The Department for International Development (DfID) has accepted three out of four of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact’s (ICAI) recommendations about its unrestricted funding partnerships.

Last month ICAI called on DfID to review the way it selects and evaluates the voluntary sector organisations to which it grants unrestricted funding in its programme partnership arrangements (PPAs).

That report made several criticisms of the £120m programme and DfID has now responded, accepting three but rejecting one of the Commission's four key recommendations.

The Department said in a statement that it does not see the need to assign specific technical counterparts to each PPA: “We do not agree that DfID needs to use resources [for this].”

The statement continued: “DfID has regular technical and policy dialogue with PPA agencies and has sought to maximise the value of PPAs through the PPA Learning Partnership and by engaging agencies extensively in discussions on emerging HMG [Her Majesty’s Government)/DfID policy priorities.”

The technical counterparts that ICAI recommended DfID put in place would follow the lines of the technical counterparts that DfID's Conflict, Humanitarian and Security (Chase) teams have with their PPAs: namely they would manage the relationship with the CSO on an expert-to-expert level.

For example, if the PPA was on governance, ICAI would expect the technical counterpart to have expertise in the area and be aware of the issues and be able to collaborate effectively with the CSO.

"Our thinking is that this would lead to better dialogue, delivery and learning that would also result in building DfID’s capacity and would help better identify the value that the CSO can bring to the Department," a spokesman from the Commission told civilsociety.co.uk.

DfID did, however, accept ICAI’s recommendation to extend the PPAs to more than three years (“to allow the strategic and innovative aspects of this unrestricted funding to develop”), saying that it has now stretched the current PPAs by two years to 31 March 2016.

The Department also agreed with the Commission’s view that some elements of the current PPA approach have been “cumbersome”, saying it was reviewing its mid-term evaluation and will be issuing updated guidance to the PPA agencies.

Finally, DfID agreed that it should strengthen the role of its PPA learning groups, saying that their activities are already increasing and that it is to design and implement a new communications strategy for the groups.

DfID’s full response can be found on its website here.

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