The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
DFID’s
Southern Iraq Employment and Services Programme (SIESP) was
approved
in July
2004, providing £10m for infrastructure services and £6m for
employment
generation.184
£0.5m was
allocated for programme administration.
In May
2005, the DFID Office in Basra closed the employment generation
component
of the
SIESP after an assessment identified “worrying issues”. The Office
asked DFID’s
Internal
Audit Department (IAD) to visit Basra to review the SIESP and
identify lessons, in
particular
for the implementation of DFID’s Iraq Infrastructure Services
Programme (IISP).
The IAD
identified several flaws in the design of the component. It
concluded that:
•
A “key driver”
of the SIESP had been “political (and consequent
senior
management)
pressure in Whitehall and beyond to achieve visible results
…
In retrospect,
these pressures appear unreasonable but at the time were
generally
irresistible.”
Warnings against proceeding with a programme of “such
high
fiduciary
risk and intangible benefit” had not been heeded.
•
There had been
limited advisory input from DFID headquarters.
•
The initial
decision to work through the newly formed (and unelected)
Iraqi
Provincial
Councils (PCs) had been a misjudgement. They had limited
capacity
and there
was evidence of widespread corruption in their
operation.
•
A later
decision to work through local NGOs had not improved performance.
Many
NGOs had
been set up solely to secure funding from donors. They had
limited
capacity,
lacked local knowledge, and had proved to be “largely
unreliable
and/or
corrupt”.
•
The lack of
physical monitoring had undermined implementation. The
security
situation
meant that there was little chance of DFID staff visiting projects
funded
under the
SIESP. In Maysan, where the security situation was particularly
difficult,
the UK
military had managed the employment generation component of
the
SIESP
directly (bypassing the PC). The military had undertaken some
monitoring
as part of
routine patrolling, but that had not been “adequate”. The IAD
concluded
that the
inability to monitor progress indicated that Iraq “was not ready
for this type
of
development intervention”.
•
Weaknesses in
the DFID Office in Basra had contributed to the problems
within
the SIESP.
The Office had been set up “hastily under pressure from UK
and
locally to
show a DFID presence”. It had proved very difficult to recruit
staff for
Iraq,
leading to the appointment of staff with “little or no experience
in managing
programmes
or staff”.
•
The DFID
Office in Basra had established “good controls” over SIESP
finances.
The
Office’s decision to close the employment generation component
immediately
after its
initial assessment had saved £3m (the amount remaining in
the
employment
generation budget).
184
Report DFID
Internal Audit Department, 11 August 2005, ‘Visit Report: Basra,
Iraq 26th
–
31st
July
2005’.
248