Governments are the implementing partner

Governments are the implementing partner for ORDA. Some $50 billion a year are channeled to governments as part of the ORDA process. It is enough to make a big difference if it was used productively. But governments are not good at using resources productively.

As one of my English friends said early in my career – the government could not organize a “piss-up” in a brewery.

Governments have a terrible track record in production and efficiency. This is not just a “south” phenomenon. A study prepared during Mayor Koch's administration in New York by a business group compared the costs of a whole range of city operations with the equivalent activities in the private sector. The results were laughable if they were not so serious. Government costs were frequently 10 times what the equivalent was in business.

Why is government the implementing partner

The reason why government is the implementing partner goes back to the origins of development assistance. The core structures engaged in international official development assistance were all created around the time of World War II or immediately afterwards ... and these organizations were created with an expectation that governments would be taking a big role in the development process and were given the mandate to work with governments. The ORDA system was designed to use government as the key implementing partner. That is the mandate that there is!

Why does it not get changed? Because most of the key decision makers in the ORDA community is quite happy with the status quo. The status quo facilitates all sorts of inappropriate uses for funds, and the system is so dysfunctional that nobody is ever going to be held accountable.