• Donor assessments

Donor assessments

A joint governance assessment (JGA) aims to bring government and development partners together to undertake a joint assessment of governance performance based on commonly agreed indicators. The first assessment of this kind was undertaken in Rwanda during 2008 and this paper discusses the usefulness of a joint approach to governance assessment and offers practical guidance on how it might be applied elsewhere. Benefits of a joint governance assessments would arise from:

• greater coordination, information-sharing and joint analysis among donors carrying out governance assessment work
• directly involving developing country governments in governance assessments

The paper suggests that a joint governance assessment will work best where it focuses on those requirements that are common to both donors and recipients and centre on better managing the aid relationship. These include:

• reducing duplication of effort, fragmentation of knowledge, uncoordinated action and high transactions costs (consistent with Paris Declaration principles)
• testing the evidence basis for assessments, identifying and resolving misunderstandings and misinformation, and promoting better understanding of country specific considerations
• reducing donor-induced reform overload, and inducing greater realism about the possible scope and pace of change
• identifying areas of overlap between the interests of donors and government
• providing a formal channel for communication through which governance issues can be collectively raised by donors
• building mutual accountability around a joint framework for performance assessment as a means to increase aid predictability and reduce aid volatility

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