Accountability
This page provides an overview of the accountability regime that is in place to manage the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)’s development program in Afghanistan.
Context
Accountability for results is an integral part of the Government’s aid effectiveness agenda. It is important that the Canadian public be assured that public funds are well spent in Afghanistan.
CIDA supports a number of successful programs in Afghanistan whose results are publicly available. Nation-building and development in Afghanistan takes time. There are always uncertainties and risks. CIDA and other donors must take into account the reality of Afghanistan’s currently weak institutional capacity, both governmental and non-governmental, to plan and implement development and reconstruction projects as well as the country’s ongoing internal conflict and instability. These realities pose financial, operational and developmental challenges for CIDA’s Afghanistan program.
Response to the Challenge
To meet this challenge, CIDA has put in place a rigorous accountability regime for the Afghanistan program based on CIDA and Treasury Board rules, regulations and established procedures as well as international best practice. Financial accountability and risk management are integral to every part of CIDA’s programming cycle, from project selection and design through to implementation, monitoring of progress and evaluation of results.
Canada also works with other donors and the Afghan government to set appropriate standards for accountability and transparency for major multi-donor initiatives and overall progress against the Afghanistan Compact. There are regular performance updates, third-party evaluations, and audits of key multi-donor initiatives. There is a biannual report of progress against the Afghanistan Compact benchmarks. Members of the public, in both Afghanistan and Canada, can see monthly performance updates of key Afghan programs, such as the microfinance initiative MISFA. They can download periodic – third-party evaluations of these programs, and can review the semi-annual assessments of progress against Afghan Compact benchmarks.
While these actions are aimed at reducing risk, due to the operating environment in Afghanistan, neither CIDA nor any other donor can eliminate risk altogether. CIDA’s goal in employing a mixture of internal and external controls is to ensure that we can fully account for funds spent and results obtained in Afghanistan. Where results are strong we will do more. Where risks are identified, we take corrective actions or shift our investment to initiatives that are showing better results.
In this way, CIDA is meeting Canada’s reconstruction and development commitment to the people of Afghanistan, while meeting our accountability commitment to the people of Canada.
Details of Accountability and Oversight Processes
CIDA’s accountability and oversight regime can be best explained at three levels:
i) CIDA Project Initiatives Oversight
ii) CIDA Country-Program Level Oversight
iii) Afghan Compact Oversight
I) CIDA Project Initiatives Oversight
CIDA exercises close oversight on every project it is involved with in Afghanistan. CIDA provides support to three types of initiatives in Afghanistan: Afghan national programs overseen by reputable international partners, multilateral humanitarian initiatives and CIDA-managed projects.
I A) Supporting National Programs by Working with Multilateral Institutions
Along with other major donors, CIDA supports Afghan-designed national programs whose delivery is overseen by reputable multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) through trust funds. This has proven to be an effective way to mitigate and manage the fiduciary, operational and developmental risks in Afghanistan due to the country’s weak institutional base.
Over the past few years, a large portion of CIDA funding has gone through these channels, including the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), the National Solidarity Program (NSP), the Microfinance Investment Support Facility for Afghanistan (MISFA) and the Mine Action Program (UNMAS). The first three programs are overseen by the World Bank and the last one is overseen by UNMAS.
These programs have effective and proven accountability and oversight systems in place. The principal elements of the multilateral accountability and oversight regime include:
- Regular monitoring of national programs by multilateral staff and contracted monitoring agents. Quarterly progress reports are shared with all participating donors. For example, Canada receives quarterly progress reports from the World Bank and UNDP on the progress of the ARTF, NSP and MISFA and National Area-Based Development Program (NABDP). These progress reports provide detailed updates on projects, identify performance problems and recommend corrective action.
- Regularly scheduled supervision missions led by World Bank and UN technical specialists to review progress towards results. In several cases, CIDA staff have participated in such supervisory missions.
- Regularly scheduled audits of national programs, undertaken by independent auditors. The World Bank, for example, is required to produce an annual management assertion together with an attestation from the Bank’s external auditors on the satisfactory performance of the procedure and controls used by the Bank in administering the grant funds. With the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), the World Bank has engaged an independent firm, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, to act as a monitoring agent. Audit findings are shared with contributing donors and are reviewed by senior management and the Board of Directors at, for example, the World Bank.
- Regular mid-term and end-of-project evaluations of national programs commissioned by the respective multilateral institutions. Many of these evaluations (e.g. for NSP or MISFA) are made public. In addition, when deemed necessary, special evaluations can be commissioned. CIDA has been an active participant in the review of such evaluations (for example, for the Afghanistan Stabilization Program).
- Annual meetings to review the operation of all Trust Funds (e.g., ARTF, NSP) where the full range of project information - quarterly progress reports, supervision missions, audits and evaluations - are discussed by all funding agencies, including CIDA.
I B) Humanitarian Assistance
CIDA works closely in Afghanistan with our traditional multilateral humanitarian assistance partners, the World Food Programme (WFP), the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF - all of which have significant delivery capacity on the ground in Afghanistan. At present, CIDA has provided grants to WFP and UNICEF who are delivering food and non-food aid to both internally displaced persons (IDPs) and conflict-affected communities in Kandahar while WHO is delivering a polio vaccination program to children in Afghanistan, including Kandahar Province. While the accountability and oversight regime of these UN agencies is similar to the multilateral processes described above, the very nature of the work performed by these humanitarian agencies requires different processes:
- Monitoring and reporting on results is done on an annual basis rather than quarterly. CIDA officers complement this reporting by periodic field visits to review project implementation of CIDA-supported field operations.
- WFP, WHO and UNICEF all have internal audit and evaluation functions which are active in reporting to their senior management and Executive Boards.
- In addition to internal evaluations, these humanitarian agencies are also subject to broad-based multi-donor financed evaluations.
I C) CIDA-Managed Project Initiative Oversight
CIDA has a series of rigorous procedures in place to ensure effective accountability and oversight from project design to final implementation.
- At the design phase, CIDA carries out various feasibility and risk assessments and detailed planning of each project initiative in order to establish a comprehensive accountability and results reporting framework for the project. CIDA assesses the possible partners to determine their management capacity to deliver the project and establishes an overall monitoring and evaluation approach and milestones before project implementation begins.
- Oversight during implementation includes quarterly financial and progress reporting by the implementing organization as well as annual project performance reports that detail progress made against expected results established in the project design document.
- Project review committees (PRCs) are comprised of the CIDA project team leader and implementation partners periodically review project progress, propose necessary adjustments and develop annual work plans. Given the difficult environment in Kandahar, our grant agreements with partners in Kandahar contain provisions for PRCs on a monthly basis, usually with our field staff in Kandahar.
- CIDA reinforces its oversight with the periodic use of resources external to the Asia Branch or to CIDA. CIDA may commission third-party monitoring and evaluation reports .Financial compliance audits may be carried out by CIDA’s internal Financial Compliance Unit. Other audits may be commissioned by CIDA’s Internal Audit Division either as part of the Agency’s audit plan or as requested by the Branch or by CIDA’s corporate office.
In sum, this accountability and oversight regime allows CIDA to ensure progress towards development results, assure appropriate risk management and financial reporting and to make necessary project adjustments on a timely basis.
II) Program-level Oversight
In addition to tight oversight and control at the project level, CIDA has an oversight and accountability framework for the entire Afghanistan Program.
- In accordance with Treasury Board regulations, CIDA has a Results and Risk Management and Accountability Framework (RRMAF) for the period 2004-2009. This forms the basis for CIDA to monitor and review the implementation of the Afghanistan program against expected results.
- Since July 2005, CIDA has commissioned three operational evaluations by third-parties of CIDA’s entire Afghanistan Program and related reports carried out by third parties. These evaluations, together with CIDA’s oversight at the initiative level, have assisted the team in identifying new opportunities or required corrective actions within specific initiatives. They have also assisted the team in making decisions to reallocate funds from low performance to high-performance initiatives. For example, after review of relative performance, the entire budgetary allocation for an underperforming initiative (the Afghanistan Stabilization Program) was reallocated to the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund.
- As part of Treasury Board’s RRMAF requirements, CIDA’s internal Evaluation Division has commissioned an operational review of the Afghanistan program by third-party consultants. This review is complete and the findings have been made public.
III) Afghan Compact Country Level Oversight
The international donor community, including Canada, are active participants in country level oversight in collaboration with the government of Afghanistan using the Afghanistan Compact framework. These mechanisms include:
- Canada sits on the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board (JCMB) that meets every six months to review progress made against the Afghanistan Compact targets.
- Canada is a member of several JCMB Sectoral Consultative Groups including governance and rule of law, security, and agricultural and rural development.
- Canada is also a member of the External Advisory Group (EAG) in Kabul that provides coordinated donor input to the deliberations of the JCMB. In fact, CIDA chaired the EAG in the lead up to the Afghanistan Compact.
- Canada is a leading participant in the Afghanistan Development Forum held regularly in Afghanistan where development officials from donor countries and senior ministers from Afghanistan discuss both policy and performance issues.
