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  • 8/10/2019 Report on the Desk Review of Feedback Mechanisms Docx1

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    BackgroundDevelopment Initiatives (DI)PPA project 2011- 2016 requires DI to establish a baseline tobetter understand the community feedback mechanisms used by donors in Uganda and Kenya.The objectives of this workstream are: to determine the number of donors that collect and usecommunity feedback in the design and review of programmes when allocating resources in theEast African region; improve information to specific communities and systems through whichthey can provide feedback and review if this has led to better donor use of information in theirprogramme design and delivery.

    DI believes that information is power. Access to information is central to achieving developmentoutcomes, through promoting choice and empowerment for communities. In turn thecommunities are able to engage with the decisions made on their behalf. Access to information,preferably in transparent, open formats, is a precondition to community feedback - but it is notsufficient. Beyond making information available, aid agencies and other DPs need to activelylisten and engage with feedback received from communities for access to information to really

    result in lasting change and improvements to the lives of people living in poverty.This paper sets out what the initial findings from the desk research and interviews with donors inUganda. It will be followed in due course by findings that will draw on donor responses fromKenya.

    Methodology for baseline surveyThere are two methods DI has used to develop the baseline of donor agencies that capturewhich beneficiary feedback mechanisms are used donor in their aid programmes for specificdonors working in East Africa:

    Desk review research

    Structured meetings with donors to discuss their approach to beneficiary feedbackmechanisms

    The desk review of the donor feedback mechanisms is a method of looking for and analysingdonor feedback online and was essentially meant to analyse which different mechanismsdonors use to capture beneficiary feedback from the projects they implement.

    In the desk review, 15 most prioritised donor agencies that operate within Uganda andelsewhere in East Africa were reviewed. We looked at each donors website; navigate through itto look at the policy or methodology it uses to capture feedback. The key method used wasword search on the publicly available material online. Search terms used were beneficiaryfeedback, community feedback, feedback, beneficiary engagement, community

    engagement, listening to beneficiaries, consultation (with the community/beneficiaries),listening to beneficiaries, etc.

    Briefing

    Baseline survey oncommunity feedback

    mechanisms used by donors

    2014June

    Development Initiatives

    exists to end

    absolute poverty

    by 2030

    www.devinit.org

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    Three meetings were held in the week of 24thMarch 2014 in Kampala to discuss with donorstheir use of community feedback. The meetings were held with the European Union, DFID andthe World Bank.

    A representative from the donor was questioned with the aim of (a) understanding currentpractices on feedback, (b) gathering thoughts on the current practices of donors and (c) gauging

    interest in participation on future discussions on this theme. Questions were adapted to theresponses of recipients. Specific questions asked included:

    Aim Question

    Surveyingcurrentpractices

    - What does feedback mean to your organisation?- Why is feedback important to your organisation?- In what ways do you collect feedback from your beneficiaries?

    (including at which stages of the project cycle, methodologies forcollecting feedback, and impact of this feedback on programming)

    - In what types of activities do you seek beneficiary feedback (projectplanning, project delivery, advocacy activities, etc)?

    - What is your mechanism for response to beneficiary feedback?

    Reflectionon currentpractices

    - What are some of the challenges to further collecting, implementingfeedback and integrating it into programme design?

    - What are the drivers of success or failure of beneficiary feedbackmechanisms? (context, etc)

    - What have you learned from beneficiaries that you wouldnt havelearned otherwise?

    - What are the costs of beneficiary feedback processes?

    Assessinginterest in

    future work

    - What is some of your upcoming work on beneficiary feedback?- What would be the incentives for integrating beneficiary feedback into

    its work in a more systematic way?- What information and evidence would you need to give greater priority

    to feedback?- Would you be interested in learning more about feedback, and

    participating in a discussion on this with other donors?

    Results from the desk researchThe 15 agencies fall into three categories:

    1. Those that have a clear strategy for capturing feedback.2. Those that dont have a clear strategy but have projects where feedback has been

    collected.3. Those that have no feedback strategy and have no feedback captured for any of the

    projects available.

    Seven agencies have a clear and well laid out strategy/policy through which feedback iscollected, some have it covered under the accountability or evaluation function, while othersinclude it in other sectors/ departments. These agencies are: DFID, USAID, World Bank, AfricanDevelopment Fund, Norwegian Refugee Council, DANIDA and SIDA. Some of these agencieswork hard to engage beneficiaries to engage online through functions such as Have your say,Better together or provide your comments. Others have engaged more specifically withcommunities through community discussions to involve community views about a particular

    project that has been implemented so that the project or future projects can be improvedfollowing feedback.

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    Development Initiatives // www.devinit.org 3

    Five agencies fall in the second group of agencies that have no clear strategy but they capturefeedback for some projects but do not have a clear, well thought out strategy on capturing andusing feedback in project evaluation and design. These five agencies are: European Union,JICA, War Child Holland, Netherlands Development Cooperation and Belgium DevelopmentCooperation.

    The last group of donors have no feedback policy or strategy and their websites also had noobvious projects where beneficiaries have had the opportunity to input into the projects by eitherproviding feedback on participating in consultations about the implementation of the project.These three agencies were GIZ, IRISH AID and AFD.

    Results from Interviews with agenciesThe meetings revealed quite different level of experience and practice on community feedbackacross the 3 donors.

    While DFIDis becoming a thought leader among donors on feedback at the headquarter level,this is not necessarily reflected at country office level, where practices on collecting andintegrating feedback are ad-hoc and the topic is often not consider a strategic priority. There is

    no currently no systematic, integrated method of collecting or using feedback in DFID Uganda.DFID staff interviewed had undertaken some very expensive feedback collection training(extensive workshops, etc) that have not necessarily demonstrated huge impact - so themethod was later changed to using other tools such a U-Report (SMS based). This techniquemay have a lower response rate compared to expensive methods, but appears to work muchbetter and the light touch approach is easier to manage.

    One of the programme areas operational in northern Uganda collects feedback throughcommunity leadership structures. As these are often long-term settlements, leadership isrelatively stable and split into committees on particular themes (health, education, etc). Thissystem works very well and allows prioritisation of needs on a rolling basis. One reason why thefeedback loop works well in this context may be because the camp leader is easily accessible,and the beneficiary population are also easily accessible. DFID Uganda would be interested inengaging in a Kampala roundtable on feedback. This seems to be a good country for this kindof discussion, given for example very high mobile phone usage. They were very keen forsomeone from London to join the meeting to ensure joined-up thinking across DFID.

    The World Bankreveals a wealth of experience and know-how on collecting feedback, and ahigh level of investment on collecting feedback, but is less able to show how feedbackinfluences programming. Improving its ability to use feedback strategically is an important stepfollowing President Jim Kimscommitmentto collect feedback on 100% of project.Transparency, access to information and accountability are at the heart of the World Banksagenda in the design and delivery of their programmes. The Bank tries to incorporate feedback

    in a number of its work streams:

    o Follow the money type of work: identification of organisations that would be ableto follow the money, training of media on budget analysis (2012)

    o Country opinion survey: ongoing now, last one was in 2008. But what impact didit have? There are examples of the Bank not acting on feedback received

    o Corruption Hotline (Integrity Section of the Office of Parliament), where anyonecan call the World Bank directly

    o Public list of bad contractorso SMS monitoring systems trialled and to be phased upo Procurement feedback channels... etc: many other channels

    Feedback is prioritised and collected at different stages of project cycle: planning mission,monitoring mission, etc all include component of talking to beneficiaries. However for the Bankthe question is whether feedback is integrated and acted upon? How does the Bank respond to

    http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/speech/2013/10/11/world-bank-group-president-jim-yong-kim-speech-annual-meetings-plenaryhttp://www.worldbank.org/en/news/speech/2013/10/11/world-bank-group-president-jim-yong-kim-speech-annual-meetings-plenaryhttp://www.worldbank.org/en/news/speech/2013/10/11/world-bank-group-president-jim-yong-kim-speech-annual-meetings-plenaryhttp://www.worldbank.org/en/news/speech/2013/10/11/world-bank-group-president-jim-yong-kim-speech-annual-meetings-plenary
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    feedback and go back to its beneficiaries to report on how the feedback helped to makechanges to programmes? These questions still need to be reviewed and answered. Also, thefeedback loop is difficult to close, in the case of the country opinion surveys, beneficiaries areaccessed by a firm rather than World Bank and do not directly communicate with the Bank.Also, there is so much feedback that the Bank has to put in processes to manage the amount offeedback they are collecting. However, currently BFM works as a system of checks for the

    World Bank, where just the existence of these channels acts as a prevention to corruption.

    While the EUhas practically neither experience, nor identifiable high-level commitment onfeedback, there is strong interest in learning in this area. The EU in Uganda has about 20 grantson going with non-state actors but none of them include feedback mechanisms. The intervieweefelt that more could be done in this area, specifically the EU could include a requirement forcommunity feedback as a new element in its call for proposals guidelines. It was felt this mayalso help the EU overcome its lack of visibility with beneficiaries often being unaware of who isfunding the programme. A main question for the EU in this area was around how tocommunicate directly with beneficiaries and what methods were the most effective in openingup this communications and engagement. Overall the EU staff interviewed were very keen toparticipate in future workshops or roundtables on this issue to help them develop their practice

    in this area.

    Areas of particular interest/questions to explore further with the donor agencies include:- Link between country office and head office- how does feedback from country reach into

    head office level?- Are country office and headquarters on the same page on feedback?- What should country office do with feedback once its collected? How can it be more

    strategically integrated into evaluations and programme design? While feedbackcollection is seen as relatively straightforward, the question of how to deal with it in acost-effective way is still open to debate.

    Overall, all three agencies interviewed are interested in knowing what other donors are doing inthis area, and improve their current practices.

    Next stepsSimilar desk research and interviews will be conducted with donors in Kenya too and the resultsof the interviews will be compared to pull out similarities and differences in donor behaviouracross country offices in the region. Other countries may be added to provide more depth ofinformation for the baseline survey.

    Next, specific programmes will seek to increase access to information for beneficiaries andchannels for them to provide feedback also improvedthis will mainly be in Uganda and focuson channels for communication with government directly rather than donors. However, DIs

    policy engagement work will proactively work with key donors to improve their uptake of BFMsand greater integration into their programming. Donors will then be surveyed again to see ifthere has been an improvement in the way they incorporate feedback into this programmedevelopment and delivery.