In practice the two types of advisers appear to work well together and in terms of price there is little difference (both are extremely expensive, at about A$400,000 per year per advisor).
But there are issues. To overly simplify the situation, the ECP perspective tends to view Australian government deployees as a superior form of technical assistance. It could be argued for example that they have a better knowledge of day to day economic policy making and providing effective policy advice. The team nature of the program also offers a kind of self-regulation for the deployees as they can monitor each others outputs. ASF advisers are a more disparate bunch, often working individually in remote parts of the PNG bureaucracy – this creates difficulties for AusAID in assessing their performance. They also often have not worked within a developed country bureaucracy for a number of years (or ever), potentially leading to a lower quality of advice.
The ASF advisers might on the other hand argue that ECP deployees are too closely aligned with the Australian government. This can make them too focussed on getting the job done, rather than spending time to build the capacity of local staff (‘crowding out’ rather than ‘crowding in’).
The ARDE considers this point, suggesting perhaps there should be a greater focus on a ‘hands-off’ approach to technical assistance across the program. Now that macroeconomic stability has been established in PNG and the Solomon Islands, I think this is a good idea. Whether the Australian government can resist the urge to get their hands dirty, and also potentially let the reform process slow down as this happens, is another question.
AusAID plans to have a major review of the technical assistance program in PNG later this year. The findings will be very interesting – assuming they are made public. Watch this space.
Having only read this entry, with a background knowledge that PNG is vaguely north of where I am sitting, I understand this post as a comparison of team technical assistance (ECP) versus individuals (ASF) – continuing the oversimplification.
I’ll side with the architects and say that less is more – again qualified with no knowledge of the situation in country. Although one may claim that the team style can undergo self evaluation, it wouldn’t be drawing the bow to long to say that any evaluation – and the holy grail of measuring (aid or policy) effectiveness – is a fine art. Since the outcome of money spent now, policy enacted and reforms undertaken won’t be seen until years into the future, wouldn’t the best form of technical assistance in these circumstances be ones which are continued for the longest – or as long as required? One person there for 4 years is better than eight boffins for six months.
Unless the team is large enough to incorporate others – and thus involve and train – than surely the outcome would be doomed to become another artifact of programs past and forgotten.