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Mr D Williams
(ODM
S
E944)
AID POLICY AND MANAGEMENT REVIEWS
1. We spoke about these over the telephone on Friday evening and you asked me to let you have copies of relevant papers.
2.
When I introduced the term "Aid Management Review" at the end of your meeting on the Solomons last week I am not sure that I made myself entirely clear. In a nutshell my proposal is that ODM geographical departments should transact their business against a back-cloth provided by two documents; an Aid Policy Review and an Aid Management Review.
3.
The Aid Policy Review would correspond to the existing Country Policy Paper. It would represent a major pieve of self- contained analysis and prescription, and the policy framework it laid down would be expected to endure for at least three years. It would be cleared inter-departmentally in Whitehall. My prefer- red format for the Review would be the same as that for the Economic Assessment in the Territorial Studies recently prepared for the Dependencies. As you will see from the attached copy (Flag A) this covers similar ground to the traditional CFP. The text has four principal sections which aim to provide answers to the following hierarchy of questions:
(a) what are the country's chief characteristics?
b)
(c)
(a)
how good is the development track record?
what are current objectives and constraints on their achievement?
how should we help?
-I would add a Summary and Recommendations nection.
4.
d
The Aid Management Review would be a new concept (for the ODM, that is). Its purpose would be to express the agreed outcome of the Policy Review so far as possible in terms of concrete pieces of timed work. It would answer the question: what does the agreed policy framework mean in terms of action by the depar ment and its advisers in the next twelve months? I first developed this idea (for which I claim no originality it is old hat out,- side Whitehall) in a minute to Mr Pettitt in September 1975, and the relevant paragraphs are attached (Flag B). The Mann, oment Review would be linked to the Policy Review by the reproduction, as its opening section, of the Summary and Recommendations of the latter. It would have two further sections: the first would review performance over the previous twelve months in delivering the aid programme to the country in question; the second would specify the tasks facing the programme managers in the succeedin twelve month period. Among other things each section would list all visits to the country (including those from out-ntation) in /the rever on
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