Government report on development assistance results

The Communication is part of work to improve the results-based management of Swedish development assistance and to provide better performance reports for the Riksdag and the general public.

The Communication gives an account of Sweden's international development cooperation and reform cooperation in Eastern Europe. Both Sweden's bilateral and multilateral development assistance is described. The intention is to provide as comprehensive a picture of activities as possible. To provide a context for this report, trends in global and Swedish development assistance over the period 2000-2008 are also described.

"All in all, the Government considers that many of the development assistance initiatives taken have been very useful in relation to the set goals. At the same time, the Communication shows the difficulties in describing the long-term effects of the activities receiving support via Swedish development assistance," says Minister for International Development Cooperation Gunilla Carlsson.

The review shows that the results of development assistance vary. Not all initiatives have been successful and it is important that we learn from the mistakes made.

Like the development cooperation of other donor countries, Swedish development cooperation has not been sufficiently focused on results. The preparation and monitoring of programmes and projects have not focused sufficiently on the results of development cooperation in helping to enable poor people to improve their conditions of life. For this reason, in autumn 2006 the Government began long-term and systematic improvement of management and performance reporting in Swedish development cooperation. The strategies governing cooperation with Sweden's partner countries have been given a clearer focus on results, based on the partner country's goals and results framework. Requirements for monitoring and evaluating initiatives have been made more stringent. Swedish development assistance must make more extensive use of performance data in order to continually improve its activities. An important part of this work is to improve performance reporting to the Riksdag and the general public.

This Communication will make it easier than ever before for Sweden to continue to improve the management of Swedish development assistance and its performance reports. However, much remains to be done.

In many cases it is impossible to establish a causal connection between a specific activity and change. In many of Sweden's partner countries, the conditions for analysing impact are particularly difficult because of partner countries' lack of capacity, poor statistics, etc.

The positive connection between development assistance and development at an aggregated level is also hard to substantiate. It is this cautious assessment of the development impact of Sweden's performance that characterises the reporting in the Communication.

Among the conclusions that can be drawn, the following particularly deserve mention:

1. The results of development assistance should primarily be sought in the context in which they are expected to be effective - when a partner country is to implement a poverty reduction strategy, when child soldiers are to be demobilised after an armed conflict or when democratic actors for change attempt to make themselves heard in a society with authoritarian rule. These are some examples of situations in which development assistance, with its special tools, can be expected to contribute to development.

2. Development assistance initiatives benefit people's lives. This applies to everything from the 44 000 agricultural households in Zambia who have acquired improved food safety and higher incomes as a result of Swedish support in the agricultural sector, to the millions of children who are now receiving elementary schooling in Afghanistan, partly with assistance supported by Sweden.

3. The performance culture in development assistance must be strengthened.

"There are many good examples of development assistance initiatives that have made a difference to people's lives, but we still have a long way to go before we have development assistance that we can prove leads to long-term results. We have done a lot to improve results-based management, but we will now increase our demands both on Sida and ourselves," says Ms Carlsson.

In the next few years the Government intends to select one or a number of aspects of development assistance activities and present in-depth performance analyses in these areas.

The Government's package of measures for more performance-focused development assistance:

1) Implementation of the management model approved by the Government in 2007 will continue. Over time, the Government will take separate decisions on policies and multi-year strategies that govern both bilateral and multilateral development cooperation.

2) In its appropriation directions for 2009, Sida was tasked with establishing as soon as possible a uniform system for results-based management, including a system for assessing development assistance and systematic risk analyses. Sida is to report on its progress in implementing this by 30 September 2009 at the latest.

3) In its appropriation directions for 2009, SADEV was tasked with presenting a proposal for a multi-annual evaluation plan for a selection of the Government's cooperation strategies with individual countries. This was to be done by 15 May 2009. These evaluations could provide the basis for drafting new cooperation strategies.

4) Increased demands on Sida: The focus on expected and actual performance, when preparing, implementing and following up individual programmes and projects must increase. The goals of the activities to which Sweden gives support through each separate initiative must be clarified so that it is subsequently possible to evaluate the extent to which the expected results have been achieved.

5) Greater control over support to multilateral organisations: The quality of performance reporting also differs when it comes to multilateral organisations, depending on the efficiency of each organisation's system for results-based management. This is one of the factors analysed in the assessments that the Government is now making of these organisations' relevance and effectiveness. Where there are shortfalls, Sweden is working to improve the quality and reliability of reporting by discussions in each organisation's board or via other dialogue channels in the organisation.

6) Increased international cooperation: Work on evaluation must be made more systematic and the quality of individual evaluations must be raised. Evaluating the long-term impact of a specific activity is difficult and often expensive. Greater efforts will therefore be made to perform evaluations together with other donors.