Dan Hooton
Managing Director
The reporting of the potential reduction in spending in the media earlier this week of a decrease from 0.7% to 0.5% of an already shrinking Gross National Product will no doubt create concern in the development sector. The timing could hardly be worse, when placed into the context of a deteriorating worldwide economic situation due to CV19, with a possible debt crisis looming.
Overview
The recent contraction of economic activity has compounded the considerable need for international aid, particularly in the areas of public health and humanitarian response. We have seen funding pivoted to these sectors and other less relevant programmes reduced or cancelled altogether.
Security Risk Management Platforms
So, what then does this mean for funding of security risk management platforms for programmes as we advance into 2021? Several points are apparent:
There remains a variety of risks to manage in many locations, but the CV19 pandemic will have influenced these. Keeping track of these factors must be prioritised, particularly for operations that have stopped for the last six months, and organisations are looking to restart, sometimes from afar before arriving on the ground.
Local partnerships and consortia are now more critical than ever, and they must develop the right structures correctly to prevent overlap or incomplete systems. Choosing and capacity building your local teams in-country can be a challenge and must be approached correctly.
Duty of Care (DOC) applies to all staff and partners, both international and national. Bid teams must clearly define from a contractual perspective, who is being looked after and how. These discussions need to take place at the bid phase and aren’t a problem to be pushed down the line and sorted out during implementation.
What is likely that the days of flying international consultants in for short term visits for quality assurance are most likely gone for now, and risk managers need to be able to rely on tried and tested local hires as never before. There is bound to be a shrinking of overhead costs for security, where businesses may reduce in-house resources either in headcount or operational budgets. If you can allocate assets and personnel as programme costs, it will allow the same resources to mobilise, but under a different budgeting mechanism.
Conclusion
A reduction in spending is coming regardless of the final decision taken on the actual percentage point of GNP. What is important to protect is the process of creating the correct security budget, as part of the overall construction of a bid and that it meets your expectation for DOC. There are ways of delivering lean risk management structures, utilising international expertise coupled with experienced, local security teams. Only in this way, can you make maximum use of donor funds and demonstrate value for money for the UK taxpayer. Greater use will likely be made of outsourced advisor platforms such as ourselves.