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More performance-based HIV/AIDS funding urged
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The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the Global Fund and the World Bank could be more transparent and conduct more performance-based reviews for their funded programs, according to a report issued last month from the Center for Global Development.
“Of these three AIDS donors, the Global Fund is the only one that systematically bases funding decisions on performance,” Nandini Oomman, PhD, director of the HIV/AIDS Monitor at the Center for Global Development said in an interview. “However, in practice even the Global Fund is often hampered by poor information.”
Both PEPFAR and the World Bank use assessments of performance to inform decisions, but the data used to drive funding decisions are not consistent measures of program performance, according to Oomman.
“The Global Fund has a formal process to rate and reward performance,” Oomman said. “The other two donors rate and reward performance in more inconsistent and ad hoc ways.”
The Global Fund grants about 96% of requested second-round funding to the programs that perform well and 14% to programs that do not, according to findings in the statement.
All three organizations were encouraged to increase transparency to improve accountability and help local stakeholders coordinate responses, according to Oomman. Better performance monitoring systems could create greater accountability to taxpayers and intended beneficiaries of the funding.
The report’s authors also recommended:
- The Global Fund should lengthen the time between performance reports to six months or more to ease the burden on recipients and smooth the flow of disbursements.
- PEPFAR should develop clear guidelines for how to use performance data in funding decisions by outlining the rewards for good performance and the consequences of poor performance against a grant’s targets.
- The World Bank should give greater weight to programmatic outcomes to emphasize and reward achieving the programs’ ultimate goals, in addition to operational and financial targets.
“In this economic climate, we have to make some tough choices about allocating money,” Oomman said. “Funders of AIDS programs need to make sure that every existing dollar counts.”– by Rob Volansky