The SSC Review of NZAID

An article by Frank    No Comments

The Don’t Corrupt Aid campaign has raised awareness of possible changes to New Zealand’s government aid agency, NZ Aid.

The concern was/is predominantly two-fold. The first is that the government was seeking to fold NZ Aid back into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, thus removing its semi-autonomous status. It has been argued that this would reduce the effectiveness of our aid dollars. The second concern was around the shifting of the aim of NZ Aid away from Poverty Eradication to Economic Development.

There are previous posts dealing with these issues, what I would like to clarify here is the nature of the review currently underway. It has been recognised by some that NZ Aid rightly needs to be reviewed with the aim of making it more effective. It has some very serious defficiencies, but the accusation was being put forward that any understanding that the government was looking to fold NZ Aid back into MFAT was simply media alarmism and that reviews of NZ Aid to simply increase its effectiveness and improve it are worth-while.

I agree that reviews to simply improve NZ Aid and their use of money are to be welcomed, but that is not what has been happening.

Under the Official Information Act it has been found by CiD (Council for International Development) that the State Services Commission has not been asked to review NZ Aid or Aid policy to make it more effective. I will not offer any opinion as I am writing this to simply clarify much of the discussion happening in the public sphere about what is actually happening and what reviews are taking place. According to the information, the improvement of NZ Aid is not the official directive of the information being asked for from the State Services Commission.

The following is the response from the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs to each of the emails that has been sent about this issue since the story began:

Dear…

Thank you for your email expressing concern about the future of NZAID.

Prior to the 2008 election, National’s policy statement drew attention to serious concerns about the management of NZAID, and promised that we would ‘review the operation of agencies that deliver aid to ensure that aid expenditure is effective and efficiently delivered’. That is the process that we are now engaged in.

Reviews of the structure and mandate of NZAID are currently being undertaken by both the chief executive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the State Services Commissioner, in response to those pre-election commitments.

That work should be completed prior to the 2009 Budget.

I appreciate the time you have taken in writing to me to express your views, and I can assure you that the points raised by you and the NGO community at large will be given careful consideration before any final decisions are made.

Yours sincerely,
Hon Murray McCully
Minister of Foreign Affairs

The following is the information supplied to CiD under the Official Information Act that shows that the mandate of the current information request to the State Services Commission does not aim to “review the operation of agencies that deliver aid to ensure that aid expenditure is effective and efficiently delivered”, but rather simply aims to ”develop advice… about a way to ensure greater integration of NZ Aid within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.” The Minister may very well see this as the best way to deliver the aims of efficiency and effectiveness, and I am not questioning that in this article, but the information asked for from the State Services Commission has clearly not been asked for in direct relation to that, they have not been asked to review NZ Aid. The State Services Commission is not reviewing NZ Aid.

This will clear up the understanding in the public about what the aims of the current review are. I have blacked out names for privacy even though I may not have needed to. Click on the images for the full size versions that are more readable: