By Julian Dierkes

Global Affairs Canada has called for input on a review of development assistance.

Given this blog’s focus on direct diplomacy, it is more than appropriate to consider the potential contributions that direct diplomacy and the utilization of social media and information technology more broadly could make on Canada’s international development assistance.

Thinking Out Loud in Policy-Making

I’m hoping to make a case for more transparent processes in policy development across foreign policy elsewhere. I strongly believe that more open processes of decision-making should include more public deliberations about policy options where these are appropriate. This seems to me to be very much the case with development policy. For example, if the current international development assistance review results in a decision to maintain some list of countries-of-focus, should the composition of that list not be open to discussion? If some platform can be found for thinking out loud that gives access to different voices, but possibly also moderates contributions to prevent the kind of trolling that makes many online discussions less-than-productive, both, the criteria for a list of countries of focus as well as the actual countries could be discussed more transparently. Surely, many of these criteria (particularly urgent needs or destitute populations, in line with the focus on poverty alleviation for development assistance, but perhaps also some larger foreign policy goals that could determine inclusion such as building on strengths in broader relations, support for democracy, or a regional balance) could be open to a reasonable public discussion.

How Beneficiary Needs Are Assessed Now

Development assistance has been battling a perception that it is partly a neo-colonial exercise in making developing countries aid-dependent, forcing them to adopt socio-political principles that they would not adopt on their own, or serving the commercial interests of OECD producers and exporters. One of the counter-measures to this perception is that Canadian aid is meant to be targeting areas of need that have been identified by developing country governments.

Apart from bigger questions surrounding the independence of that decision of targeting specific areas, and of aid dependency, etc. how is this identification by beneficiary governments documented? Typically, by letters from this beneficiary government that confirm that, yes, indeed, a project on sector X in our country Y will be very welcome.

The limitations to this approach should be obvious:

1. It presupposes democratic governance that allows the people a voice in the determination and expression of their needs.
2. The production of these letters can devolve into a negotiation with beneficiary governments giving rise to corruption and nepotism in the implementation of projects.
3. Did the beneficiary government have an alternative? I.e. if the Canadian government announces a further strengthening of its focus on maternal health, but a beneficiary government actually thinks that health care for the elderly is a more pressing problem, will it turn down a project on maternal health with the funding, job opportunities, and attention attached to that? So how genuine is this confirmation of a need?
4. Finally, the supply of ministerial letters is an area where development professionals acquire specialized skills and a Rolodex of contacts that allows them to produce such letters, whether they demonstrate a meaningful engagement with the initiative at hand, or not.

What’s the Alternative?

Even if ministerial letters as demonstration of beneficiary demands for a specific project have some clear limitations, the demonstration of such demands cannot be abandoned unless development assistance would consider some kind of parallel structure to the individual guaranteed minimum income.

It seems to me that the amalgamation of CIDA into DFATD offers opportunities to leverage the overall larger structure to solicit input from targeted populations directly, relying on social media and other information technology. Such direct engagement of beneficiary populations should be integrated into decision-making on international development assistance.

Some Prerequisites for Direct Engagement

I don’t think that even a wholesale embrace of direct engagement as a complement to governmental expressions of need could be implemented overnight, obviously, or even over the short term. Some of the pieces that would be required for this are missing and can not be created very quickly. But, that does not mean that this is not a direction that the government of Canada should embrace and aim for in changing its procedures over the next, say, five years.

We currently don’t yet have platforms that would allow beneficiary populations to express their views on the urgency of specific needs to be addressed by development assistance. But, a) we assume that beneficiary populations would have views on specific needs, and b) the technological infrastructure required to allow for such expressions is being built in the form of the spread of smartphones, for example.

At the same time, the increasing presence of Global Affairs in social media is building the basis/channels for the utilization of platforms for direct engagement once such platforms are developed.

If Global Affairs continue to push toward a more substantive engagement with stakeholders through social media across diplomacy, trade promotion AND development assistance, direct engagement with targeted populations will be possible in the future.

What Might Direct Engagement Look Like

Imagine a Global Affairs mission in a country that has been identified as a target for development assistance. Or, imagine a sector or topic that has been identified as a focus for activities.

Then imagine a platform that allows for the sharing of some initial thoughts about new projects, hosted either by that mission or by Global Affairs in Ottawa, but with strong local mission involvement. Specify potential budget envelopes, give examples of previous projects in this  country or in this sector, ideally some thought pieces by experts (local and international) assessing areas of need, some links to currently active development assistance projects implemented with funding from other donors (hopefully available via the Intl Aid Transparency Initiative). Obviously, all these materials would have to be available in local language(s).

With such information in place, all kinds of interactions, in-person, on social media, could be possible. They could involve various voting schemes, comments, discussions, etc. There could be public workshops that would collaborate to build an overall logic model (or, ideally some version thereof that doesn’t require a PhD in Development Studies). Public events could be planned and organized to engage specific communities directly.

Such engagement would potentially produce an overwhelming amount of responses, so that the processing and digesting of these responses could be laborious. But if the amount of responses is great, that would also suggest that conclusions from this process could be quite robust. Also, organizations who involve themselves in the process would be potential collaborators, people who get involved could also be involved in implementation… Yes, ambitious, but even a trial implementation in a specific country or region could yield a lot of information about potential projects and make such projects more specific to populations’ needs.

Recommendation

In the long term, Canadian international assistance should seek to develop new ways to integrate beneficiary populations’ views on their needs into policy-making. Social media platforms would have to be developed to make best use of the potential for communication technologies to enable this engagement.