Asia-Pacific Regional Centre

Aid Coordination and Management

The Aid Coordination Unit responds to the needs of Governments and Country Offices by providing policy advice and technical support related to aid management. Within the broader framework of the MDGs and the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, the team supports the development and strengthening of capacity in all aspects of the design, implementation and monitoring of national aid management strategies, as well as promoting linkages and alignment with national priorities and systems. Consistent with UNDP knowledge management practices, the team maximizes its regional nature by promoting cross-country learning and knowledge sharing across the Asia-Pacific region, with a special focus on tsunami-affected countries.

Aid Coordination and Management Support

In each country, in which the Aid Coordination Unit (ACU) provides support, the collaborative effort of the UNDP Asia-Pacific Regional Centre and the respective Country Office seeks to develop a package of support that is tailored closely to the specific national requirements. The package marries capacity development measures and policy advice with customized aid and budget tracking technology. The policy advisory and technical support services include:

1. Aid coordination and management capacity needs assessment;
2. Support to formulating aid policies and aid management strategies;
3. Practical guidance on how to implement the Paris Declaration at country level;
4. Support to establishing aid information management systems;
5. Advice on establishing and maintaining effective dialogue mechanisms;
6. Advice on integrating ODA in Medium-Term Budgetary Frameworks as well as domestic budgets.

Currently, the Aid Coordination Unit is, for example, directly involved in assisting the Governments of Vietnam, India and Pakistan. The APRC support to Pakistan immediately after the South Asia earthquake focuses on practical advice on how to establish an effective and efficient aid coordination mechanism for recovery assistance as rapidly as possible. With respect to Vietnam and India, there is scope to make progress regarding the:

• harmonization and alignment agenda consolidated in Paris in March 2005; and,
• integration of aid within a national budget framework reflecting the priorities of national MDG-based Poverty Reduction Strategies.

The Governments of Maldives, India and Vietnam have expressed their interest in fostering the linkage between ODA and the respective national public investment programme through a more sophisticated public finance management system.

Knowledge Sharing and Networking

In order to foster knowledge sharing and contribute to the preparation of a practical Aid Management Toolkit, an interactive website on aid effectiveness has been established, which can be accessed under http://aideffectiveness.org. This website is intended as a resource for practitioners working on aid coordination and aid effectiveness issues. AidEffectiveness.org is one outcome from a Paris to Practice workshop of Practitioners hosted by UNDP in Bangkok in June 2006, and attended by 16 countries in Asia and the Pacific, Government representatives, UNDP Country Offices, ADB, DFID, OCHA, the OECD DAC, and the ODI in London. It is an informal space that does not represent the views of any institution, and its objectives are to:

• provide access to up-to-date lessons learned and policy documents;
• enable practitioners to add freely to the existing resources and to exchange views informally using the dialogue pages;
• develop a repository of information that can be "harvested" and drawn upon for UNDP's Corporate Toolkit on Aid Management - and which can also be drawn upon by any other organization for its own purposes. For more information on UNDP and aid management please visit www.Devaid.org

UNDP Support for Tsunami-Affected Countries

The Indian Ocean Tsunami disaster of 26 December 2004 was the most devastating natural disaster in recent history. At least 220,000 people died or were missing; many more were displaced or lost their livelihoods or homes. Greatly increased levels of international assistance have been received by Tsunami-affected countries in support of nationally-led efforts to meet relief, recovery and reconstruction needs. National aid coordination systems thus have to deal with a huge growth in the volume of assistance being received and the number of organizations requiring coordination.

UNDP has been requested by the Governments of Sri Lanka, Maldives, Thailand and Indonesia to support them in enhancing their team and their systems for coordinating tsunami assistance. In each country, the work is led by a nodal Government agency, supported by the UNDP Country Office and the UNDP Asia-Pacific Regional Centre .

The country-level initiatives to improve the national aid coordination capacity are largely funded from the Regional Project for Capacity Development for Tsunami Aid Coordination, and a small team provides technical backstopping out of the Asia-Pacific Regional Centre. The package of country-level support comprises advisers (international and national), on-the-job training, policy advice, and nationally-customized versions of the Development Assistance Database (DAD).

Four country-specific, government-owned DADs have now been developed, publicly launched and put online for all to access.

Country	DAD Website	General Website
Sri Lanka	http://dad.tafren.gov.lk/	http://www.tafren.gov.lk/
Maldives	http://dad.finance.gov.mv/	http://www.tsunamimaldives.mv/
Thailand	http://dadthailand.mfa.go.th/	http://www.tica.thaigov.net/
Indonesia	http://rand.brr.go.id/	http://www.e-aceh-nias.org/

By accessing the DAD, everyone can find real-time information on who is doing what and where – including details on projects by sector and location. Read more...

In order to facilitate cross-country analysis and provide easy access to data from all country-level DADs, as well as additional background information within a one-stop shop, a Regional Tsunami Tracking Portal has been established, which can be accessed under http://tsunamitracking.org.

The Portal is designed to serve government institutions, bi- and multilateral agencies, national and international non-governmental organizations, as well as the general public as information platform on tsunami assistance. It provides a single window through which all partners can see how resources were allocated across 4 tsunami affected countries, as well as information on results that have been achieved with these resources. The Portal is linked to a Regional Development Assistance Database, which automatically brings together the data collected in the four national DADs and presents a regional perspective of the assistance for tsunami-recovery provided to the affected countries, including access to various documents, reports and charts.

Additional information

• Access the Regional Tsunami Tracking Portal
• Contact us for further information