Research for Poverty Reduction: DFID Research Policy Paper

Executive Summary and Recommendations

1. Purpose and background: This paper proposes policies and principles to guide DFID's research work over the longer term and:
   
   • considers the appropriate scale of DFID funded research, notably the balance between research and operational expenditure
   • assesses priorities within the research programme
   • provides a framework for more clearly defined research strategies
   • sets out criteria for managing research, giving options for its organisation
   • proposes best practice on dissemination of the results of research
   • assesses DFID's role in research capacity building, recommending further work if necessary.
   • proposes policies and principles to guide DFID's research work over the longer term (paragraph 7).
   • The Terms of Reference for the study are at Annex 1.
2. Vision. Evidence is provided in the report to demonstrate that research can have powerful influences on both policies and institutions in support of development objectives and is therefore likely to be an essential element in meeting the Millennium Development Goals, delivering DFID's Public Service Agreement, and reducing poverty. Research has a crucial role to play in helping to develop evidence-based, innovative approaches to international development.
3. The report acknowledges the high quality of much current practice and proposes to build on the best of what is currently done. The report also identifies certain key weaknesses. The critical issue for the future is how to improve researchers' effectiveness in producing outputs that directly and indirectly change both policy and practice, are truly relevant to poor people's needs, and are effectively taken up. The power of ideas must be combined with finance to promote change....

Introduction

1. The issues concerning DFID's support for research have been the subject of a number of previous reviews both overall and at the sub-sectoral level. This report has been commissioned as a direct consequence of the Report prepared by DFID's Internal Audit Department: Knowledge and Research Programmes. Comprehensive reviews of various aspects of DFID's support to research were undertaken in 1996 and 1997.Many of DFID's Centrally Funded ‘research' programmes have been restructured a number of times over recent years. Staff noted the immense changes that have taken place in DFID research over recent years: the move out-house, the focus on poverty, the reduction of geographical and thematic compass, the focus on outputs, uptake and impact, joining-up and inter-disciplinary strategising and planning currently underway, the initiatives to improve our partnerships with bilateral and multilateral players and with the private sector.
2. This review has found much research that is both high quality and well focussed on poverty reduction. It has also been impressed by the many researchers and staff that are both skilled and dedicated. It will therefore be important for future developments to ‘build on the best' and evolve the current systems so that they can tackle poverty reduction even more effectively in an uncertain future.
3. While the previous reports tackle different aspects of the subject and note the important work being done, all suggest that there is a need for more coherence across the various sectoral research programmes.
4. There is also a widespread view among some members of senior management in DFID that DFID's current research programmes have become overly detached from the rest of DFID's work, and operate too much in ‘self contained silos'. Furthermore it is argued that the research programmes have largely grown up as a result of DFID's historical relationship with certain UK based research institutions and has not produced the evidence that it has delivered positive benefits for poor people commensurate with the large investment made by DFID. Significant elements seem to regard ‘research' as the opposite of ‘action' rather than the opposite of ‘ignorance'.
5. A major opportunity for improving DFID's support to research is currently provided both through the processes by which all of DFID's work has become more finely focussed on poverty reduction, and through the very recent changes DFID is making to the roles of the Chief Advisors who have been responsible in the past for much of DFID's support to research....

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