Photo by: REUTERS / Stefan Wermuth LONDON — The U.K. development community has begun the year with more questions than answers about the fate of the After the Conservative Party won a landslide victory in December’s election, speculation mounted that a newly empowered Prime Minister Boris Johnson would merge DFID with the “Diverting aid towards U.K. foreign policy, commercial and political objectives would undermine the U.K.’s global influence at a critical moment.”Devex looks at the cases of Canada, Australia, and Norway — which have all seen their development departments merged with their foreign offices — to understand the impact on aid.The turnabout is “the best piece of #globaldev news,” Samy Ahmar, head of health at But the celebrations were short-lived, as just 24 hours later, While many aid advocates see this as preferable to eliminating the department completely, it still raises fears about what it would mean for the quality and poverty focus of U.K. aid.“Diverting aid towards U.K. foreign policy, commercial and political objectives would undermine the U.K.’s global influence at a critical moment, and this remains a real risk if DFID is merged or loses its dedicated Secretary of State,” wrote Stephanie Draper — CEO of “Both [DFID and FCO] are important departments with complex portfolios and have distinct but at times complementary roles that need dedicated attention. Blue Dot Network participants – from the public, private and civil society sectors – believe in building and financing quality infrastructure projects. In this Some DFID programmes address very complex problems with structurally simple approaches, particularly when the management workload can be moved onto a single, trusted organisation, such as funding a local organisation which DFID has worked with for many years.Therefore, matching programme aims to available delivery partners is key to mitigating workload. While questions of management may seem mundane, these decisions ultimately shape whether and how DFID has the right ambition, skills and resources to deliver on its mission to reduce poverty and tackle conflict around the world. Getting a programme approved can be burdensome and time consuming. A ‘good-enough’ programme design, with a trusted experienced partner to manage it, may be more effective than an ideal intervention that requires a bespoke delivery mechanism but lacks the right partners to deliver it.What counts as a ‘trusted delivery partner’ is not fixed however. She has previously worked as a writer, researcher and editor for Prospect magazine, The Telegraph and Bloomberg News, among other outlets. OAA (0 . These inevitably require adjustments to plans and activities, which often trigger bureaucratic processes that are not set up to support adaptive ways of working.Moving actual management responsibility to partners can free DFID staff up to work on policy influencing to leverage greater change, rather than being bogged down with micro-management.Different programmes require different roles of management.If the intervention is such that you can be confident of its success, then effective management is efficient management: delivering that intervention with minimal possible overhead management costs. January 2019 . Get development's most important headlines in your inbox every day.Jessica Abrahams is Devex's Deputy News Editor. DFID’s new Secretary of State, Rory Stewart, has previously shown a willingness to get into the weeds, including arguing that DFID needs to maintain a sense of simplicity in how it operates. Although officials have confirmed to the media that plans to merge DFID and FCO have been abandoned, 10 Downing Street did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the issue, or about the state of play surrounding Cabinet positions.Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Cabinet Office said simply that things will continue as normal until an announcement is made.A social enterprise, we connect and inform 1,012,000+ development, health, humanitarian, and sustainability professionals through news, business intelligence, and funding & career opportunities so you can do more good for more people. He requested the support of the UK in overcoming this difficulty. Trade Union calls re European Negotiations on … I am pleased to be here in Nigeria in the run-up to next year’s elections.It is an incredibly important time for the country, and I have seen the passi DFID ADVERTISEMENT Home Neglected management risks bad programmes.Part of the problem in achieving realistic ambition sits in the incentives for programme approval. The best way to ensure U.K. aid continues to help the world’s most vulnerable people is to have a dedicated Secretary of State for International Development,” Draper said.Compared with a merger, the arrangement would reduce the chance of staff dismissals and the exodus of aid expertise A former senior DFID official told Devex that it could mean a return to something like the situation before DFID was created in 1997, when aid was administered and managed by a distinct body — the Overseas Development Administration — which sat within FCO and reported at the Cabinet level to the foreign secretary.However, the former official cautioned that the new dynamics of U.K. aid spending — which has seen Despite the various news reports, the government is not expected to announce details of any reorganization until after the U.K. leaves the EU at the end of January. Development works and achieves tangible outcomes; both for the poor and for the advancement of the United Kingdom’s national interest. The new DFID Secretary of State has in the past been sceptical about UK aid, with comments and retweets indicating she questioned the priorities of spending taxpayers' money helping the poor overseas. However, the new Secretary of State and DFID’s Chief Economist rightly identify a risk in addressing complexity with more complexity.
There is a growing evidence base that supporting greater autonomy can be more efficient, both in terms of management workloads and There are incentives within DFID to be as ambitious as possible within programmes. Our ref: 190305 . Dear Douglas. Development challenges may have multiple drivers but that does not mean programmes should have multiple elements. A listair Burt, MP for North East Bedfordshire and a minister at the Department for International Development (Dfid) ... “I do think that he will be a good secretary of state.