ICAI 5
Written evidence submitted by Dr Alexandra Cran-McGreehin, Head of Secretariat,
Independent Commission for Aid Impact
This year has seen an under-spend of around £350,000, the same as in FY 2012-13. How do you explain the under-spend? Can we be sure that ICAI is still using its funds efficiently, and working to its full capacity?
We keep a tight control on costs – one of the reasons for the under-spend – and are confident that we are using our funds efficiently. Contractor fee rates have remained fixed for the four-year contract term (2011-15) and the cost of each of our reviews is negotiated with the contractor on the basis of the amount of work expected to be needed to fulfil Commissioners’ requirements. Another reason for the underspend was our decision to move the delivery of certain complex pieces of work, notably the thematic private sector development review and the annual report synthesis, into the 2014-15 financial year, in order to allow sufficient time to produce high-quality outputs.
We are confident that ICAI is working to its full capacity, particularly in this past year where a number of our reviews have examined more complex topics. We have identified, through the experience of our work to date, that the organisation with which we were established, which includes the existence of two central teams managing reviews – the Secretariat and the contractor team – leads to a measure of duplication. Whilst everyone has worked hard to reduce this, we believe that a modified structure merging these functions into a larger Secretariat will improve both the efficiency and the resilience of ICAI in Phase 2. We are currently discussing the implementation of this modified structure with DFID.