Incentives for harmonisation and alignment in aid agencies

The scope of this paper is to assess the importance of incentive systems internal to aid agencies in their efforts to deliver on the commitments made in the Rome Declaration on Harmonisation, adopted at the Rome Conference on Harmonisation, 24-25 February 2003. It looks at different factors which influence individual and collective behaviour in aid agencies, and discusses whether these work for or against the adoption of harmonised practices and of the new paradigm in development cooperation based on donor coordination and country ownership. Its findings are based on case studies of six members of the DAC Task Force on Harmonisation and Alignment. The rationale for the study stems from a perception that despite the various steps taken to implement the Rome Declaration, progress on harmonisation has been fairly slow. The overall findings of the study point to a certain degree of disconnection between the high-level declarations and commitments, and the challenges related to turning these commitments into effective additional signals at lower levels of the organisation, which can bring individual behaviour in line with harmonisation objectives. At the political level, there has been a significant effort by Senior Management in all agencies involved to transmit to staff members the message that harmonisation has to be considered as a priority. At the institutional level, initiatives have been much less consistent. Very little attention has been given by most agencies to individual level incentives, despite their clear importance in affecting behavioural choices. To conclude, the study draws some general positive and negative elements and lessons about ongoing efforts to foster harmonisation in different aid agencies, and provides some suggestions for further research, which should look in more detail at the crucial issue of how incentive systems affect harmonisation efforts at country level. The great emphasis put by many of the interviewees on the importance of focusing on the country level and of including the incentives faced by partner governments and donor staff in field offices points to an interesting and necessary follow-up to complement the findings of this study.