Development policy administration reform adopted

The Government decided on Thursday 11 September to carry out a major reform of the administration of Norwegian development policy in a move to improve its ability to contribute in the combat against poverty in developing countries.

The changes involve a considerable degree of decentralisation in that a number of functions and responsibilities will be delegated to the foreign service missions so that the work is carried out as close as possible to the recipients of Norwegian assistance. Responsibility for the implementation and results of Norway’s development efforts will lie with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, NORAD, will have the main responsibility for knowledge management, evaluation and quality assurance, NGO and private sector support schemes, and the Foreign Service Institute. The reform will also entail changes in the Ministry’s organisational structure and working methods, and means that NORAD and the Ministry will be working even more closely together. Preparations will begin immediately, and implementation of the reform is planned to start in January 2004.

"Major changes are taking place in development policy. The extensive reform we have now decided to carry out will make it possible for us to address the major challenges we are facing. It will enable us to play an even more active and more central role in fighting poverty in a new international framework," said Minister of International Development Hilde F. Johnson.

The reform is the result of a comprehensive review and evaluation of the way development policy administration is organised today, carried out by external consultants. The review was announced in a development policy statement to the Storting on 30 April 2002, and was based on the Norwegian Government’s Action Plan for Combating Poverty in the South towards 2015 and the Government’s modernisation project.

The consultants’ report concluded that development co-operation is an increasingly political process in which a number of policy instruments must be viewed together. Despite the fact that there is much in the current system that works well, the report identified a number of obvious weaknesses. Among other things, it pinpointed unclear divisions of functions and responsibilities, duplication of effort, and too many decision-making levels. Moreover, the report found that there is a definite potential for improvement as regards performance assessment and quality assurance. The administrative reform is an attempt to rectify these shortcomings while retaining what works well.