Aid Agency Results-Based Management Policies: Switzerland, New Zealand,The World Bank, the Netherlands,the United Kingdom, Canada and Sweden

Greg Armstrong

Last updated March 27, 2023


The OECD has produced 7 case studies on how Results-Based Management policies are used by the World Bank, and the international aid agencies for Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, the United Kingdom,  The Netherlands and New Zealand.  These guides will not help anyone manage a project, but they do provide a useful comparative overview of the intentions of these agencies as they seek to create usable, comprehensible Results-Based Management frameworks.

OECD Results-Based Management Case Studies

Level of Difficulty:  Moderate-Complex
Length: 10-15 pages for each case study, 33 pages for the synthesis
Primarily useful for: Implementing agency managers
Most useful: Annex 1 of the synthesis document
Limitations:  The studies present one side of the analysis – from the agency management, not from users


In 2016 and 2017 OECD produced 7 very short case studies (all PDF files) on how Results-Based Management was used for agency management in planning and reporting on aid projects in 2016 and 2017.  While for some of these agencies things have changed substantially since then, the summaries are still useful guides to the general results orientation of aid agencies.  The seven case studies include:

• The World Bank, 
• The Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation, 
• The New Zealand Aid Programme,  
• The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, 
• Global Affairs Canada,  
• The United Kingdoms’ agency formerly known as the Department for International Development, and 
• The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  
• OECD also produced a useful synthesis report comparing the use of RBM in the seven aid agencies, as it stood in 2017.

Utility and Limitations of the OECD country case studies

For any implementing agency manager  considering either bidding for a project funded by one of these agencies, or for anyone working on a multi-donor project, trying to understand what drives different agencies’ results agenda, each of these guides can provide some superficial introductory summaries of what the insiders in the agencies have to work with, and what pressures may be on them as they manage their agencies programmes. 

But aid agency administrators often think their own agency’s approach to RBM is easier to understand than do the implementing partners, who have to translate the often arcane Results-Based Management policies into practical plans and reports.

These are very short case studies, based on documentary analysis and interviews with aid agency managers, and therefore they present only one side of the story on each agency’s approach to results-based management.

Those who want detailed guidance on how to implement the Results Based Management frameworks in any practical way will not find it in these reports.  That guidance is, for some, but not all of the agencies, available from their websites.

Links to Aid Agency Results-Based Management Guides and Handbooks

Update:  A few of the studies, such as those on the Netherlands, The United Kingdom and Sweden, still provide more information than anything  publicly available on those donors' own websites. But, since these case studies were originally produced, and since I originally wrote this review in March 2018, a number of the links to aid agency sources have expired, or disappeared.  Those who want more detailed guidance on how the different agencies incorporate Results-Based Management in their work, may in some cases find them (as of February 2023) at these links:

• The web page describing how the World Bank uses results scorecards in Results-Based Management is still useful.

• The Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation's website at first glance makes it easier to find information on priorities, than on results.  The agency's monitoring and evaluation page includes a link to a 52-page report on results of the Swiss development cooperation programme between 2017 and 2019 [a very large 16 MB file] which does provide some interesting indicators on Switzerland's contributions to achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, and this suggests that somewhere there are more details on a results framework. This page also has a link to a publicly available interactive e-learning course on Project Cycle Management. 

•  The New Zealand Aid Programme's  managing for results page,  provides little information, but if readers do a search for results we can find a number of documents used in the past to guide work on results.  These include: 
• The 2015-2019 Strategic Results Framework for New Zealand aid - a single-page, but large format table listing intended results and indicators for 12 themes, which are a subset of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.  The 2 or 3 indicators per results theme in this table appear for the most part to be variations on indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals, of a type similarly used by the Asian Development Bank at the strategic level.
• The useful Detailed Indicator Sets for the same 12 themes.  These have 30-40 indicators for each theme, divided into general and capacity development.
• The 22-page MFAT Guidance on Developing a Results Framework
• Some of the agency's yearly reports provide indicators that results are being achieved in some regional programmes.  Evaluation documents do refer to Outcomes and contributing Outputs for programmes such as the Pacific Islands Capacity Development Programme  [p. 7] 

• The Swiss Development Cooperation Agency's monitoring and evaluation page includes a link to a 52-page report on results of the Swiss development cooperation programme between 2017 and 2019 [a very large 16 MB file] which does provide some interesting indicators on Switzerland's contributions to achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. This page also has a link to a publicly available interactive e-learning course on Project Cycle Management.

• Publicly available information on Results-Based Management at the Swedish International Development  Cooperation Agency  has been substantially reduced.

• The most recent Global Affairs Canada Results-Based Management Guide, tools and checklists have been updated within the past year.

• The somewhat dated 2014 Department for International Development results framework from the United Kingdom is still useful, but it is not clear if it is still being applied within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office since the demise of DFID.

• The basically (in English at any rate) opaque  Dutch Development Results site unfortunately is less useful than the OECD case study, and subsumes the Dutch Development results within the framework of the SDGS.  This includes links to results by 11 SDG themes, and for 20 countries.

Lessons Learned from the Case Studies

Of potentially more interest from a comparative perspective is the 31- page synthesis report Strengthening the Results Chain by Rosie Zwart.  

OECD Synthesis Report on Results-Based Management

This document summarizes and analyses the challenges facing the different agencies, in terms of how they link their internal results frameworks to long term international development results, how they use standard indicators, and the problems associated with this, how the results and indicators contribute to accountability, how attribution of credit for results is handled in each agency, how they use narratives to make sense of the results frameworks, and the extent to which results reporting contributes to  any meaningful learning – and change, within the agencies

Short summaries of how aid agencies use RBM
[click to enlarge]

Readers may find the Annex to the report, which summarizes many of these issues by aid agency, useful, before deciding whether to read the individual country reports.

RBM Comparison Chart for 7 Aid Agencies
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The bottom line:  These case studies can provide useful overviews of the challenges facing different aid agencies as they implement Results-Based Management.  Policies change,  however, and readers should check the agencies' own websites for updates.

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GREG ARMSTRONG

Greg Armstrong is a Results-Based Management specialist who focuses on the use of clear language in RBM training, and in the creation of usable planning, monitoring and reporting frameworks.  For links to more Results-Based Management Handbooks and Guides, go to the RBM Training website.