Disaggregated Budget

[andylolz]

Description

Disaggregated budgets are scored for each of the three years ahead for which they are available.

Approach

This is a hard test to design, because the only available list of countries in which an organisation works is the list of <recipient-country-budget>s. This may or may not be a complete list. We therefore have to look at the total value of <recipient-country-budget>s as a proportion of the <total-budget> for the relevant year - with the value of the <total-budget> reduced to take account of aid that is not allocated to individual countries.

We assessed the value of all recipient country budgets available for the relevant year as a percentage of 50% of the average of Country Programmable Aid (CPA), multiplied by the total budget for the relevant year. If the relevant year was not available, the current year was used instead. In 2016, we used the same fraction for all donors (21.36%). The total points available were distributed equally among the three years.

Example Total budget: USD 1,000 Total country spend per year required for 100% score: USD 213.60 (21.36% was 50% of the average CPA in 2011)

Year	Total country budgets	as % of USD 213.60	Score
Year 1	USD 300	140%	100%
Year 2	USD 150	70%	70%
Year 3	USD 0	0%	0%

Issues identified

We would like to find ways to simplify this test. An alternative method to determine the number of countries in which a country has activities would certainly help. We welcome alternative suggestions for measuring this.

[AndieVaughn]

We do not fully understand the methodology of this test. It appears that the test is attempting to measure if spending matches the reported budget. However, it looks like the test is just measuring how closely a country spending matches a calculated mean. Can you please explain what this test is trying to capture and give a fuller explanation of the methodology. Are you comparing spending against budgets? Does the total budget in the example refer to the agency’s total budget or the country budget and is it summed across 3 years.

We also have concerns about using CPA at all – it is not an accurate measure to see if budget and disbursements align, and there is no proxy for this. Additionally, for the USG, CPA is a historical measure and not a budgetary tool. The USG submits preliminary CPA for Calendar Year 2016 in April 2017. Additionally, CPA tracks transactions by calendar year and not fiscal year – considering on how this diverges, there can be significant differences.

The only information the USG has that gets close to annual budget is the CBJ. However, this is by funding accounts that go across Agencies, and it would be very difficult to isolate agency budgets through the CBJ.

While we understand what PWYF is trying to measure and understand why this could be interesting, but given that it is nearly impossible to measure in a meaningful way, we very strongly recommend that this test be abolished.

Our recommendation is to change the test to see if there is or is not a budget (ie is total budget present?). Assessing accuracy may not feasible.

[ToonVB]

For the Belgian Development Cooperation (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), as indeed for other DAC donors probably, the very idea of "country budgets" itself does not fit into how our budget is organized and how we work. Our budget is not structured on the basis of partner countries (which would allow to add up all country enveloppes to get the full budget) but rather along thematic and "top-channel" lines (direct bilateral, non-governmental, multilateral channels, private sector, humanitarian aid etc).

[johnadamsDFID]

Trying to assess the value of the forward-looking budget seems rather convoluted. The underlying assumptions seem to be a growing or flat-lining budget for specific countries, and that is unrealistic. Like Andie, I would suggest making this a simple binary test of whether a country budget is present or not in future years.

[carlelmstam]

We also see problems we the approach suggested and would also recommend a binary test if country budget is present or not. Carl, Sida

[andylolz]

Many thanks for the comments here.

Based on this feedback, we would like to amend the test in the following way: We will test for forward recipient-country-budgets for all recipient countries where a donor has current activities (this is consistent with #7). As before, we will test for annual budgets for three years forward, and points will be evenly split for each of the three years.