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CDA Collaborative Learning Projects (CDA) would like to share a new and enlightening report on “Feedback Mechanisms in International Assistance Organizations.” This report was motivated by the desire heard over and over from people in aid recipient societies to provide feedback—and to hear from aid agencies—about their efforts. In over 20 Listening Exercises conducted around the world, many people said they were often asked to provide information during assessments, consultations, monitoring visits, or evaluations, but felt that they had not been genuinely listened to, and rarely received a response. As a consequence, they thought that opportunities were missed to share important feedback on the effects of aid efforts, agencies’ performance, and other important issues related to the accountability and effectiveness of international assistance.

These findings prompted the Listening Project to undertake supplementary research to assess other types of feedback mechanisms that international assistance organizations have used and what lessons could be learned about their effectiveness. Some key findings from the report are highlighted below:

Ø Getting feedback from aid recipients is valued by aid providers as an important indicator of accountability and one of the ways to improve the effectiveness of international assistance efforts.

Ø The utilization of systematic feedback processes is not widespread. Even as many implementing agencies work to establish feedback mechanisms, obstacles remain to their influence on institutional policies and practices. These include:

· Lack of management buy-in to provide the resources for effective feedback processes.

· Most feedback processes focus on project-level information.

· Weak skills and capacity of staff and partners to implement and utilize feedback mechanisms.

· Few agency-wide feedback mechanisms prompt systemic changes.

· Poor documentation of good practices in designing, utilizing and evaluating feedback mechanisms.

Ø Recommendations for establishing and maintaining feedback mechanisms include:

· Ensuring that senior leaders are committed to receiving and utilizing feedback from aid recipients, and that they provide adequate resources to gather and respond to it.

· Building feedback mechanisms into other institutional processes (i.e. strategic planning, M&E, institutional learning, staff and partner performance management, etc.).

· Closing the feedback loop to respond in a timely manner (agencies need to consider how this will be managed before establishing a feedback mechanism).

· Investing in documentation of feedback mechanisms, their influence on decisions, and lessons learned—and sharing it.

CDA is encouraged by the interest in improving approaches to gather, utilize, and respond to feedback from aid recipients. At a global level, DAC members have expressed an unequivocal commitment to give aid recipients greater voice in decisions affecting their lives, inter alia, through the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005), Accra Agenda for Action (2008) and the Principles and Good Practices of Humanitarian Donorship (2003). Bilaterally, donors have made similar commitments, including the recent UK Government response to the Humanitarian Emergency Response Review (2011), which committed to ‘make beneficiary accountability a core element of DFID’s humanitarian work’. Civil society organizations have long championed the voices of those on the receiving end of aid and have reiterated these commitments in the Istanbul Principles on CSO Development Effectiveness (2010).

The time is ripe to reinvigorate these commitments during the upcoming 4th High Level Forum on Development Effectiveness in Busan to meet the demand by those in aid recipient societies for opportunities to provide feedback.

CDA invites you to read this report, to share it with your colleagues and partners, and to give us your thoughts and suggestions on how to improve the effective use of feedback mechanisms by donors, governments and civil society organizations in the future.

Please direct feedback and inquiries to Candice Montalvo, cmontalvo@cdainc.com