Measuring Accountability in Aid Effectiveness: What and How to Monitor

Government and private sector aid to improve health in developing countries has met with mixed success. There is no general consensus on what delivers guaranteed success in aid and development assistance, or on standards of accountability, sustainability of results, or measures of return on the investment. In 2007 an APHA panel explored various efforts to establish accountability measures for donor aid, from the perspectives of representatives from international donors, aid recipients, and activists within the framework and principles of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. The principles of the Paris Declaration are: Ownership, Harmonization, Alignment, Results and Mutual Accountability. This presentation will be part of panel presentation and contribute by presenting a simple model to decide what and how to monitor accountability and aid effectiveness. Taking monitoring and evaluation methods to a new level of individual and organizational accountability, the author presents a number of tools for donors, countries and development organizations to adhere to the principles of the Paris Declaration signed by over a hundred countries and international agencies in 2005. The author will describe a model based on the principles of quality, efficiency and consistency, and discuss pros and cons of various tools to decide what and how to monitor aid effectiveness: stakeholder analysis, accountability trees and worksheets, success milestones, health scorecards, value-added analysis, process maps and impact/effort worksheets, etc.