What capabilities (up to five) would you like to see improve across Australia’s development sector?

From the responses, the top five capabilities that emerged were:

Development expertise

This sounded like: dedicated stream for development professionals that prioritises retention and specialisation; incentivise and reward skill development; training to better understand the political nature of social change.

Localisation

This sounded like: improve localisation approaches in the new policy; increased engagement with partners at sub-national level; more flexible financing for local partners.

Partnership management

This sounded like: improve genuine partnerships in the region; understand country-specific politics; develop listening capacity.

Coordination of aid

This sounded like: prioritise whole-of-government strategy; improve cross-agency collaboration capacity; improve communication between departments.

Measurement and evaluation

This sounded like: simplify monitoring systems; introduce a separate oversight body to provide evidence-based assessments; track progress better.

We then asked respondents to allocate 100 points according to what capabilities they thought were most critical for Australia to improve.

RANKING RESULTS

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What are three key things Australia can do to effectively balance short- and long-term drivers for the development program?

From the responses, the top five things that emerged were:

Approach partnerships with a long-term vision

This sounded like: genuine partnerships require long term strategic engagement; stronger long-term partner arrangements with more countries.

Be clear on what is short-term and long term

This sounded like: design longer term programs; have a clear split in country budgets between long-term and short-term objectives (e.g., 70/30); put in place short-, medium- and long-term measurable goals; review all investments to clarify if they achieve short term objectives (e.g., disaster relief).

Promote reflection on the program

This sounded like: set up appropriate consultative and feedback forums within Australia; invest in a systems analysis and regular updates to frame all development activities; promote dialogues across diverse groups to give feedback and reflection on the program.

Budgeting improvement

This sounded like: lock in budget floors over the forward estimates; consistency of funding and approaches; keep funding stable.

Bipartisan support/consistency for stability

This sounded like: achieve bipartisan support for five-year strategies that will reduce disruptions caused by changes of government at the federal level; longer staff engagements at Post and on desk — five years rather than three at Post; communicate with the Australian public, it's in their interests to have a stable, prosperous region, play to the middle and supporters, and navigate around critics.

Again, respondents were asked to allocate 100 points according to what they thought was most critical for Australia when balancing short- and long-term drivers of development.

RANKING RESULTS

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What are three ways to generate a more transparent and accountable culture of Australian development cooperation?

From the responses, the top five categories that emerged were:

Publish reporting and funding information

This sounded like: annual ministerial statements of development effectiveness; consistent and public monitoring and evaluation metrics; published independent reviews; detailed breakdowns of performance by country and thematic area; publish managing contractor funding volumes; publish Performance of Australian Aid reports.

Reward learning and openness

This sounds like: share funding metrics in a way that is easy to find and understand; reward learning (including failure) rather than penalising it; encourage and reward a culture of contestability (because there is so much we don't know and don't understand); reward continuous improvement and humble self-reflection.

Openly engage with the broader development community (Australian-based)

This sounded like: engage in more robust debate and open contestability; more Senate Estimates engagement; formal meetings with ACFID, universities etc.

Establish independent evaluation mechanism

This sounded like: re-establish ODE with significant increase in resourcing and authority; invest in another independent body.

Improve communication channels with/feedback from partners

This sounded like: more community outreach; ensure partner feedback is systematically and credibly collected.

Finally, the group was asked to allocate their 100 points according to what they thought was most critical for Australia when generating a more transparent and accountable development culture.

RANKING RESULTS