In July-September 2015 the Development Policy Centre surveyed 461 stakeholders in the Australian aid program and 136 stakeholders in the New Zealand aid program, from the senior executives of the biggest NGOs and development contracting companies, to the officials of multilateral, partner government and Australian and New Zealand government agencies. The surveys asked stakeholders what they thought about their country’s government aid program, what they liked, what they didn’t like, what they thought the future of aid was and what needed to be done to improve the quality and effectiveness of aid.

Australian aid stakeholder survey

The Australian survey report was launched on 11 February 2016 during the 2016 Australasian Aid Conference.

Full report
» Download [pdf, 2.1 MB]

Four-page summary
» Download [pdf]

Blog post
» Read

Article published in Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies
» Download

Full survey dataset
» Download [zip, 3.7 MB]

Launch presentation
» View presentation [pdf, 284 KB]
» Watch video
» Listen to podcast

On transparency, in our Canberra Times article, we incorrectly wrote that “In 2013, only one quarter of respondents saw aid transparency as a weakness. Now three quarters do.” Rather, as we correctly wrote in the report and its summary, “In 2013 fewer than a quarter of respondents thought transparency was a weakness or a great weakness. In 2015 just over a quarter assess the aid program’s transparency positively.”

New Zealand aid stakeholder survey

The New Zealand survey report was launched on 31 March 2016 at Victoria University of Wellington and is available below.

Full report
» Download [pdf, 2.6 MB]

Blog post
» Read

Full survey dataset
» Download [zip, 1.9 MB]

Launch presentation
» View presentation [pdf, 447 KB]
» Listen to podcast

Background

A lot changed since the first aid stakeholder survey was run in 2013, including the Australian aid program being fully integrated into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) following the 2013 election. At the same time, major cuts to aid were budgeted and implemented. These changes made it more important than ever to have an independent feedback mechanism to chronicle the impact of these changes on the perceived effectiveness of Australia’s aid by those who know the aid program best.

Much of the design and implementation of the 2015 survey was the same as in 2013. The only major change from 2013 was the extension of the survey to New Zealand, which has experienced similar reforms to Australia in recent years. The 2015 survey was in effect two surveys – one tailored to the Australian context and another to New Zealand. While the questions were largely aligned across the two surveys, there were some changes between them due to the different contexts of the aid programs.

The first phase of the survey launched on July 6, and is a closed survey targeting pre-identified members of the development contractor and NGO communities, who have been targeted because they are the only two sectors where we can hope to pre-identify a representative sample. We have targeted all major development contractors and NGOs which receive funding from the aid program, and a sample of smaller NGOs. Participants were selected based on seniority in their organisation and level of direct engagement with the Australian and New Zealand aid programs.

The second phase of the survey launched on August 28, and was a public survey in which all other interested stakeholders – NGO and contractor executives and staff, government and multilateral organisation officials, academics, consultants, and anyone else with an interest in Australian and NZ aid – were able to participate. The questionnaire is the same as in the first phase.

View the survey questionnaires, for the Australian survey, and the New Zealand survey. More details on the survey process can also be found in this brief [pdf, 229 KB].

For more information please contact Devpol or Terence Wood.