Help increase the effectiveness of UK aid

By Ben Anderson @ 2024-10-02T18:27 (+107)

(You can read this post as a Google Doc, which may be easier to share with global health focused non-EAs)

Hi all, my name is Benjamin Anderson and I am currently leading work to coordinate the UK EA community to make individual submissions to a consultation on UK aid. 

The main purpose of this post is to ask for input on the arguments that we will be making, both feedback/expansion on the arguments we already have, and suggestions for further points. The secondary purpose of this post is to advertise the online workshop that I will be running on October 14th to support people to make submissions to the consultation. 

What’s the public consultation?

The Independent Commission for Aid Impact is running a public consultation on the future of its work, so that it can ‘maximise its effectiveness and ensure the government is held to account’. ICAI is a public body that is responsible for examining the effectiveness and value for money of the UK’s aid spend.

The consultation ends on October 16th and asks four specific questions: 

1. Which aspects of the UK's aid programme are the highest priority for review?
2. How can we improve the ways in which we examine the effectiveness and value for money of the UK's aid programme? Is there anything that you would find useful from ICAI that we do not already provide?
3. How can we improve how we communicate about our work and make our reports accessible to more people?
4. Do you have any other views on ICAI that you would like to share?

It is worth noting that the consultation “will not consider questions on the size and allocation of the UK’s aid budget.”

Why am I coordinating submissions for this consultation?

I am leading this work as I have been involved in similar efforts in the Australian EA community over the past two years, in coordinating the community to make submissions to public governmental consultations . This work has been very successful and has  been led by Good Ancestors Policy and the Australian Alliance for Animals.

I gave workshops outlining those efforts and discussing if similar work could be done in the UK and Europe at EAGx Utrecht and EAGx Berlin this year. In between the conferences the ICAI consultation was published and after numerous discussions it was determined it could be quite impactful if pursued. 

As such, with the help of a lot of people,^[1] we are holding five workshops in the next two weeks; at the Ambitious Impact office, the Trajan House office, UCL EA, LSE EA and online. Further workshops are also likely to be held. We will likely support at least 100-150 attendees to make individual submissions, and as such the arguments that we decide to make could potentially be quite impactful. 

At these workshops attendees will be given context of the consultation and the arguments that we are putting forward. Then attendees will be supported to make personal submissions to the consultation, utilising the provided arguments that they personally think are important.

How you can help

This post is primarily to ask for input (both support and criticism) of the core arguments that will be put forward for the workshops and to ask if people have further suggestions. If you don’t have input to give yourself but know people who might, please share it with them. 

Secondarily this post is also to advertise for the online workshop on October 14th (see below), where I’ll be working through the consultation and supporting people to make submissions. 

Finally, you can also respond to the consultation yourself by accessing it here (you don’t have to be a UK citizen to respond). If you make a submission yourself using some of the current draft arguments, try not to quote them verbatim and please fill in this form.

Core Arguments:

The draft summary of the core arguments is Linked Here. It would be helpful for people to specify both support and suggested expansion of arguments they think are important, and blunt criticism of arguments they think are less valuable and/or could even be a net negative. As well as this, further suggested arguments would be greatly appreciated. 

My background is in political advocacy, not in global health and development. The arguments listed here are thereffore not my own, but have been and will be sourced from various people and organisations with expertise in the area. For this initial draft I want to give a big thanks to Gabriel Hanrieder from Kooperation Global who massively contributed.

Will this be impactful?

I think so, but I don't know for certain. But I do know that similar efforts have been impactful in Australia and it is therefore worth trying elsewhere.

(You might be interested in Max Carpendale's research into whether public consultation responses can influence decision-makers, and Kirsten's comment on her experiences aggregating responses.)

1. ^{^}

   I can’t name everyone but I want to thank the following for their support on this consultation: Ameema Talat, Gemma Paterson, Thom Norman, David Nash, Gabriel Hanrieder, Patrick Stadler, Mathias Bonde and Arthur Baker.