Are aid facilities having a positive or negative impact on aid effectiveness? The increasing reliance on facilities has become controversial in the Australian aid program. Read More
A lack of public support for foreign aid makes it hard to increase the budget. Could renaming and reframing it help? Read More
Leaders at the top level of the Australian Public Service will soon have a go-to list of executive coaches, and separately, foreign aid officials are putting together a panel of consultants to support them and other agencies with policy design, review, monitoring and evaluation. Read More
While Australia’s foreign aid budget has shriveled to the smallest share of national income ever in the past five years, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been pursuing ways of attracting private venture capital to back local entrepreneurs in the Asia-Pacific region. Read More
Projects that vanish, ministerial over-involvement and a lack of evaluation: there appear to be some major problems with secretive aid initiative InnovationXchange, a new report argues. Read More
Not everything went according to plan in a push towards innovation, online platforms and administrative efficiency during the Obama administration, but progress was made and a lessons were learned along the way. Read More
FEATURE: Government can gain huge advantage from working with the shared value movement. Co-design can benefit everyone, but first the public service must confront its distrust of dealing with others. Read More
DFAT needs to focus on retaining aid staff and replacing those who left after the department's absorption of AusAID, say experts who worry our aid program is becoming less effective. Read More
When AusAID joined DFAT, it brought one of the federal government's most successful evaluation teams with it and its only independent evaluation committee. Now the department is considering what other areas beyond foreign aid could do with evaluation. Read More
The foreign service is not normally associated with a pro-risk culture, yet the launch this week of innovationXchange is being touted as the key to fomenting a start-up mentality in DFAT. Experts are offering a hopeful, though sceptical, welcome. Read More
DFAT is on track to cull 500 staff from its ranks following the merger with AusAID. Secretary Peter Varghese discussed job cuts, economic diplomacy and the UN Security Council in Senate Estimates. Read More
Would Australia's foreign aid program be more effective if it had the singular goal of eliminating poverty? Maybe -- but being more selective with money might be a better bet. Read More
Agency outlines its approach to achieving Australia's international aid and development goals of reducing poverty and lifting living standards via projects in Africa and Asia. Read More
The assimilation of AusAID into the Department of Foreign Affairs has seen decades of public service experience walk out the door, insiders tell The Mandarin. Read More
