New Inquiry: DFID's Annual Report and Accounts 2013-14

• Trends in DFID expenditure – including the level of spending on:
  o Multilateral organisations,
  o humanitarian assistance: is it proportionate; is the UK undertaking  too great a share compared to other OECD countries?
  o bilateral country programmes, in particular the desirability of reductions in spending on country programmes in Africa; the process for determining country budgets and whether too much is allocated to resource-rich and middle income countries; and DFID’s dialogue and partnership with and ability to influence developing country Governments.

Further areas of interest: 

• Trends in ODA spending by non DFID departments, including how DFID ensures ODA managed by other Departments is compliant with the International Development Act 2002 and OECD definition?
• DFID’s management of the 0.7% ODA target – what DFID did to deliver the 2013 target, and challenges it is now facing in delivering 2014 ODA; the profile of DFID’s spending in-year and factors leading to the increase in spending at calendar year-end; and success in developing a strong pipeline of projects.
• Centrally managed programmes: nature, advantages and disadvantages, and management of, including whether DFID should develop its own expertise to manage more of these programmes in house.
• DFID’s reform of its approach to project and programme delivery: nature and scale of the reforms, progress, monitoring of reforms and whether changes in rules have led to a change in culture, in particular whether DFID has managed to ensure staff spend less time on designing and preparing business cases and more on monitoring and implementation.
• How effectively DFID works with contractors, NGOs and multilaterals, including the transparency and accountability of its framework agreements and whether it is able to engage effectively with small organisations.
• Payment-by-results: the effectiveness of the initiative.
• Whether DFID's current staffing levels are adequate and whether existing staff are best deployed in the light of new demands such as: fostering development cooperation; working with smaller organisations as well as managing large contracts; and whether staff have the right skills, including political and negotiating skills and language skills and whether length of postings are appropriate.
  

The Committee invites short written submissions from interested organisations and individuals. The deadline for this is Monday 8 December. The Committee will consider requests for reasonable adjustments to its usual arrangements for taking evidence and publishing material, to enhance access. Please contact indcom@parliament.uk or telephone 020 7219 1223.

Please note

As part of a scheme to encourage paperless working and maximize efficiency, the Committee is piloting a new web portal for online submissions of written evidence. Written submissions for this inquiry should therefore be sent via the International Development Committee website- Please click the evidence form to submit written evidence.

Written evidence submitted should:

Have a one page summary at the front
Be no longer than 3000 words in length
Have numbered paragraphs
Avoid the use of colour or expensive-to-print material