid effectiveness

4. Build and maintain space for active civil society5. Promote public support for development by

encouraging UK citizens to contribute internationally

Slide 7

DFID NepalDFID Afghanistan

DFID IndonesiaDFID Ethiopia

DFID Uganda

Latin America

Middle East, Caribbean, North Asia Division£23M

Climate & Environment

Research & Evidence

Evaluation Department

Communications Division

Central£242M

DFID£515M

Country Programmes

£273M

Europe & Donor Relations

Trade Policy Unit

Policy &Research

Directorate£175M

Civil Society Dept.£141M

Human Development

Governance &Social Development

Growth & Investment

Pan-Africa Strategy & Programmes£40M

Other

Liberia

DFID Zimbabwe

DFID Zambia

DFID GhanaDFID Sierra Leone

DFID DRC

DFID Mozambique

DFID Malawi

DFID NigeriaWest & Southern

£63M

Other

DFID TanzaniaDFID Rwanda

DFID Sudan

DFID Burundi

East & Central£67M

Africa Regional Department

Africa Conflict & Humanitarian

DFID Southern Africa

Africa£170M

Other Iraq

DFID CambodiaDFID Caribbean & Nicaragua

DFID Vietnam

Other

DFID Pakistan

DFID Bangladesh

DFID IndiaSouth Asia

Division£80M

DFID Kenya & Somalia

Conflict, Humanitarian and Security

= Fragile State

= PSA Country

= Budget Support Country

= PSA & Budget Support Country

Other

MultilateralsMinimum £160M

EC

UNDP

World Bank

Slide 8

Key changes in DFID’s work with Civil Society

• Balance between support for small, medium and larger CSOs

• More competition, stronger focus on outcomes, outputs and VfM

• DFID focal countries + HDI bottom 50

• Increasing focus on tangible results/less on campaigning work

• Ceiling on central funding to CSOs - max 40% of org income

• Transparency Guarantee

• Introduction of new ‘Business Cases’ to justify investments

• Increased pre contract due diligence

• Encouraging matched and performance based funding

• Emphasis on use of evidence and independent evaluations

• Aiming to generate learning, sharing and better practice

Slide 9

How are CSOs responding?

• The example of Sniff, Scurry, Hem and Haw…

“Who Moved My Cheese” by Spencer Johnson (1998)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEH6fvU8i7o&feature=related

Slide 10

Results and ‘theory of change’

• Improved understanding of what works - judgement based on the strength of evidence supporting interventions

“An intervention will begin with a belief about how it will work – but the process through which programme inputs lead to outputs, and outputs covert to the Outcome and Impact, often remains opaque (‘the black box’ of the change process). This needs to be articulated, and its theoretical foundations made explicit….”

DFID Revised Business Case How to Note,

August 2011

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What are we learning?

•Be explicit about all the causal links between each stage between inputs, outputs, short and long term outcomes

•Spell out assumptions – about causality/theory, programme implementation and external factors

•Indicate evidence (or lack of it) for each causal link and seek beneficiary feedback

“I think you should be more explicit here in Stage 2…”

Slide 12

Improving Value for Money

•VfM means maximising the impact of every £1 spent to improve poor people’s lives …not necessarily doing the least cost option or easiest to measure thing

•Aims to develop understanding of costs of delivering work to enable better informed, evidence based choices to be made

•Challenge to know the cost of inputs; develop better ways to assess ‘value’; and consider ‘opportunity costs’

•A process of continuous improvement

Slide 13

Evaluation Systems and Practice

• Due Diligence work shows ..

“Patchy systems and practice” across civil society (UK and Global)

• Some strong examples

• But generally need for more systematic, research guided interventions - to put ‘evidence into use’

• Investment needed to improve systems that contribute to better practice

Slide 14

Responding to the Aid Transparency Challenge

• Bond Survey Jan 2012 -

Which information does your organisation intend to publish in the IATI format?

Slide 15

Valuing Learning

•Establishment of a new DFID/CS ‘Learning Partnership’

•Focusing on: Empowerment and Accountability Inclusion Resilience Institutional Effectiveness

•Challenge to assess how the learning leads to better practice!

Slide 16

Next steps

• Portfolio Review refresh (June 2012)

• Mid term evaluations of key CS programmes used to allocate DFID resources and design new programmes

• ICAI Review (end of 2012)