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Dates
The first informal meeting of ‘Directors of Public Information of the Development Agencies of the DAC-countries’ took place in Canada in 1988 and was followed by a meeting in Sydney, Australia in 1990. The meetings in 1988 and 1990 were so-called initial meetings. The Directors of Public Information started to meet yearly from 1992.
Records of the meetings are available to the OECD from 1992. The 1992 meeting —with a proposal to meet every 12-18 months from then on— was hosted by Sida in Stockholm, Sweden. Fourteen DAC member countries participated. Subsequent meetings were hosted by the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) in Tokyo, Japan (November 1993), and by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (March 1995). A member of the DAC secretariat does not seem to have participated in the meeting until 1995. Nevertheless, the participants in the Tokyo meeting did approach the DAC with a formal letter requesting it to ‘collect more accurate statistics on the expenditure for public information in DAC member countries’. Participation in the informal meeting expanded in 1995 to include France, Belgium, Ireland, Italy and the OECD Secretariat.
The OECD secretariat delegate presented the results of the first joint DAC / Development Centre informal experts’ meeting on public support for development co-operation (Paris, October 1994). This was the departure point for a stronger OECD connection to the informal meeting and network. There is a gap in summary records of the meetings between 1996 and 2000. Meetings took place in Norway (1996), Canada (1997), Denmark (1998), OECD Paris (1999), ?? (2000), London (2001), OECD Paris (2002) and Canada (2003).
Aim
The original aim of organising a meeting between directors of public information was to enable international networking between information directors, share best practices and swap ideas about communicating on development co-operation. Since public information and development education have been and continue to be one of the more neglected sectors in aid agencies, there was little opportunity for international meetings on those topics, in spite of the wide recognition that public support is fundamental to sustaining and improving international development co-operation.
Nature
The meetings are informal. The group of countries which meets does not constitute an official DAC working group. It is an independent organic formation. While the title of the meeting incorporates the term DAC, this is the case because the participating countries are DAC members, not because there is a mandate from the DAC to meet. Indeed, there has never been a consensus in the DAC to address formally the issue of public opinion. It is perceived as a domestic issue too political to handle at the consensus-based DAC level. There is however an informal link and support between the group and the OECD development co-operation directorate (DCD). The annual meetings do not conclude with an official statement, although there have been lists of ‘action points’.
Until now, the meetings have been only open to information officers in DAC Member countries, OECD Secretariat and some UN agencies. Attendance at the meeting is voluntary. There is no formal membership process, and therefore no membership fee or budget for the annual meeting. The occurrence of a meeting in a member country is dependent on the willingness of a member country to host the meeting and to cover the costs of doing so. There is no established rotation among members.
The OECD Secretariat became gradually involved on a voluntary basis, in the form of the DCD and the Development Centre supporting the host country with the drafting of the agenda and meeting summary, providing up-to-date mailing lists and other historical information, thereby helping maintain some ‘institutional memory’ of the annual meeting.
DevCom Network: history of annual meetings (1988-2003)
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