Dear Mr Bacon

Freedom of Information Request F2009-205

Thank you for your Email of 2 November 2009 requesting an internal review of our response to your Freedom of Information request about the information held in the fields relating to Project Performance for each record on DFID's ARIES database. I have now completed an internal review of DFID's handling of this request and am writing to you with the outcome.

Your original request asked for the following information:

“For each record in the ARIES database, I would like to have a copy of all the information held under the fields relating to “Project Performance”

Our response of 28^th October 2009 confirmed that DFID holds information relevant to your request, but stated that we were withholding it under Section 27 (1) (a) (c) and (d) (International Relations), Section 36 (2) (b) and (c) (Prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs) and Section 40 (2) (Personal Information).

In your request for an internal review you asked for further information about the way these exemptions had been applied and the different fields to which they applied. In conducting the internal review, I have reviewed the documentation for this case, spoken to individuals involved in the original response and reviewed a sample of the relevant material held by DFID.

With respect to the application of Section 27, my review of a sample of information held in the relevant fields of the ARIES database confirms that comments and opinions concerning other governments and international organisations appear in a number of fields, including Purpose Justification, Output Justification and Lessons. Based on reviewing the material and discussions with staff involved in the original response, I am satisfied that the balance of public interest lies in withholding this information. The achievement of the UK Government's international development goals require good working relationships based on confidence and trust. Disclosure of opinions relating to them would be likely to damage these relationships. You ask whether the passage of time changes the balance of public interest in the case of completed projects. I am satisfied that for the time periods covered by the ARIES database, even for completed projects, the balance of public interest lies in withholding. The review of a recently completed one year project is as current as the first reviews on a live three or five year project. Furthermore, much of the material in the ARIES database refers to governments and international organisations with whom the UK has ongoing relationships.

With respect to the application of Section 36, my review of a sample of information held in the relevant fields of the ARIES database confirms the use of the database as an important internal management and reporting tool. The full and effective use of this tool to ensure strong programme and project delivery depends upon DFID staff being able to share full and frank information with team members and with the rest of the organisation, both in managing day to day implementation and in learning and applying the lessons from experience. Because many of DFID's projects are delivered with and through partners, the willingness of those partners to also be candid in their assessments is important in ensuring project effectiveness. I am satisfied that disclosure is likely to discourage openness in both DFID staff and partners and that this would be detrimental to programme delivery.

DFID acknowledges the factors of transparency and accountability and lesson dissemination in favour of disclosure that you also mention. DFID is committed to ensuring the lessons from project performance reviews are accessible and available to other development practitioners and to those seeking to hold DFID and the UK Government to account. To this end, all DFID evaluations are published and DFID has strengthened the independence of evaluations through a new independent committee, the Independent Advisory Committee for Development Impact (IACDI). These published evaluations draw, amongst other sources, from lessons learnt through DFID project implementation. DFID published a new DFID-wide evaluation policy (2009 - 14) in June 2009.

The 2009 White Paper, "Eliminating World Poverty: Building our Common Future", commits DFID to improving the transparency of its aid through the establishment of the searchable project database. The first stage of this database went live in September 2009. The second phase will go live in 2010. The White Paper also commits DFID to lead the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), which brings 18 donors together with partner countries, CSOs and experts to agree common standards for sharing information about aid. Donors who signed up to the IATI, including DFID, have agreed on a voluntary basis to `share more detailed and more up-to-date information about aid in a form that makes information more accessible to all relevant stakeholders. DFID is committed to meeting the IATI standards within the proposed timeframes.

Given the work underway to proactively publish more project data from DFID systems and make this available both through the DFID website and as a feed to other data users, I am satisfied that the balance of public interest lies in withholding the specific information requested. Maintaining the ARIES database as an important internal management tool is critical to effective programme management.

With respect to Section 40, my review of a sample of information held in the relevant fields of the ARIES database confirms that the names of individuals are held in a number of fields. These include, but are not necessarily restricted to: Purpose Justification, Output Justification, Purpose Attribution, Method of Scoring, Lessons and Notes. Disclosure of this information would breach the legitimate expectation of an individual's right to protection of their personal information.

I hope that you will find this explanation helpful. If you remain dissatisfied with our response to your request and wish to take the matter further, you should contact the Information Commissioner at the following address:

The Information Commissioner's Office,

Wycliffe House,

Water Lane,

Wilmslow,

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

On behalf of the teams leading DFID's work on both IATI and the project database, I would like to extend an invitation to you to come and exchange views with us on the challenges of making information on aid accessible to users. We would be interested to hear views from those in the user community as to the content and formats that would be most valuable from the user perspective. Please contact Simon Jones, Director Business Solutions Division, at [email address] if you would like to do this.

Yours sincerely

Liz Ditchburn

Head of Value for Money Department

NOT PROTECTIVELY MARKED

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