Learning, monitoring and evaluating: achieving and measuring change in adaptive programmes - Callaghan, Sarah; Plank, Georgia (DFID-LASER Programme, 2017)

Why isn’t Tech for Accountability Working in Africa? - de Lanerolle, Indra (SAIIA, 2017)
Expanding mobile networks and falling costs could transform communication between African citizens and governments. So far, however, attempts to harness new technologies to improve transparency and accountability in Africa and elsewhere have had disappointing results. What is going wrong? Research suggests that an important reason for this failure is a poor understanding of technologies and limited skills in developing and using them. It seems that civil society organisations (CSOs) and governments often ‘re-invent the flat tyre’: experimenting with new tools without finding out what has been tried (often unsuccessfully) before. They also do not follow best practices in how to source, develop and test technologies to ensure these are ‘fit for purpose’. Decision makers should focus on building an effective innovation ecosystem with better links between technologists and accountability actors in both government and civil society to enable learning from successes – and mistakes.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Case studies of results-based management by providers: New Zealand - OECD (OECD, 2017)

Case studies of results-based management by providers: Sweden - OECD (OECD, 2017)

Case studies of results-based management by providers: Switzerland - OECD (OECD, 2017)

Case studies of results-based management by providers: The Netherlands - OECD (OECD, 2017)

Case studies of results-based management by providers: United Kingdom - OECD (OECD, 2017)

Combating Wildlife Trafficking Cross-Mission Learning Agenda - Present, Teresa; Peabody, Shawn (USAID, 2017)

Amateur hour: CfC's 'surprising' success in addressing school congestion in the philippines - Sidel, John T. (Asia Foundation, 2017)
The international development community has increasingly embraced the idea that finding durable solutions to complex development problems requires new ways of working that move beyond industry norms. This paper makes an important contribution to the current debate by outlining an innovative monitoring system called Strategy Testing (ST). This is the third paper in the Working Politically in Practice paper series, launched together with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Six things that help grant-makers learn and adapt - Murray, Aoife (Itad, 2017)
There’s an emerging body of literature identifying key strategies that can both improve learning and enable adaptive management amongst grant-makers. We recently reviewed a host of publications from eight grant-making organisations. Those organisations have diverse aims and approaches but we’ve identified six common themes that stand out: Strong leadership and facilitation enables successful learning and …

Smart Risks: How small grants are helping to solve some of the world's biggest problems - Lentfer, Jennifer; Cothran, Tanya (Practical Action Publishing, 2017)
As never before, international aid is in the hands of ordinary people. Concerned citizens in wealthy countries are starting philanthropy groups, joining giving circles, and travelling internationally to lend support. Yet, they are torn between the feelings that 'something' must be done about global poverty and that foreign assistance is creating dependency and fueling corruption overseas.A growing community of international small grant-makers know how to find and fund effective grassroots initiatives. Compared to donor-controlled, large-scale, project-based international aid funding, small grant-makers use the concept of 'smart risks' to build upon existing human and social capital and to make a lasting changes in people's lives. Smart Risks brings together the wisdom of experts with wide-ranging experience within the development sector. Their contributions focus on five guiding question, such as 'who is a smart risk?' and 'what is your role in smart risks?' They include case studies, personal stories of lessons learned over time, provocative insights on power and privilege, and practical frameworks for choosing, investing in, and measuring the impact of grassroots organizations and movements. This book is essential reading for all those who wonder how their donations and work can make a difference in developing countries - from aid agency staff and policy makers, to globally engaged individuals.

Systems Change in a Polarized Country - Kramer, Mark R. (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2017)
A growing number of US foundations are adopting practices based on systems change to achieve their goals in the current political environment.

Lifestyle politics and the concept of political participation - Moor, Joost de (Acta Politica, 2017)
Van Deth’s comprehensive ‘conceptual map of political participation’ has reinstated a lively debate about the concept of political participation, and provides some compelling solutions to it. However, an important question that has been raised is whether van Deth’s map actually achieves its main goal of unambiguously identifying and classifying emerging, complex types of participation, like online political activism – or lifestyle politics. To contribute to this debate, this article aims to evaluate the usefulness of van Deth’s approach for the analysis of lifestyle politics. Such an evaluation requires a clear classification of lifestyle politics. This, however, is still missing from the literature. The second aim of this article, therefore, is to identify and classify different types of lifestyle politics. On the basis of a literature review, this article argues that lifestyle politics are often enacted throughout different private, public and institutional arenas, and that they are often targeted at various social, economic and political actors at once. Applying van Deth’s conceptual map to these empirical realities, then, suggests that it cannot always account for their complexity sufficiently. Therefore, this article proposes a modification of van Deth’s framework that increases its usefulness for analyzing emerging, complex political participation repertoires.

Conservation Enterprises: Using A Theory of Change Approach to Synthesize Lessons from USAID Biodiversity Projects - Boshoven, Judy (USAID, 2017)
In an effort to increase the understanding of conservation enterprises’ activities and outcomes and to improve the effectiveness of biodiversity programming, this brief synthesizes lessons from past USAID-funded efforts to support conservation enterprises

Causal Link Monitoring - Britt, Heather; Hummelbrunner, Richard; Greene, Jacqueline (2017)
Causal Link Monitoring (CLM) 1 integrates design and monitoring to support adaptive management of projects. CLM helps project planners and managers identify the processes that are required to achieve desired results, and then to observe whether those processes take place, and how. Result-producing processes specify the causal links between results in a logic model or results framework—in other words, the processes between results.2 CLM focuses on how specific individuals or organizations use results to achieve other results. In CLM, planners start by creating a logic model to help document predictable, agreed-upon elements of the project. Next, they refine the causal links by describing the processes that will transform results at one point in the causal chain to the next. Planners are often less certain about these resultproducing processes. Finally, the CLM logic model is enhanced with information about two important sources of uncertainty, contextual factors that may influence the project and diverse perspectives on the problem and its solution.

"That's how the light gets in": Making Change in Closing Political Environments - IBP (International Budget Partnership, 2017)
This collection of learning and reflection essays from the International Budget Partnership's 2016 Annual Report illustrate the multidimensional nature of budget work and democratic engagement. Read more.

The Boda Boda Talk Talk Module - Internews (Internews & USAID, 2017)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Evidence Base for Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting: summary of the literature review (2017 update) - Learning Lab (USAID, 2017)
LEARN and USAID/PPL are managing an area of work known as Evidence Base for Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (EB4CLA). The purpose of this work is to answer key learning questions:

(Draft) Managing to Adapt - Analysing Adaptive Management for Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (draft) - Schlingheider, Annika; Pellfolk, Erica; Maneo, Gabriele; Desai, Harsh (Oxfam, 2017)
Adaptive management is at the heart of ‘doing development differently’ (Wild et al., 2016). Whether it is here to stay depends on how much it is mainstreamed into existing development programming by donors and implementers alike, especially in planning, monitoring, evaluation, and learning (PMEL) cycles. In this report, we find that mainstreaming adaptive management in PMEL involves three strategies: 1. planning for flexibility; 2. developing locally owned monitoring and evaluation (M&E); and 3. creating an enabling environment for learning. Adopting these strategies contributes to virtuous cycles of PMEL

VANUATU GOVERNANCE FOR GROWTH PROGRAM – REVIEW - Warner, Robert; Gouy, Jonathan; Samson, Anthony (2017)

Using PDIA to Put Data Into Action - Bhatia, Vinisha; Powell, Josh (Development Gateway, 2017)
We recently wrote about how the data for development community needs to take a more context aware, demand-driven approach to data. Applying theories of change...

It’s About Results at Scale, Not Collective Impact - Edmondson, Jeff; Santhosh-Kumar, Parvathi (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2017)
Improving outcomes at scale requires a paradigm shift in how we work.

Implementing the new development agenda - Wrap up - Teskey, Graham (2017)

Re-Perceiving Results: Aid Programs and Change in Fragile Societies - van Veen, Erwin; Rijper, Alies (Knowledge Platform Security & Rule of Law, 2017)
Aid programmes need to be able to adapt their objectives and operations to changes in their political environment, since development processes are subject to political contestation. Change takes time and is often a matter of seizing the opportunity.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Thinking and Working Politically (Yangon, October 2016) - British Council (British Council Myanmar, 2017)
On 3-4 October 2016, British Council, Pyoe Pin, The Asia Foundation and UK DFID co-hosted a two day conference on ‘Thinking and Working Politically’ (TWP) for more effective and sustainable development assistance. The success or failure of development programmes is, in many – if not most – cases, determined by domestic politics within countries, rather than by the technical elegance of programme design by external donors. The event brought together international donors, implementing agencies and local partners. Participants compared experiences on what has worked, where and why – both in Myanmar, and across the world including case studies from Sudan, Zambia and the Philippines. Throughout the conference, participants familiarised themselves with politically smart development approaches and what it means to think and work politically in Myanmar. This has laid foundations for greater collaboration on TWP to help meet Myanmar’s critical development challenges.

Getting beneath the surface in program planning, monitoring and evaluation: Learning from use of participatory action research and theory of change in the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems - Apgar, J Marina; Allen, Will; Albert, Joelle; Douthwaite, Boru; Paz Ybarnegaray, Rodrigo; Lunda, Jeston (Action Research, 2017)
Many rural poor and marginalized people strive to make a living in social-ecological systems that are characterized by multiple and often inequitable interactions across agents, scale and space. Uncertainty and inequality in such systems require research and development interventions to be adaptive, support learning and to engage with underlying drivers of poverty. Such complexity-aware approaches to planning, monitoring and evaluating development interventions are gaining strength, yet, there is still little empirical evidence of what it takes to implement them in practice. In this paper, we share learning from an agricultural research program that used participatory action research and theory of change to foster learning and support transformative change in aquatic agricultural systems. We reflect on our use of critical reflection within participatory agricultural research interventions, and our use of theory of change to collectively surface and revisit assumptions about how change happens. We share learning on the importance of being strengths-based in engaging stakeholders across scales and building a common goal as a starting point, and then staging a more critical practice as capacity is built and opportunities for digging deeper emerge.

Implementation of the first adaptive management plan for a European migratory waterbird population: The case of the Svalbard pink-footed goose Anser brachyrhynchus - Madsen, Jesper; Williams, James Henty; Johnson, Fred A.; Tombre, Ingunn M.; Dereliev, Sergey; Kuijken, Eckhart (Ambio, 2017)
An International Species Management Plan for the Svalbard population of the pink-footed goose was adopted under the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds in 2012, the first case of adaptive management of a migratory waterbird population in Europe. An international working group (including statutory agencies, NGO representatives and experts) agreed on objectives and actions to maintain the population in favourable conservation status, while accounting for biodiversity, economic and recreational interests. Agreements include setting a population target to reduce agricultural conflicts and avoid tundra degradation, and using hunting in some range states to maintain stable population size. As part of the adaptive management procedures, adjustment to harvest is made annually subject to population status. This has required streamlining of monitoring and assessment activities. Three years after implementation, indicators suggest the attainment of management results. Dialogue, consensus-building and engagement among stakeholders represent the major process achievements.
Keywords: Adaptive harvest management; Human–wildlife conflict; Population target; Stakeholder involvement; Structured decision-making; Tundra degradation

Refining advocacy assessment: reflections from practice - Buffardi, Anne; Hearn, Simon; Tilley, Helen (ODI, 2017)
• This paper revisits how existing advocacy evaluation frameworks classify people and activities, and define and assess outcomes. We discuss how assessments could be more specific and propose bounding the scope of inquiry in one of four ways: strategy specific, outcome oriented, actor-centric or system-wide. • In classifying activities, the same action or event may be situated at different phases of the change pathway – in some cases used as a tactic to influence a policy outcome, and in others an intended outcome itself. • Because advocacy is more relational than other types of more technical development interventions, there will be fewer sources of directly observable data, and the direction of potential bias may be unknown. • In terms of learning, advocacy initiatives are contextually dependent, therefore lessons may be less directly transferable to subsequent phases of an initiative or to other settings. Organisations have bounded repertoires and the transferability of skill sets is limited, so advocates adapt how and with whom they engage more than what they do

The Social Realities of Knowledge for Development - Georgalakis, James; Jessani, Nasreen; Oronje, Rose; Ramalingam, Ben (IDS, 2017)
This edited collection of peer-reviewed papers explores critical challenges faced by organisations and individuals involved in evidence-informed development through a diverse set of case studies and t...

The NGO-Academia Interface: Realising the shared potential - Green, Duncan (The Social Realities of Knowledge for Development, 2017)
This edited collection of peer-reviewed papers explores critical challenges faced by organisations and individuals involved in evidence-informed development through a diverse set of case studies and t...

Causality and attribution in market systems development - Jenal, Marcus; Liesner, Mollie (BEAM, 2017)
Resources that contain evidence of market systems interventions. Recently updated.

Landscape Analysis of Learing Agendas: USAID/Washington and beyond - Learning Lab (USAID, 2017)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY U.S. government agencies and development organizations around the world are increasingly recognizing and supporting learning activities— often informed by a learning agenda—as important tools for improving organizational effectiveness and efficiency. A learning agenda comprises a set of broad questions directly related to the work that an agency conducts; when answered, they enable the agency to work more effectively and efficiently, particularly pertaining to evaluation, evidence, and decisionmaking. This report surveys the landscape of learning agendas at USAID and beyond to inform the learning agenda initiative planned by the Office of Learning, Evaluation, and Research (LER) in the Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning (PPL). Reporting on research conducted over a 6-month period (September 2016 to February 2017), this landscape analysis focuses on six documented, office-, bureau-, or initiative-wide learning agendas being used at USAID/Washington. It also considers 11 new or noteworthy learning initiatives at USAID and five learning efforts at other federal agencies. The research team interviewed 60 staff from 20 USAID offices and bureaus, as well as staff from five other federal agencies. (See Annexes 1 through IV for more information.) The team also convened two focus groups: one with staff in USAID/Washington who had recently returned from serving in Missions, and one with PPL staff who discussed that bureau’s learning activities. The report details the interviewees’ remarks on six topics:  Motivations behind their decisions to pursue a learning agenda, such as expectations of accountability, especially in response to leadership demands  The key benefits emerging from their learning agenda efforts, which have included identifying gaps in knowledge and evidence, and supporting other cultural and organizational change processes  The participatory and consultative strategies they used to engage with stakeholders, including engagement with Mission staff and inclusion of academics and outside experts  The learning activities and products related to their initiatives  Challenges and strategies on resources, dissemination, and utilization, including ways to update their learning agenda to ensure that it remains a “living document”  Recommendations they had for PPL and others considering embarking on a learning agenda initiative

Thinking and Working Politically – Are We Seeing the Emergence of a Second Orthodoxy? - Teskey, Graham (Abt Associates, 2017)
There now is a persuasive volume of evidence that demonstrates that capacity and technical knowledge alone are insufficient to change deeply entrenched political interests and bureaucratic norms. These critiques demonstrate that an understanding of power asymmetries is frequently the critical missing ingredient in project design and implementation. Many eminent thinkers have looked at the difference between success and failure in development, and all point to the primacy of domestic politics. This point has not been lost on development agencies and some have tried to provoke greater attention to the role that politics plays. However, this recognition is yet to pass into the mainstream of development practice. Despite the slow but sure accretion of this knowledge the international community seems to be wedded to doing development traditionally. The purpose of this paper is to consider the extent to which a ‘second orthodoxy’ is slowly emerging which can stand alongside, and in some cases may supplant, the ‘first orthodoxy’ of the traditional project framework. Care has to be taken in making this argument, as there is certainly no consensus within the development community on its importance, and even among advocates, there are slightly differing interpretations of what this second orthodoxy looks like. Further, it is not absolutely clear that the two orthodoxies can co-exist. The paper does not call for any ‘paradigm shift’ in how development practitioners conceptualise programs and projects, nor does it demand that the project framework be scrapped; the former would be impossible and the latter undesirable. Equally readers will find no claims that Doing Development Differently or ‘Thinking and Working Politically’ will always and everywhere guarantee better development outcomes. Rather, the paper seeks to summarise how the two orthodoxies differ, where the second orthodoxy now stands, and propose how it can be taken forward in practical terms.

Project Cycle Hacker's Toolkit - changing the conversation around your projects - UNDP (UNDP, 2017)
The Istanbul Regional Hub partnered with Nesta and 4 country offices (fYR Macedonia, Moldova, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan) to develop a program that can help us bring innovation closer to the center of the organization by embedding it in the key project management business processes - The Project Cycle Hackers Toolkit.

Measuring Efforts to Combat Wildlife Crime - A toolkit for Improving Actiona and Accountability (v.1.3) - USAID (USAID, 2017)

Innovating in Development Learning Event - Challenge brief - Vogel, Isabel (Ideas to Impact / iMC, 2017)

Connecting the Dots: Systems Practice & Political Economy Analysis - Walker, Tjip; Jacobstein, David (2017)
This slide deck, from a presentation to the Local Systems Community by Tjip Walker and David Jacobstein, shows various ways in which assessing the political economy of a context and understanding that context through the lens of systems thinking can reinforce each other. Effective systems practice should be grounded in the incentives and power dynamics of a particular local system; thinking and working politically requires understanding the systems dynamics of an issue or sector.

Development is Going Digital: What is the role of INGOs? ICT for Development programmes in the Horn, East and Central Africa - Haikin, Matt; Flatters, George (Policy & Practice, 2017)
Development is going digital and INGOs like Oxfam have a vital convening role to play. This paper draws on ICT for Development in Oxfam’s programmes in the Horn, East and Central Africa to consider what this role is. In order to realise the opportunities

Fostering Learning in Large Programmes and Portfolios: Emerging Lessons from Climate Change and Sustainable Development - Harvey, Blane; Pasanen, Tiina; Pollard, Alison; Raybould, Julia (Sustainability, 2017)
In ﬁelds like climate and development, where the challenges being addressed can be described as “wicked”, learning is key to successful programming. Useful practical and theoretical work is being undertaken to better understand the role of reﬂexive learning in bringing together different knowledge to address complex problems like climate change. Through a review of practical cases and learning theories commonly used in the areas of resilience, climate change adaptation and environmental management, this article: (i) reviews the theories that have shaped approaches to reﬂexive learning in large, highly-distributed climate change and resilience-building programmes for development; and (ii) conducts a comparative learning review of key challenges and lessons emerging from early efforts to promote and integrate reﬂexive learning processes in programmes of this nature. Using a case study approach, the authors focus on early efforts made in four large, inter-related (or nested) programmes to establish, integrate and sustain learning processes and systems. Eight themes emerged from the review and are considered from the perspective of learning programmes as emergent communities of practice. By investigating how these themes play out in the nested programming, the paper contributes to the limited existing body of evidence on learning in large climate change programmes and identiﬁes areas where future efforts might focus.

PDIA Course: Alumni are already practicing what they learned - Samji, Salimah (Building State Capability, 2017)
written by Salimah Samji We offered 4 free PDIA online courses between November 2015 and June 2016. They were well received and 365 people, living in 56 countries, successfully completed the course…

Sense and Respond: How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously - Gothelf, Jeff; Seiden, Josh (Harvard Business Review Press, 2017)
The End of Assembly Line ManagementWe’re in the midst of a revolution. Quantum leaps in technology are enabling organizations to observe and measure people’s behavior in real time, communicate internally at extraordinary speed, and innovate continuously. These new, software-driven technologies are transforming the way companies interact with their customers, employees, and other stakeholders.This is no mere tech issue. The transformation requires a complete rethinking of the way we organize and manage work. And, as software becomes ever more integrated into every product and service, making this big shift is quickly becoming the key operational challenge for businesses of all kinds. We need a management model that doesn’t merely account for, but actually embraces, continuous change. Yet the truth is, most organizations continue to rely on outmoded, industrial-era operational models. They structure their teams, manage their people, and evolve their organizational cultures the way they always have.Now, organizations are emerging, and thriving, based on their capacity to sense and respond instantly to customer and employee behaviors. In Sense and Respond, Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden, leading tech experts and founders of the global Lean UX movement, vividly show how these companies operate, highlighting the new mindset and skills needed to lead and manage them—and to continuously innovate within them.In illuminating and instructive business examples, you’ll see organizations with distinctively new operating principles: shifting from managing outputs to what the authors call “outcome-focused management”; forming self-guided teams that can read and react to a fast-changing environment; creating a learning-all-the-time culture that can understand and respond to new customer behaviors and the data they generate; and finally, developing in everyone at the company the new universal skills of customer listening, assessment, and response.This engaging and practical book provides the crucial new operational and management model to help you and your organization win in a world of continuous change.

What is technopolitics? A conceptual schema for understanding politics in the digital age Doctoral Student on the Programme on Political Science New School for Social Research - Kurban, Can; Peña-Lopez, Ismael; Haberer, Maria (Revista de Internet, Derecho y Política, 2017)
In this article we seek to revisit what the term ‘technopolitical’ means for democratic politics in our age. We begin by tracing how the term was used and then transformed through various and conflicting adaptations of ICTs (Information and

Digital Democracy: The Tools Transforming Political Engagement - Simon, Julie; Bass, Theo; Boelman, Victoria; Mulgan, Geoff (NESTA, 2017)
This paper shares lessons from Nesta’s research into some of the pioneering innovations in digital democracy which are taking place across Europe and beyond

Innovation in development: Sharing learning, improving impact - Vogel, Isabel; Minkley, Gabrielle; Chowdhury, Sajid (Ideas to Impact / IMC Worldwide, 2017)

Putting theory into practice: how DFID is doing development differently - Wild, Leni; Booth, David; Valters, Craig (ODI, 2017)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Lean vs Agile vs Design Thinking: What you really need to know to build high-performing digital product teams - Gothelf, Jeff (CreateSpace, 2017)
As companies evolve to adopt, integrate and leverage software as the defining element of their success in the 21st century, a rash of processes and methodologies are vying for their product teams' attention. In the worst of cases, each discipline on these teams – product management, design and software engineering – learn a different model. This short, tactical book reconciles the perceived differences in Lean Startup, Design Thinking and Agile software development by focusing not on rituals and practices but on the values that underpin all 3 methods.

ADS 201 Additional Help- Whole-of-Project Evaluation - USAID (USAID, 2017)

USAID ADS 201 - Program Cycle Operational Policy (Update 1/23/2017) - USAID (USAID, 2017)
The Program Cycle is USAID’s operational model for planning, delivering, assessing, and adapting development programming in a given region or country to advance U.S. foreign policy. It encompasses guidance and procedures for: 1) Making strategic decisions at the regional or country level about programmatic areas of focus and associated resources; 2) Designing projects and supportive activities to implement strategic plans; and 3) Learning from performance monitoring, evaluations, and other relevant sources of information to make course corrections as needed and inform future programming.

Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action - Andrews, Matt; Pritchett, Lant; Woolcock, Michael (Oxford University Press, 2017)
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Governments play a major role in the development process, and constantly introduce reforms and policies to achieve developmental objectives. Many of these interventions have limited impact, however; schools get built but children don't learn, IT systems areintroduced but not used, plans are written but not implemented. These achievement deficiencies reveal gaps in capabilities, and weaknesses in the process of building state capability.This book addresses these weaknesses and gaps. It starts by providing evidence of the capability shortfalls that currently exist in many countries, showing that many governments lack basic capacities even after decades of reforms and capacity building efforts. The book then analyses this evidence, identifying capability traps that hold many governments back - particularly related to isomorphic mimicry (where governments copy best practice solutions from other countries that make them look morecapable even if they are not more capable) and premature load bearing (where governments adopt new mechanisms that they cannot actually make work, given weak extant capacities). The book then describes a process that governments can use to escape these capability traps. Called PDIA (problem driveniterative adaptation), this process empowers people working in governments to find and fit solutions to the problems they face. The discussion about this process is structured in a practical manner so that readers can actually apply tools and ideas to the capability challenges they face in their own contexts. These applications will help readers devise policies and reforms that have more impact than those of the past.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Donor perceptions and processes: Risks to success of adaptive programming? - Browse - Knowledge Platform Security & Rule of Law - Donovan, Elbereth (Knowledge Platform - Security & Rule of Law, 2017)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Rapid experiments with a purpose - Moses, Michael (BEAM Exchange, 2017)
New insights, opinions and perspectives on market systems development, from experts and practitioners.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Agile Metrics: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Wolpers, Stefan (dzone.com, 2017)
Suitable agile metrics reflect either a team’s progress in becoming agile or your organization’s progress in becoming a learning organization.

Principles for Monitoring, Evaluation, and Adaptive Management of Environmental Water Regimes - Webb, J. Angus; Watts, Robyn J.; Allan, Catherine; Warner, Andrew T. (Water for the Environment, 2017)
Environmental water is often a contentious investment in the environment that must be delivered under uncertainty regarding the ecological and social benefits they deliver. Adaptive management can be used to facilitate decision making under uncertainty, and use new knowledge and understanding to improve management decisions and outcomes over time. However, there is a perception that adaptive management has failed to deliver improvements in decision making and learning. Monitoring and evaluation are an essential feature of adaptive management. However, past monitoring for river protection and restoration has too often been of insufficient quality to facilitate adaptive learning. Moreover, environmental water represents a class of protection and restoration that is inherently difficult to monitor, and some of the learnings are not evident in part because fragmented assessment, documentation, and reporting of adaptive management can obscure successes. We outline a set of general principles for improving monitoring, evaluation, and adaptive management of environmental water regimes, and provide several examples from Australia and North America. Successful adaptive management depends upon the formation and maintenance of strong partnerships and an appreciation of the importance of individuals in teams. Through such partnerships, it is possible to coordinate monitoring programs over large scales, create programs of requisite simplicity, and use innovative approaches to evaluation. Finally, we note that although adaptive management has occurred in the past, too often it has been poorly documented and reported. The inclusion of reflectors in monitoring and evaluation teams will better capture the lessons learned by individual programs, improving adaptive management into the future.
Keywords: Environmental water management; Knowledge exchange; Legitimacy; implementation challenge

Learning to Target for Economic Diversification: PDIA in Sri Lanka - Andrews, Matt; Ariyasinghe, Duminda; Batuwanthudawa, Thamari; Darmasiri, Shivanthika; Silva, Nilupul; Harrington, Peter; Jayasinghe, Prasanna; Jayasinghe, Upul; Jayathilake, Gamini; Karunaratne, Jayani; Katugampala, Lalit; Liyanapathirane, Jeewani; et al. (Center for International Development, Harvard University, 2017)

Political Economy Analysis – Guidance for legal technical assistance - Denney, Lisa; Domingo, Pilar (ROLE UK, 2017)
Political economy analysis is about understanding how change in relation to rule of law and international development is embedded within and shaped by political and economic relations that interact and are particular to each context. These political economy dynamics determine the distribution of power and resources within any given society and must be taken into account when attempting to achieve change. Political economy analysis is important in the justice sector because rule of law and dispute resolution processes reflect the rules of the game about who wins and who loses in the allocation of power and resources. Using political economy analysis in legal technical assistance can help to ensure more relevant and effective assistance that sustainably addresses concrete problems. It can also help to avoid the risk that poorly targeted assistance might inadvertently exacerbate existing power structures in a way that was not intended.

Integrating Livelihood and Conservation Goals: A retrospective Analysis of World Bank Projects - Gómez, Andrés; Price, Claire (USAID, 2017)
Using a database of World Bank project evaluations, E3/FAB’s new study called “Integrating Livelihood and Conservation Goals: A Retrospective Analysis of World Bank Projects” aims to contribute to building the evidence base around the integration of biodiversity conservation and livelihood goals.

Evaluation at IDRC - IDRC (IDRC, 2017)

Systems Practice - Omidyar Group (The Omidyar Group, 2017)

Beyond Logframes - Simister, Nigel (Intrac, 2017)
The logical framework, otherwise known as a logframe, is a commonly used planning tool. Initially designed for use within simple projects, it is increasingly being applied to complex programmes and organisations. In these cases the logical framework has limitations. There are several options that can help overcome these limitations. These include expanding the logframe, and using multiple logframes.

18F Method Cards - A collection of tools to bring human-centered design into your project - 18F-GSA (18F-GSA, US Governement, 2017)
18F’s method cards describe how our organization puts human-centered design into practice.

+Acumen MOOC: Adaptive Leadership: Mobilizing for Change and Disrupting the Status Quo - +Acumen (NovoEd, 2017)
This four-module course by +Acumen and Adaptive Change Advisors on adaptive leadership, which is a practical leadership framework developed at Harvard Kennedy School for driving systemic change, particularly during times of uncertainty or when there are no easy answers.

Using adaptive processes and adverse outcome pathways to develop meaningful, robust, and actionable environmental monitoring programs - Arciszewski, Tim J.; Munkittrick, Kelly R.; Scrimgeour, Garry J.; Dubé, Monique G.; Wrona, Fred J.; Hazewinkel, Rod R. (Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, 2017)
The primary goals of environmental monitoring are to indicate whether unexpected changes related to development are occurring in the physical, chemical, and biological attributes of ecosystems and to inform meaningful management intervention. Although achieving these objectives is conceptually simple, varying scientific and social challenges often result in their breakdown. Conceptualizing, designing, and operating programs that better delineate monitoring, management, and risk assessment processes supported by hypothesis-driven approaches, strong inference, and adverse outcome pathways can overcome many of the challenges. Generally, a robust monitoring program is characterized by hypothesis-driven questions associated with potential adverse outcomes and feedback loops informed by data. Specifically, key and basic features are predictions of future observations (triggers) and mechanisms to respond to success or failure of those predictions (tiers). The adaptive processes accelerate or decelerate the effort to highlight and overcome ignorance while preventing the potentially unnecessary escalation of unguided monitoring and management. The deployment of the mutually reinforcing components can allow for more meaningful and actionable monitoring programs that better associate activities with consequences. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2017;13:877–891. © 2017 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC)
Keywords: Adaptive monitoring; Environmental management; Environmental monitoring; Tier; Trigger

The Generalizability Puzzle - Bates, Mary Ann; Glennerster, Rachel (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2017)
The practice of using rigorous scientific evaluations to study solutions to global poverty is relatively young. Although researchers continue to advance our knowledge of the mechanisms at work, confusion about their role and value persists. Having evidence from specific studies is fine and good, but for policy makers, the point is not simply to understand poverty, but to eliminate it. Do decisions always need to be informed by evidence from the local context? What potential and limits do randomized controlled trials have for improving our knowledge and finding effective answers? Two leaders in anti-poverty research—J-PAL and IPA—dispel some of the myths about their field. In this article, authors from J-PAL argue that rigorous impact evaluations tell us a lot about the world, not just the particular contexts in which they are conducted. Access to this article made possible by MIT.

More accountable and responsive governance: How do technologies help make it happen? - Brock, Karen; McGee, Rosemary (2017)
The change Making All Voices Count wants to see is more responsive, accountable governance. The programme has contributed to this change by supporting tech-enabled initiatives which amplify citizen voice and nurture government responsiveness, and by building understanding of when and how the technologies help create and support change. In March 2017, partners from 34 of the programme's projects met with Making All Voices Count staff and associates in South Africa in order to share their stories of change. The learning event participants analysed their experiences using a framework that describes seven streams of tech-enabled change: the information stream; the feedback stream; the naming-and-shaming stream; the conducive innovation system stream; the connecting citizens stream; the infomediation stream and the intermediation stream.

A reflection on collaborative adaptation research in Africa and Asia - Cochrane, Logan; Cundill, Georgina; Ludi, Eva; New, Mark; Nicholls, Robert J.; Wester, Philippus; Cantin, Bernard; Murali, Kallur Subrammanyam; Leone, Michele; Kituyi, Evans; Landry, Marie-Eve (Regional Environmental Change, 2017)

Historical Roots of Dissemination and Implementation Science - Dearing, James W.; Kee, Kerk F. (Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health, 2017)
Research about dissemination and implementation (D&I) is a response to a general acknowledgment that successful, effective practices, programs, and policies resulting from clinical and community trials, demonstration projects, and community-based research as conducted by academicians very often do not affect the services that clinical staff, community service providers, and other practitioners fashion and provide to residents, clients, patients, and populations at risk. In any one societal sector (populated, for example, by planners for health care delivery, or city-level transportation and parkway planners), the state of the science (what researchers collectively know) and the state of the art (what practitioners collectively do) co-exist more or less autonomously, each realm of activity having little effect on the other. In the United States, this situation has been referred to as a “quality chasm” by the U.S. Institute of Medicine.12 Dissemination science is the study of how evidence-based practices, programs, and policies can best be communicated to an interorganizational societal sector of potential adopters and implementers to produce uptake and effective use. For example, public middle school nurses in U.S. southern states can comprise a societal sector. This definition means that dissemination embeds the objectives of both external validity, the replication of positive effects across dissimilar settings and conditions, and scale-up, the replication of positive effects across similar settings and conditions.

DFID Data Disaggregation Action Plan: Better Data for Better Lives - DFID (2017)

DFID Smart Rules: Better Programme Delivery - version VII (2017.04) - DFID (DFID, 2017)
Smart Rules provide the operating framework for the Department for International Development’s (DFID’s) programmes.
Keywords: IMPORTANT; Practice

DFID Smart Rules: Better Programme Delivery - version VIII (2018.04) - DFID (DFID, 2017)
Smart Rules provide the operating framework for the Department for International Development’s (DFID’s) programmes.
Keywords: IMPORTANT; Practice

Adaptive Programming and Business Environment Reform – Lessons for DFID Zimbabwe - Donovan, Elbereth; Manuel, Clare (DFID, 2017)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Doing Development Differently: Understanding the Landscape and Implications of New Approaches to Governance and Public-sector Reforms - Fritz, Verena (Transformation, Politics and Implementation, 2017)
Seeking to accelerate development, the agencies and individuals involved have regularly advanced new ideas of how external support can function better, deliver more, and achieve greater impact. There has been a particular flourishing of new ideas within the broad field of governance and public-sector reforms in the 2000s. This chapter starts off with a review of the “landscape of new ideas,” focusing on five proposed approaches in particular: political economy analysis (PEA), Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), Doing Development Differently (DDD), Thinking and Working Politically (TWP), and the “science of delivery.” It sets out the “problem-diagnostic” that underpins each of these

Canada's Feminist International Assistance Policy - GAC (Global Affairs Canada, 2017)

Scaling Science - Gargani, John; McLean, Robert (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2017)

One step to a thousand miles: building accountability in Liberia - Gilberds, Heather (Accountability Lab Liberia, 2017)
Lessons for enabling accountability and integrity in Liberia

Toolkit Digitalisation: Tools to Support Strategic Planning and Implementation - GIZ (2017)

Voice or chatter? Making ICTs work for transformative engagement: research report summary - Gurumurthy, Anita; Bharthur, Deepti; Chami, Nandini (IDS, 2017)
What are the conditions in democratic governance that make information and communication technology (ICT)-mediated citizen engagement transformative? While substantial scholarship exists on the role of the Internet and digital technologies in triggering moments of political disruption and cascading upheavals, academic interest in the sort of deep change that transforms institutional cultures of democratic governance, occurring in ‘slow time’, has been relatively muted. This study attempts to fill this gap. It is inspired by the idea of participation in everyday democracy and seeks to explore how ICT-mediated citizen engagement can promote democratic governance and amplify citizen voice. The study involved empirical explorations of citizen engagement initiatives in eight sites – two in Asia (India and Philippines), one in Africa (South Africa), three in South America (Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay) and two in Europe (Netherlands and Spain).

RAND Program Evaluation Toolkit for Countering Violent Extremism - Helmus, Todd; Matthews, Miriam; Ramchand, Rajeev; Beaghley, Sina; Stebbins, David; Kadlec, Amanda; Brown, Michael; Kofner, Aaron; Acosta, Joie (RAND Corporation, 2017)

The International Development Innovation Alliance - IDIA (R4D, 2017)
Brochure from the International Development Innovation Alliance

We Rise - Movement Building Reimagined - JASS (Just Associates, 2017)
In our virtual toolkit, We Rise: Movement Building Reimagined, we describe in detail four interconnected cycles of movement building – Rising Up, Building Up, Standing Up, and Shaking Up. At the heart of these cycles lies an analysis of how to challenge and transform power. Each cycle features key ideas, relevant tools, and practical tips from our work and activists in our network that movement builders around the world can learn from and adapt in their own work.

Transformation, politics and implementation: smart implementation in governance programs - Kirsch, Renate; Siehl, Elke; Stockmayer, Albrecht (Nomos, 2017)
Working in environments characterised by a high degree of uncertainty, uncontrollability and unpredictability, development agents try to organise complex realities into manageable units. What principles influence the decision on adequate approaches and necessary steps? Through theoretical considerations and nine case studies, the GIZ traces implementation processes and identifies underlying guiding principles which provide the flexibility and adaptability that is necessary for acting in complex contexts. Main findings show that an adaptive and reflexive management structure is crucial for successful implementation. Quick iteration and tight feedback loops facilitate adaptation and reorientation. Contextsensitive knowledge and constant monitoring create a space for learning and innovation. A joint vision for the future which is used for orientation purposes and can be modified according to new findings and developments fosters fruitful cooperation.
OCLC: 1000398466

Changing humanitarian action? - Knox-Clarke, Paul (ALNAP/ODI, 2017)
We live in times of profound change. This has had a great impact on humanitarian needs, and the approaches taken to meet these needs. Changes in technology, ecology, politics, economics and demographics have shaped, and will continue to shape, humanitarian action. Many humanitarians and observers of humanitarian action have suggested that change initiatives in the sector have been unambitious and unsuccessful. Indeed, many people think that the humanitarian system is unable, or unwilling, to make the changes that are required to remain effective and relevant in a rapidly changing world. Following the World Humanitarian Summit many stakeholders have made commitments to significant changes. But can the system change? And if so, how? As a network which exists to support change and improvement, it seems appropriate that ALNAP meets to consider how change occurs in the humanitarian system, and how it can be done better. Find out more about the 31st Annual Meeting by reading the concept note, or by visiting alnap.org/31am.

An analysis of what CLA looks like in Development Programming - Learning Lab (USAID, 2017)

Toybox's Adaptive Management in Practice - Malcolm, Emily (Toybox, 2017)
At Toybox, we understand ‘Adaptive Management’ as a broad innovative and learning approach that involves the whole organisation, our partners and funders. ‘Adaptive Programming’ of projects is part of this approach which is greatly enhanced by the Adaptive Management of all actors, including communities and children in the projects. Over the last few years Toybox have been piloting Adaptive Programming with our partners across Latin America, Africa and Asia to support children in street situations. This project has been developed within the wider context of an organisation which is focused on innovation and learning, therefore enabling Adaptive Management to become mainstream within the organisation. This paper captures the experiences and learnings of Toybox to our newly implemented Adaptive Programming approach, through the lens of a small-sized UK-based organisation working with local organisations internationally. This paper explains our learnings, inclusive of why we believe Adaptive Management is important to Toybox and how the organisation has embraced this new approach.

How can we be more adaptive? AdaptScan identifies critical areas for improvement - Mercy Corps (Mercy Corps & IRC, 2017)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Adaptive Leadership in Development course - Moran, Mark; Curth-Bibb, Jodie; Grice, Tim; Glavey, Sarah (University of Queensland, 2017)

Learning to make all voices count: Lessons and reflection on localising the Open Government Partnership - Moses, Michael (2017)
This report reviews the evidence from Learning to Make All Voices Count (L-MAVC), a programme funded by Making All Voices Count and implemented in collaboration with Global Integrity. L-MAVC intended to support six Making All Voices Count grantees, working in five countries, in co-creating and applying a participatory, learning-centred, and adaptive approach to strengthening citizen engagement in governance processes in their contexts, including with respect to the Open Government Partnership (OGP). Two overarching sets of lessons emerge from the experiences of L-MAVC grantees. First, supporting citizen engagement and government accountability in subnational contexts, and localising the OGP in ways that matter to citizens, is not straightforward. Doing so successfully entails engaging with, navigating and shaping political and power dynamics in those contexts, and iteratively adapting to emerging lessons and challenges. Second, the effectiveness of adaptive ways of working depends in part on the extent to which they offer opportunities for cross-context peer learning, support the regular collection and use of data, and are themselves adaptive. These lessons have implications for the broader community of actors working to support governance reform, including the OGP and its partners, donors and multilateral institutions, and practitioners and policy-makers. The evidence from L-MAVC suggests that if these actors are to contribute more effectively to reforms that affect citizens’ lives, substantial changes – with respect to the nature of support provided to domestic stakeholders and to grant-making practices – may be warranted

Participation and Power in Climate Change Adaptation Policies: Vulnerability in Food Security Programs in Nepal - Nagoda, Sigrid; Nightingale, Andrea J. (World Development, 2017)
The article explores the moments wherein participatory approaches in climate change adaptation (CCA) policies contribute to reinforcing, rather than transforming, the underlying causes of vulnerability. Using the case of food insecure households in the district of Humla in northwestern Nepal, the study demonstrates that the same social and power relations that are driving local vulnerability dynamics, such as caste, gender, and access to social and political networks, also play important roles in shaping the impact of CCA policies. By tracing Nepal’s CCA programs, starting with the local level, through district to international-national level dynamics, the study adds insights into the barriers to exclusion that embed power relations all the way through the chain of policy development. The purpose is to better understand how CCA can perpetuate rather than alleviate the conditions that create differential vulnerability patterns at village level. It raises questions about how whether CCA programs are an adequate response to increasing vulnerability for some of the world’s most marginalized people.

Evaluating Humanitarian Innovation - Obrecht, Alice; Warner, Alexandra; Dillon, Neil (ALNAP, 2017)

Open Governance Research Exchange - OGRX (Your hub for quantitative and qualitative research on innovations in governance, 2017)
Your hub for quantitative and qualitative research on innovations in governance.

The Politics of Evidence: From Evidence-based Policy to the Good Governance of Evidence - Parkhurst, Justin (Taylor & Francis, 2017)
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. There has been an enormous increase in interest in the use of evidence for public policymaking, but the vast majority of work on the subject has failed to engage with the political nature of decision making and how this influences the ways in which evidence will be used (or misused) within political areas. This book provides new insights into the nature of political bias with regards to evidence and critically considers what an ‘improved’ use of evidence would look like from a policymaking perspective. Part I describes the great potential for evidence to help achieve social goals, as well as the challenges raised by the political nature of policymaking. It explores the concern of evidence advocates that political interests drive the misuse or manipulation of evidence, as well as counter-concerns of critical policy scholars about how appeals to ‘evidence-based policy’ can depoliticise political debates. Both concerns reflect forms of bias – the first representing technical bias, whereby evidence use violates principles of scientific best practice, and the second representing issue bias in how appeals to evidence can shift political debates to particular questions or marginalise policy-relevant social concerns. Part II then draws on the fields of policy studies and cognitive psychology to understand the origins and mechanisms of both forms of bias in relation to political interests and values. It illustrates how such biases are not only common, but can be much more predictable once we recognise their origins and manifestations in policy arenas. Finally, Part III discusses ways to move forward for those seeking to improve the use of evidence in public policymaking. It explores what constitutes ‘good evidence for policy’, as well as the ‘good use of evidence’ within policy processes, and considers how to build evidence-advisory institutions that embed key principles of both scientific good practice and democratic representation. Taken as a whole, the approach promoted is termed the ‘good governance of evidence’ – a concept that represents the use of rigorous, systematic and technically valid pieces of evidence within decision-making processes that are representative of, and accountable to, populations served.
Google-Books-ID: RTQlDwAAQBAJ
Keywords: Public policy; Social Policy; Social Services & Welfare

The politics of evidence: from evidence-based policy to the good governance of evidence - Parkhurst, Justin O. (Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017)
Introduction – Evidence-based policymaking : an important first step, and the need to take the next – Bias and the politics of evidence – The overt politics of evidence : bias and the pursuit of political interests – The subtle politics of evidence - the cognitive-political origins of bias – What is "good evidence for policy"? From hierarchies to appropriate evidence – What is the "good use of evidence" for policy? – From evidence-based policy to the good governance of evidence
OCLC: 1004900516

Citizen participation and the rise of the open source city in Spain - Peña-López, Ismael (MAVC & IT for Change, 2017)
Research on the Information Society, the Digital Divide and Information and Communication Technologies for development

Bridging Real-Time Data and Adaptive Management in International Devepment - Case Study Report - Ramalingam, Ben; Barnett, Inka; Valters, Craig; Oppenheimer, Carrie; Levy, Anna; Hernandez, Kevin (IDS, 2017)

The Truth of the Work: Theories of Change in a changing world - Reeler, Doug; van Blerk, Rubert (The Community Development Resource Association, 2017)

Confronting the Contradiction - An exploration into the dual purpose of accountability and learning in aid evaluation - Reinertsen, Hilde; Bjørkdahl, Kristian; McNeill, Desmond (Expertgruppen för biståndsanalys (EBA), 2017)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Citizen-generated data and sustainable development - Rono-Bett, Karen; Kenei, Steve (DevInit and DRT, 2017)
The potential of citizen-generated data in the sustainable development agenda

“Cash Plus” programmes for children - Save the Children (Save the Children, 2017)
This paper provides a resource on “Cash Plus” interventions for children. These interventions combine household cash transfers with complementary, context-relevant interventionsn in order to address the multiple drivers of childhood deprivations and generate more powerful impacts for children across Save the Children’s Breakthroughs, in both development and humanitarian contexts.

ING’s agile transformation - Schlatmann, Bart (McKinsey Quarterly, 2017)
Two senior executives from the global bank describe their recent journey.

Glossary of Knowledge Management - Serrat, Olivier (Knowledge Solutions: Tools, Methods, and Approaches to Drive Organizational Performance, 2017)
The knowledge management discipline can be cryptic. These Knowledge Solutions define its most common concepts in simple terms.
Keywords: Definitions; Knowledge management; Taxonomy; Terminology

Conflict Aid Goes “Lean” - Shinkle, Whitney (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2017)
Iterative design methods are essential to development work—even (or especially) in regions marked by war and violence.

I know what I know (but how do I know what I don’t?) - Smit, Debbie; de Lanerolle, Indra; Braam, Tamara; Byrne, Deborah; Legong, Gontse (MAVC, 2017)
An important support function of Making All Voices Count South Africa is to design, plan and facilitate community of practice gatherings for sustained learning and sharing across Making All Voices Count grantees. This report aims to capture the content of a one-day Making All Voices Count South African Community of Practice (CoP) Meeting held in November 2016. The South African MAVC CoP has been running for three years and has met between two and four times a year. It is a space for MAVC grantees and others working to foster innovation in the fields of transparency and accountability, to share experiences and knowledge, and collaborate in learning and improving work.

FOCEVAL – Promoting Evaluation Capacities in Costa Rica:: Smart(er) Implementation with Capacity WORKS? - Storm, Sabrina (Transformation, Politics and Implementation, 2017)
The National Monitoring and Evaluation System of Costa Rica and its corresponding laws were established during the 1990s. Since then, the country has endeavored to implement monitoring and evaluation (M&E) activities as part of its public policy framework. Nevertheless, hardly any systematic evaluations had been conducted, and monitoring activities had been reduced mainly to the institutional self-reporting of implementation compliance. Persisting regional disparities and growing levels of inequality among the population raised the level of pressure on the government to present reliable information on the effectiveness of public interventions. Hence, results-oriented evaluations were promoted by some Costa Rican departments as

Evaluating Community Impact: Capturing and Making Sense of Community Outcomes - Tamarack Institute (2017)

Thinking and working politically in large, multi-sector Facilities: lessons to date - Teskey, Graham; Tyrrel, Lavinia (Abt Associates, 2017)

How-To Note: Conduct a Data Quality Assessment - USAID (2017)

Matrixing Aid: The Rise and Fall of 'Results Initiatives' in Swedish Development Aid - Vähämäki, Janet (Stockholm Business School, Stockholm University, 2017)

What exactly do we mean by systems? - Vexler, Dan (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2017)
Everyone is talking about systems. Or at least, that's how it seems in my wonkish corner of the philanthropic world. You can't attend a conference or even have a meeting without hearing about systems, whether it's people trying to disrupt them, map them, learn from them, or catalyze them.

Monitoring Humanitarian Innovation - Warner, Alexandra; Obrecht, Alice (ALNAP, 2017)

World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law - World Bank (The World Bank, 2017)

'Leaving No One Behind': Why Ideas Matter - Evans, Alice (2016)

Applying social learning where ‘business-as-usual’ solutions no longer work for complex problems and programs - Le Borgne, Ewen (CCSL Learning Brief, 2016)
Key messages • Social learning facilitates sharing and learning beyond individuals to networks and systems. Through a facilitated, iterative process of joint work, dialogue and reflection, new shared ways of knowing emerge that lead to changes in practice. • Social learning has real potential to unlock change and transform relationships between actors involved in complex programs and/or dealing with ‘wicked problems’. Adversely it is not advisable to pursue for simple initiatives. • Social learning offers many thematic and pragmatic entry points to be embedded in the CGIAR research programs around partnerships, innovation systems, monitoring and evaluation.

The context v intervention 2x2 | From Poverty to Power - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2016)
Lots of discussion on my US trip around the strengths/weaknesses of the context v intervention 2x2 that suggests particular theories of change acc to situation
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Adaptive Management looks like it’s here to stay. Here’s why that matters. - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2016)
First installment of reflections on my US trip. This is on the rise of adaptive management approaches in USAID, and some of the questions it raises
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Real-Time Data for Adaptive Management at USAID - Doshi, Samir (2016)

Managing Policy Mess - Roe, Emery (Governance in Turbulent Times, 2016)
What are the conditions for political development and decay, and the likelihood of sustained political order? What are the limits of established rule as we know it? How much stress can systems tackle before they reach some kind of limit? How do governments tackle enduring ambiguity and uncertainty in their systems and environments? These are some of the big questions of our time. Governance in turbulent times may serve as a stress-test of well-known ways of governing in the 21st century. Governance in Turbulent Times discusses this pertinent challenge and suggests how governments and organizations cope with and live with turbulence. The book explores how organizations and institutions respond to precipitous, conflicting, and novel-in short, turbulent-governance challenges. This book is a comprehensive and ground-breaking endeavor to understand how governance systems respond to turbulent challenges, and how turbulent times provide excellent opportunities to investigate the sustainability of governance systems. The book illustrates how politics, administrative scale and complexity, uncertainty, and time constraints can collide to produce turbulence. Building on prior work in organization theory and political science, we argue that turbulence refers to four properties related to the interaction of demands for action: variability, consistency, expectation, and unpredictability. Turbulence occurs where the interaction of demands is experienced as highly variable, inconsistent, unexpected, and/or unpredictable.
Google-Books-ID: IYSuDQAAQBAJ
Keywords: Comparative Politics; International Relations; Political Process; Political science; Public Affairs & Administration

How to Apply Agile Principles to International Development M&E - ICTworks (ICT Works, 2016)
We all want to be good at our jobs. We want to accomplish the things we set out to do. If we aren’t accomplishing them, we want to figure out why or try new solutions. The trend toward Adaptive M&E is exactly that: a desire to be better at our jobs. Similar trends exist in the software world (agile) and in manufacturing and start-ups (lean). But by any name, this process of seeking to improve is about speeding up decision-making and solution delivery by focusing on incremental, iterative planning and execution. I presented on agile with Monalisa Salib of USAID Learning Lab at MERL Tech 2016. I talked about creating software; she talked about creating evaluation tools for USAID missions, but we were describing the same basic process: Develop, Release, Reflect, and Adapt. You can see our slide deck for more details, but here are the key discussion takeaways that won’t show up there: 1: Eyes on the Prize Any effort should start with a clear definition of what you’re hoping to achieve.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Assumptions, conjectures, and other miracles: The application of evaluative thinking to theory of change models in community development - Archibald, Thomas; Sharrock, Guy; Buckley, Jane; Cook, Natalie (Evaluation and Program Planning, 2016)
Unexamined and unjustified assumptions are the Achilles’ heel of development programs. In this paper, we describe an evaluation capacity building (ECB) approach designed to help community development practitioners work more effectively with assumptions through the intentional infusion of evaluative thinking (ET) into the program planning, monitoring, and evaluation process. We focus specifically on one component of our ET promotion approach involving the creation and analysis of theory of change (ToC) models. We describe our recent efforts to pilot this ET ECB approach with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in Ethiopia and Zambia. The use of ToC models, plus the addition of ET, is a way to encourage individual and organizational learning and adaptive management that supports more reflective and responsive programming.
Keywords: Assumptions; Community development; Critical thinking; Evaluation capacity building; Evaluative thinking; International Development; Theory of change

Causal inferences on the effectiveness of complex social programs: Navigating assumptions, sources of complexity and evaluation design challenges - Chatterji, Madhabi (Evaluation and Program Planning, 2016)
This paper explores avenues for navigating evaluation design challenges posed by complex social programs (CSPs) and their environments when conducting studies that call for generalizable, causal inferences on the intervention’s effectiveness. A definition is provided of a CSP drawing on examples from different fields, and an evaluation case is analyzed in depth to derive seven (7) major sources of complexity that typify CSPs, threatening assumptions of textbook-recommended experimental designs for performing impact evaluations. Theoretically-supported, alternative methodological strategies are discussed to navigate assumptions and counter the design challenges posed by the complex configurations and ecology of CSPs. Specific recommendations include: sequential refinement of the evaluation design through systems thinking, systems-informed logic modeling; and use of extended term, mixed methods (ETMM) approaches with exploratory and confirmatory phases of the evaluation. In the proposed approach, logic models are refined through direct induction and interactions with stakeholders. To better guide assumption evaluation, question-framing, and selection of appropriate methodological strategies, a multiphase evaluation design is recommended.
Keywords: Causal inferences; Complex social programs; Experimental designs; Impact evaluations; Mixed methods

The Appearance of Accountability: Communication Technologies and Power Asymmetries in Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Recovery - Madianou, Mirca; Ong, Jonathan Corpus; Longboan, Liezel; Cornelio, Jayeel S. (Journal of Communication, 2016)
New communication technologies are celebrated for their potential to improve the accountability of humanitarian agencies. The response to Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 represents the most systematic implementation of “accountability to affected people” initiatives. Drawing on a year-long ethnography of the Haiyan recovery and 139 interviews with humanitarian workers and affected people, the article reveals a narrow interpretation of accountability as feedback that is increasingly captured through mobile phones. We observe that the digitized collection of feedback is not fed back to disaster-affected communities, but is directed to donors as evidence of “impact.” Rather than improving accountability to affected people, digitized feedback mechanisms sustained humanitarianism's power asymmetries.
Keywords: Accountability; Audit; Communication for Development; Disasters; Ethnography; ICT4D; Mobile phones; Participatory Communication; SMS; Texting; humanitarianism

Assumption-aware tools and agency; an interrogation of the primary artifacts of the program evaluation and design profession in working with complex evaluands and complex contexts - Morrow, Nathan; Nkwake, Apollo M. (Evaluation and Program Planning, 2016)
Like artisans in a professional guild, we evaluators create tools to suit our ever evolving practice. The tools we use as evaluators are the primary artifacts of our profession, reflect our practice and embody an amalgamation of paradigms and assumptions. With the increasing shifts in evaluation purposes from judging program worth to understanding how programs work, the evaluator’s role is changing to that of facilitating stakeholders in a learning process. This involves clarifying purposes and choices, as well as unearthing critical assumptions. In such a role, evaluators become major tool-users and begin to innovate with small refinements or produce completely new tools to fit a specific challenge or context. We interrogate the form and function of 12 tools used by evaluators when working with complex evaluands and complex contexts. The form is described in terms of traditional qualitative techniques and particular characteristics of the elements, use and presentation of each tool. Then the function of each tool is analyzed with respect to articulating assumptions and affecting the agency of evaluators and stakeholders in complex contexts.
Keywords: Agency; Assumption-aware; Complex context; Complex programs; Participatory approaches; Program design; Program evaluation; Program tools; Theory-based

Conclusion: Agency in the face of complexity and the future of assumption-aware evaluation practice - Morrow, Nathan; Nkwake, Apollo M. (Evaluation and Program Planning, 2016)
This final chapter in the volume pulls together common themes from the diverse set of articles by a group of eight authors in this issue, and presents some reflections on the next steps for improving the ways in which evaluators work with assumptions. Collectively, the authors provide a broad overview of existing and emerging approaches to the articulation and use of assumptions in evaluation theory and practice. The authors reiterate the rationale and key terminology as a common basis for working with assumption in program design and evaluation. They highlight some useful concepts and categorizations to promote more rigorous treatment of assumptions in evaluation. A three-tier framework for fostering agency for assumption-aware evaluation practice is proposed-agency for themselves (evaluators); agency for others (stakeholders); and agency for standards and principles.
Keywords: Agency; Complexity

Policy messes and their management - Roe, Emery (Policy Sciences, 2016)
This paper presents a framework for better managing policy messes and draws implications for bad and good mess management in policy analysis and management. The framework has three foci: (1) the cognitive space in which policy messes develop, particularly in terms of gaps between macro-designers and micro-operators; (2) the unique domain of competence within that space where professionals manage the resulting messes by virtue of their skills in recognizing system-wide patterns, formulating locally specific contingency scenarios and translating both patterns and scenarios in highly reliable services; and (3) the ability of those mess and reliability professionals to be reliable in their domain and with these skills by maneuvering across different performance modes as conditions dictate—just-in-case, just-on-time, just-for-now or just-this-way.

Going vertical: citizen-led reform campaigns in the Philippines - Aceron, Joy; Isaac, Francis (IDS, 2016)
The Philippines has a long history of state–society engagement to introduce reforms in government and politics. Forces from civil society and social movements have interfaced with reform-oriented leaders in government on a range of social accountability initiatives – to make governance more responsive, to introduce policy reforms, and to make government more accountable. Several theoretical propositions on which strategic approaches work best for social accountability initiatives have been put forward – including the idea of vertically integrated civil society monitoring and advocacy. This multi-authored research report uses vertical integration as a framework for examining seven successful civil society social accountability initiatives in the Philippines, looking at what made them successful, and how the gains they realised can be deepened and sustained.

Rethinking systemic change: economic evolution and institutions - Cunningham, Shawn; Jenal, Marcus (BEAM Exchange, 2016)
Resources that contain evidence of market systems interventions. Recently updated.

Rethinking systemic change: economic evolution and institutions. Discussion paper - Cunningham, Shawn; Jenal, Marcus (BEAM Exchange, 2016)
The primary aim of this research project was to find a conceptually sound definition of systemic change. To do so, it was essential to gain a better understanding of how economies change. The central part of the research work, therefore, was an extended literature review on three bodies of knowledge: evolutionary economics new institutional economics complexity theory There is a growing interest in these bodies of knowledge, combined often called New Economic Thinking, and how they affect economic development. Hence, while rethinking systemic change, this work also contributes to answering the broader question of how market systems approaches can contribute to inclusive economic development. The answer, in short, is to shift the focus away from improving transactions at the micro level towards enabling actors to continuously shape an institutional landscape that supports inclusive economic evolution. This discussion paper briefly presents the key messages from the literature review and seven principles drawing from this literature. The principles can be used by market development practitioners, including technical advisers in donor organisations, programme designers and team leaders, to shape programmes and become more in line with how change happens in the economy. A list of selected references is presented at the end. A technical paper contains a much more detailed discussion of the findings and the principles and an extensive list of references. A case study offers a practitioner perspective through the lens of one market systems development programme: DFID-funded Northern Uganda: Transforming the Economy through Climate Smart Agribusiness – Market Development (NUTEC-MD).

Rethinking systemic change: economic evolution and institutions. Technical Paper - Cunningham, Shawn; Jenal, Marcus (BEAM Exchange, 2016)
The primary aim of this research project was to find a conceptually sound definition of systemic change. To do so, it was essential to gain a better understanding of how economies change. The central part of the research work, therefore, was an extended literature review on three bodies of knowledge: evolutionary economics, new institutional economics and complexity theory. There is a growing interest in these bodies of knowledge, combined often called New Economic Thinking, and how they affect economic development. Hence, while rethinking systemic change, this work also contributes to answering the broader question of how market systems approaches can contribute to inclusive economic development. The answer, in short, is to shift the focus away from improving transactions at the micro level towards enabling actors to continuously shape an institutional landscape that supports inclusive economic evolution. This technical paper provides an in-depth review of the fields of evolutionary economics, new institutional economics and complexity and social change. It is argued that economic development is a complex, non-linear and continuous evolutionary process. Both market and non-market institutions matter greatly in shaping economic performance. The paper then explores the consequences of this understanding for market development practice. It discusses how market development practitioners can engage in and shape an intentional change processes. To translate the theory into practice, seven principles are suggested that can be applied to market systems development practice. The paper concludes with a reframed look at systemic change in market systems development. A discussion paper presents the key messages from the literature review and seven principles drawing from this literature, and a case study offers a practitioner perspective through the lens of one market systems development programme: DFID-funded Northern Uganda: Transforming the Economy through Climate Smart Agribusiness – Market Development (NUTEC-MD).

Scaling accountability through vertically integrated civil society policy monitoring and advocacy - Fox, Jonathan (IDS, 2016)
This working paper argues that the growing field of transparency, participation and accountability (TPA) needs a conceptual reboot, to address the limited traction gained so far on the path to accountability. To inform more strategic approaches and to identify the drivers of more sustainable institutional change, fresh analytical work is needed. This paper makes the case for one among several possible strategic approaches by distinguishing between “scaling up” and “taking scale into account”. This proposition grounds an explanation of the vertical integration strategy, which involves multi-level coordination by civil society organisations of policy monitoring and advocacy, grounded in broad pro-accountability constituencies. To spell out how this strategy can empower pro-accountability actors, the paper contrasts varied terms of engagement between state and society, proposing a focus on collaborative coalitions as an alternative to the conventional dichotomy between confrontation and constructive engagement. The paper grounds this discussion by reviewing the rich empirical terrain of existing multi-level approaches, summarizing nine cases – three each in three countries – to demonstrate what can be revealed when TPA initiatives are seen through the lens of scale. It concludes with a set of broad analytical questions for discussion, followed by testable hypotheses proposed to inform future research agendas

Taking scale into account in transparency and accountability initiatives - Fox, Jonathan (IDS, 2016)
We know that gaining access to information and raising citizen voices are not the same as achieving accountability. It is important to look beyond the symptoms of accountability failure, and consider how to tackle the causes. This short research summary discusses different understandings of scale, one important aspect of making transparency and accountability initiatives more strategic. Scale shapes both the causes of accountability failure and the tactics and strategies needed to address it.

Exploring the potential for interactive radio to improve accountability and responsiveness to small-scale farmers in Tanzania - Gilberds, Heather; Handforth, Calum; Leclair, Mark (IDS, 2016)
What are the possibilities of using new digital technologies alongside radio to help ensure that agricultural development projects are farmer-centred, and meet the needs of the rural citizens they intend to serve? This research assesses Farm Radio International’s Listening Post – a model that combines radio and digital technologies with the aim of collecting and aggregating farmer feedback to aid decision-making and adaptive project implementation. The research shows that linking a mobile-based crowd-sourcing tool with radio is effective at ensuring engagement from a large number of farmers, who felt it was a useful way of raising their questions and concerns to NGOs, policy-makers and experts. The model has clear potential to strengthen the chain of relationships between citizens, extension services suppliers, projects and policymakers. It has also demonstrated its potential to collect real-time feedback from farmers that could be used to aid decision-making and improve accountability in agricultural development initiatives, helping to ensure they are more responsive to farmers. However, it also concludes that ‘closing the feedback loop’ – ensuring that farmer’s comments, questions and concerns are responded to – is a challenge for the Listening Post. Sometimes, the interactive radio programmes close the loop by disseminating answers to questions or concerns raised by farmers, or by connecting farmers to extension services – but only when a solid and systematic process had been developed for this to happen. Therefore is critical to identify and incentivise actors who are capable of responding during the design phase of a Listening Post, and to ensure that they are involved in every stage of the process. It also important that project partners who are interested in beneficiary feedback identify the flexible or actionable points in their project frameworks from the outset, rather than collecting data that they are not able to use to adapt their programmes

Rethinking systemic change in practice - perspectives from NUTEC-MD in northern Uganda - Koleros, Andrew (BEAM Exchange, 2016)
Document description This document is currently being finalised and will be published shortly. Please try again soon. Recent research by The BEAM Exchange seeks to understand theoretical perspectives on how market systems approaches can contribute to inclusive economic development through systemic change. It produced three main insights. Economies are evolving systems, building on the mechanisms of variety creation, selection and amplification. Current economic performance, including aspects like the inclusiveness of growth and economic evolution, are shaped by the ability of a society to explore different options for institutional arrangements and adjust them over time. This process of evolution is complex. While some aspects can be designed and managed, others need to be explored through a process of learning and adjustment. This paper responds to these insights by providing a practitioner perspective through the lens of one programme: “Northern Uganda: Transforming the Economy through Climate Smart Agribusiness – Market Development (NUTEC-MD)”, implemented by Palladium Group. It begins with a brief introduction to the programme and key aspects of its design phase. It then provides a summary of the three main research insights, with reflections on their applicability for programme design based on the NUTEC-MD experience. Finally, it provides some conclusions for the wider practitioner community based on this case.

Doing Development Differently: Who we are, What we’re doing, What we’re learning - ODI (ODI, 2016)
In November 2014, the doing development differently community got together in Harvard to discuss what successful development interventions look like. Two years on, our community is broader than aid. It's broader than donors. It's about all organisations delivering change, producing real solutions to real problems that have real impact. It's about building trust, empowering people and promoting sustainability. Over the past two years, the community has been putting these ideas into practice across the world – being honest about what we are learning, including where we are not getting things right. This document aims to be an entry point for anyone interested in doing development differently. It explores the things that could be stopping you including: You are constrained by a disabling environment. You have strict reporting requirements. People aren't sold on the idea. It's easier to do things the way you've always done it. It's difficult to do in practice. If you are facing one, several, or all of these constraints, this document gives you a place to start. Using 43 case studies from practitoners within donors, governments, implementing organisations and NGOs across the globe, we aim to draw out some key lessons learnt, and give some advice for people considering this approach. These case studies are split across five categories: Swimming against the tide. Working in and with government. Feedback loops and data. Organisational change. Diffusion. Finally, if you want to know more, the document concludes with a suggested list of blogs and reports which explain these concepts in more detail.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Crowdsourcing citizen feedback on district development in Ghana using interactive voice response surveys - Pegus, Ciana-Marie (IDS, 2016)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

The Science in Adaptive Management - Ripley, Matt; Jaccard, Sabine (ILO, 2016)
‘Adaptive management’ is all the rage in international development circles. But to avoid yet another buzzword – we need to learn from the experience of natural resource science.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Nigeria Public Sector Accountability and Governance Programme - Business Case - SAVI (DFID, 2016)
In May 2016, SAVI transitioned into a successor programme – the ‘Engaged Citizens Pillar’ (ECP) of a wider DFID-funded governance reform programme ‘The Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn’ (PERL). ECP is managed by the same service provider, Palladium, and the same core management team as SAVI, and many of the SAVI front line staff...

SAVI Approach Paper 11: Managing and Staffing an Adaptive Citizen Engagement Programme - SAVI (DFID, 2016)
SAVI, a DFID funded programme implemented by Palladium, is an adaptive programme putting learning and adaptation at the centre of all decision-making. In relation to management and staffing SAVI has established the following approaches to facilitate this: – An adaptive approach to programme management: Full time strategic technical leadership, that works closely with and complements...

SAVI Approach Paper 12: Managing Programme Finances to Support Adaptive, Locally-led Processes of Citizen Engagement in Governance - SAVI (DFID, 2016)
SAVI, is seeking to support processes of citizen engagement in governance in ways that are effective in influencing reform, and that are able to take on a life of their own without continuing donor support. SAVI is also an adaptive programme, putting learning and adaptation at the centre of all decision-making. Money is used and...

SAVI Approach Paper 13: Measuring Value for Money and using Value for Money Analysis - SAVI (DFID, 2016)
SAVI has established its own framework for assessing Value for Money in annual performance – in relation to expenditure, economy, efficiency, effectiveness and equity. Routine tracking and analysis of expenditure and economy ensure that inputs are supplied and services delivered to partners in line with SAVI’s core values, whilst also meeting DFID requirements and competing...

SAVI Approach Paper 14: Learning, Adaptation and Communications - SAVI (DFID, 2016)
SAVI, a DFID funded programme implemented by Palladium, is an adaptive programme, aiming to put learning and adaptation at the centre of all decision-making. Learning and adaptation takes place in SAVI at three levels: the work of partners; the work of SAVI delivery teams; and the enabling environment of the programme as a whole. Achieving...

SAVI Approach Paper 15: Introduction to PERL: the SAVI Successor Programme - SAVI (DFID, 2016)
In May 2016, SAVI transitioned into a successor programme – the ‘Engaged Citizens Pillar’ (ECP) of a wider DFID-funded governance reform programme ‘The Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn’ (PERL). ECP is managed by the same service provider, Palladium, and the same core management team as SAVI, and many of the SAVI front line staff...

Forget the money: De-linking technical assistance - Manuel, Clare (DFID-LASER Programme, 2016)

From analysis to action: operationalising learning and adaptation in Savings at the Frontier - Salehi, Yusef (2016)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Global Learning for Adaptive Management (GLAM) - DFID (DFID Development Tracker, 2016)
To improve the value for money and impact of development interventions by promoting the use of better monitoring, evaluation and learning strategies that support development programmes to gather and respond to emergent evidence on the effects of interventions, as well as changes in the development context. The Global Learning for Adpative Management programme will make available technical assistance to DFID, USAID and partners to develop this ‘adaptive management’ approach, as well as build an evidence base to understand links between the use of adaptive management and more effective, efficient, relevant and sustainable development interventions.

Shoulder to Shoulder - Hymowitz, Dan (Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative, 2016)

Overcoming Premature Evaluation - Roche, Chris (2016)
Guest post from Chris Roche on practical ways of introducing adaptive management, learning from failure etc in aid programmes

Scaling Assessment Map: An Evolving Tool Supporting Innovation Scale Up - McClure, Dan; Gray, Ian (ThoughtWorks, 2016)
Nearly three years ago we wrote about the “Missing Middle” in the innovation lifecycle[i], a gap that kept successful pilot programs from reaching the goal of replication and optimization in multiple contexts. Since then, scaling humanitarian innovation has received a great deal of attention from the sector, with a number of new initiatives specifically focused on the scaling challenge.

Positive Deviance Initiative (2016)

Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter - Rock, David; Halvorson, Heidi Grant (Harvard Business Review, 2016)
Research shows they’re more successful in three important ways.

Why the Problem with Learning Is Unlearning - Bonchek, Mark (Harvard Business Review, 2016)
Don’t get stuck in your current ways of thinking.

Ten Frontier Technologies for International Development - Ramalingam, Ben; Hernandez, Kevin; Prieto Martin, Pedro; Faith, Becky (IDS, 2016)
As new technologies and digital business models reshape economies and disrupt incumbencies, interest has surged in the potential of novel frontier technologies to also contribute to positive changes in international development and humanitarian contexts. Widespread adoption of new technologies is acknowledged as centrally important to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. But while frontier technologies can rapidly address large-scale economic, social or political challenges, they can also involve the displacement of existing technologies and carry considerable uncertainty and risk. Although there have been significant wins bringing the benefits of new technologies to poor consumers through examples such as mobile money or off-grid solar energy, there are many other areas where the applications may not yet have been developed into viable market solutions, or where opportunities have not yet been taken up in development practice.

LEARN Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning Plan - Learning Lab (USAID, 2016)
LEARN and USAID/PPL are managing an area of work known as Evidence Base for Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (EB4CLA). The purpose of this work is to answer key learning questions:

Designing for Public Services - Nesta (Nesta/IDEO, 2016)

A practical guide to outcome-focused philanthropy - Twersky, Fay; Grange, Lori (Hewlett Foundation, 2016)
Outcome-focused philanthropy is the Hewlett Foundation’s approach to how we practice strategic philanthropy. It guides how we do our work, from start to finish. We’ve been practicing strategic philanthropy for more than a decade—focusing on what problem or opportunity we’re trying to address, whether we’re achieving our outcomes and why (or why not), and how…

Guidelines and good practices for evidence-informed policy-making in a government department - Wills, Alf; Tshangela, Mapula; Shaxson, Louise; Datta, Ajoy; Matomela, Bongani (2016)

How Change Happens - Green, Duncan (OUP Oxford, 2016)
Human society is full of would-be 'change agents', a restless mix of campaigners, lobbyists, and officials, both individuals and organizations, set on transforming the world. They want to improve public services, reform laws and regulations, guarantee human rights, get a fairer deal for those on the sharp end, achieve greater recognition for any number of issues, or simply be treated with respect. Striking then, that not many universities have a Department of Change Studies, to which social activists can turn for advice and inspiration. Instead, scholarly discussions of change are fragmented with few conversations crossing disciplinary boundaries, rarely making it onto the radars of those actively seeking change. This book bridges the gap between academia and practice, bringing together the best research from a range of academic disciplines and the evolving practical understanding of activists to explore the topic of social and political change. Drawing on many first-hand examples from the global experience of Oxfam, one of the world's largest social justice NGOs, as well as the author's insights from studying and working on international development, it tests ideas on How Change Happens and offers the latest thinking on what works to achieve progressive change. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is available as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

What is adaptive management? - Wilson, Gregory (ΔNTYLLES, 2016)
Recently there has been growing recognition that most development challenges are in actual fact ‘wicked’ problem that requires development actors to recognize that the optimal management approaches…

Should the Principles of Digital Development be Agile? - ICTworks (ICT Works, 2016)
Recently, Abt Associates endorsed the “Principles of Digital Development.” These nine principles have been widely adopted by international development funders and practitioners to absorb and disseminate technology best practices in the field of international development. More than 50 organizations ranging from various offices in the United Nations and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) down to niche technology providers have endorsed the principles. The principles are aimed at moving the field away from a disconnected series of technology pilots, each of which are largely ad hoc and duplicate many of the same lessons, and toward scalability and sustainability. Ann Mei Chang, the Executive Director of the U.S. Global Development Lab at USAID in her foreword to the recent report “From Principle to Practice: Implementing the Principles for Digital Development”, characterized the problem that these principles are trying to address as follows: “Pilots have failed to move

Top-down vs. Bottom-up Hierarchy: Or, How to Design a Self-Managed Organization - Sisney, Lex (Organizational Physics - Systems thinking for breakthrough business performance, 2016)
Top-down vs. Bottom-up Hierarchy: Or, How to Design a Self-Managed Organization

Moving from Real-Time Data to Real-Time Programs - Lee, Panthea (Reboot, 2016)
How can we avoid drowning in data to actually make better decisions?
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Agile vs Lean vs Design Thinking - Gothelf, Jeff (Medium, 2016)
There’s an unforgettable scene in my favorite movie, Goodfellas, where Joe Pesci, Robert DeNiro and Ray Liotta pay a late night visit to…

PDIA Notes 2: Learning to Learn - Samji, Salimah (Building State Capability, 2016)
written by Peter Harrington After over two years of working with the government of Albania, and as we embark on a new project to work with the government of Sri Lanka, we at the Building State Capa…

Nairobi Outcome Document (2016)

Design Thinking is not enough – Innovate DFID - DFID, Innovate (Medium, 2016)
By Tamara Giltsoff

Where next for development effectiveness? Building a renewed consensus - Blampied, Catherine (ODI, 2016)

Contracts for adaptive programming - Bryan, Kevin; Carter, Paddy (ODI, 2016)
Adaptive programming is an approach to development that encourages experimentation, learning & adaptation. This report examines the contractual underpinnings of this approach.

Where next for development effectiveness? Implementing development effectiveness: a reality check - Carter, Paddy (ODI, 2016)

Thinking and Working politically to support developmental leadership and coalitions: The Pacific Leadership Program - Denney, Lisa; McLaren, Rebecca (DLP Program, 2016)

DFID Smart Rules: Better Programme Delivery - version VI (2016.10) - DFID (DFID, 2016)
Smart Rules provide the operating framework for the Department for International Development’s (DFID’s) programmes.
Keywords: IMPORTANT; Practice

Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA). Framework and Maturity Matrix Overview - Learning Lab (USAID, 2016)

Grow - Scale - Impact: How to help inclusive business achieve scale - Pérez Castro, Andrea A.; Tora, Krisztina (GIZ, 2016)

CLA Maturity Tool: Example Spectrum Cards - USAID (2016)

Collaborating, Learning and Adapting (CLA) - Maturity Matrix Overview - USAID (Policy, Planning and Learning, 2016)
Collaborating, Learning and Adapting (CLA) involves strategic collaboration, continuous learning, and adaptive management. CLA approaches to development include collaborating intentionally with stakeholders to share knowledge and reduce duplication of effort, learning systematically by drawing on evidence from a variety of sources and taking time to reflect on implementation, and applying learning by adapting intentionally. The purpose of the maturity matrix tool is to help USAID Missions think more deliberately about how to plan for and implement CLA approaches that fit the Mission’s context and needs. Through a set of easy-to-use cards, the CLA maturity matrix offers examples of what CLA looks like at different stages of maturity. USAID staff can use the decks of cards to both assess current practice and plan for the future. The maturity matrix consists of two decks of cards corresponding to the dimensions of CLA: ● CLA in the Program Cycle: By using the matrix cards to guide a conversation, teams can explore how well CLA is incorporated into the planning and implementation processes of the Program Cycle. ● Enabling Conditions: The cards encourage discussion of the conditions that can significantly influence how CLA and the Program Cycle are implemented at a Mission, including operating processes, organizational culture, and resourcing. Within these decks, the matrix covers 16 subcomponents of CLA. Each has one key concept card and five matrix cards that describe the component in practice, along a spectrum ranging from Not Yet Present to Institutionalized.

The 5 Rs Framework in the program cycle - USAID (2016)
USAID’s Program Cycle Operational Policy (ADS 201) provides guidance to missions and other operating units on how to implement the Program Cycle. A key principle of the Program Cycle is to “Promote Sustainability through Local Ownership.” The purpose of this Technical Note is to describe the “5Rs Framework”, a practical methodology for supporting sustainability and local ownership in projects and activities through ongoing attention to local actors and local systems. This Note is rooted in USAID’s 2014 Local Systems Framework paper, which establishes that achieving sustained improvement in development results depends on the contributions of multiple and interconnected local actors. That document also states that USAID needs to improve its systems practice if it is to engage local actors and strengthen local systems more effectively and thus realize sustained results more consistently. The 5Rs Framework, also introduced in the Local Systems Framework, is intended as a simple and practical tool to promote good systems practice. The 5Rs Framework highlights five key dimensions of systems: Results, Roles, Relationships, Rules and Resources. Collectively these 5Rs can serve as a lens for assessing local systems and a guide for identifying and monitoring interventions designed to strengthen them. This Technical Note is divided in two parts. The first part provides an introduction to the 5Rs Framework and the systems practice from which it emerges. The second part demonstrates how systems practice can be embedded in the Program Cycle by continuously applying the 5Rs, especially to the design, implementation, and monitoring of USAID projects and their accompanying activities.

Building justice and peace from below? Supporting community dispute resolution in Asia - Valters, Craig (ODI, 2016)

Announcement of CLA Learning Network Launch - Lab, Learning (USAID Learning Lab, 2016)
USAID’s Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning (PPL), together with the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment’s localworks program, is pleased to announce the launch of a Learning Network focused on building the evidence base for Collaborating, Learning and Adapting (CLA).

Adaptive Programming: The “Space of Possibility” - Seavey, Sara Mizuta (USAID Learning Lab, 2016)
Sara Mizuta Seavey, M.A., is a Senior Program Officer at FHI360 for the Mobile Solutions Technical Assistance and Research (mSTAR) project, where she works with USAID’s Digital Development Team to conceive, design, and test how real-time data systems can enable a more adaptive and participatory approach to development. She is passionate about systems thinking and participatory approaches to international development. What does space travel have to do with international development?

Governance and Service Delivery: Practical Applications of Social Accountability Across Sectors - Wetterberg, Anna; Brinkerhoff, Derick W.; Hertz, Jana C. (RTI Press, 2016)
The six case studies in Governance and Service Delivery: Practical Applications of Social Accountability Across Sectors illustrate the multiple ways citizen participation in accountability – called social accountability – can lead to positive effects on governance, citizen empowerment, and service delivery. Drawing on their extensive experience implementing international donor-funded programs and projects, the authors examine six recent RTI International projects in Africa and Asia. The analysis focuses on both intended and actual effects, and it unpacks the influence of context on implementation and outcomes achieved, as well as on prospects for sustainability. Donors, academics, policy makers, practitioners and others interested in sustainable development and governance will find this systematic review invaluable.

Forward Look - A vision for the World Bank Group in 2030 - World Bank (World Bank, 2016)

The fascinating world of unconscious bias and development policy - d’Almeida, André Corrêa; Grossi, Amanda Sue (The Guardian, 2016)
In the last few years scientists have exposed thinking patterns that may skew our decision-making. How can we counter these biases in humanitarian work?
Keywords: Academic experts; Higher Education Network; Neuroscience; Psychology; education; higher education

edX MOOC: Adaptive Leadership in Development - edX (edX, 2016)
Gain the skills to be an adaptive leader in development and learn how to uncover local solutions to complex problems in developing countries.

Moving ICTD research beyond bungee jumping: practical case studies and recommendations - Dearden, Andy; Tucker, William (IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, 2016)
The global spread of Internet and mobile communications has been accompanied by a growing interest in how information and communication technologies (ICTs) can contribute to social and economic development. There are a considerable number of such examples in developing countries. For example, M-Pesa in Kenya allows workers in the cities to send money back to families living in the countryside using SMS messages on basic mobile phones. In Ghana, the Motech project allows community health workers to use feature phones and network services to track ante-natal (and post-natal) care with the objective of improving outcomes for both mothers and babies. Other examples include Gram Vaani's (GRINS) open-source software for community radio stations, or Ushahidi's initiatives, which began with tracking post-electoral violence in Kenya in 2008 using mobile phones and Google maps. These examples illustrate different ways of leveraging ICT to improve lives and livelihoods worldwide. Such stories are inspiring many young (and not so young) researchers and innovators alike to explore how technology might support social and economic development and inclusion in global knowledge exchange

How China Escaped the Poverty Trap - Ang, Yuen Yuen (Cornell University Press, 2016)
Before markets opened in 1978, China was an impoverished planned economy governed by a Maoist bureaucracy. In just three decades it evolved into the world's second-largest economy and is today guided by highly entrepreneurial bureaucrats. In How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, Yuen Yuen Ang explains this astonishing metamorphosis. Rather than insist that either strong institutions of good governance foster markets or that growth enables good governance, Ang lays out a new, dynamic framework for understanding development broadly. Successful development, she contends, is a coevolutionary process in which markets and governments mutually adapt.By mapping this coevolution, Ang reveals a startling conclusion: poor and weak countries can escape the poverty trap by first harnessing weak institutions―features that defy norms of good governance―to build markets. Further, she stresses that adaptive processes, though essential for development, do not automatically occur. Highlighting three universal roadblocks to adaptation, Ang identifies how Chinese reformers crafted enabling conditions for effective improvisation.How China Escaped the Poverty Trap offers the most complete synthesis to date of the numerous interacting forces that have shaped China’s dramatic makeover and the problems it faces today. Looking beyond China, Ang also traces the coevolutionary sequence of development in late medieval Europe, antebellum United States, and contemporary Nigeria, and finds surprising parallels among these otherwise disparate cases. Indispensable to all who care about development, this groundbreaking book challenges the convention of linear thinking and points to an alternative path out of poverty traps.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Cognitive bias cheat sheet. An organized list of cognitive biases because thinking is hard - Benson, Buster (Better Humans, 2016)

Micropolitics in collective learning spaces for adaptive decision making - Tschakert, Petra; Das, Partha Jyoti; Shrestha Pradhan, Neera; Machado, Mario; Lamadrid, Armando; Buragohain, Mandira; Hazarika, Masfique Alam (Global Environmental Change, 2016)
Recent advances on power, politics, and pathways in climate change adaptation aim to re-frame decision-making processes from development-as-usual to openings for transformational adaptation. This paper offers empirical insights regarding decision-making politics in the context of collective learning through participatory scenario building and flexible flood management and planning in the Eastern Brahmaputra Basin of Assam, India. By foregrounding intergroup and intragroup power dynamics in such collective learning spaces and how they intersect with existing micropolitics of adaptation on the ground, we examine opportunities for and limitations to challenging entrenched authority and subjectivities. Our results suggest that emancipatory agency can indeed emerge but is likely to be fluid and multifaceted. Community actors who are best positioned to resist higher-level domination may well be imbricated in oppression at home. While participatory co-learning as embraced here might open some spaces for transformation, others close down or remain shut.
Keywords: Co-learning; Flood management; Participatory scenarios; Politics of adaptation; Power

Doing Development Differently at the World Bank: updating the plumbing to fit the architecture - Bain, Katherine A.; Booth, David; Wild, Leni (ODI, 2016)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Developing ICT Services in a Low-Resource Development Context - Bon, Anna; Akkermans, Hans; Gordijn, Jaap (Complex Systems Informatics and Modeling Quarterly, 2016)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

The political economy of pre-trial detention: Indonesia case study - Domingo, Pilar; Sudaryono, Leopold (ODI, 2016)

Engaging Farmers in Climate Change Adaptation Planning: Assessing Intercropping as a Means to Support Farm Adaptive Capacity - Himanen, Sari J.; Mäkinen, Hanna; Rimhanen, Karoliina; Savikko, Riitta (Agriculture, 2016)
Agriculture is one of the most vulnerable and adaptation-prone sources of livelihood facing climate change. Joint adaptation planning by farmers and researchers can help develop practically feasible and environmentally and economically sound adaptation actions as well as encourage the proactive building of farm adaptive capacity. Here, the perceptions of Finnish farmers and rural stakeholders regarding intercropping, the cultivation of two or more crop genotypes together in time and space, as a means to prepare for climate change, were collected in an open workshop. Our aim was to identify the potentials and challenges associated with intercropping, its role as an adaptation strategy, and in farm adaptive capacity. Qualitative analysis revealed better yield security, increased nutrient and protein self-sufficiency, soil conservation and maintenance, reduced pathogen pressure and regulation of water dynamics as the main perceived potentials of intercropping. Potentials relating to the farm economy and environment were also recognized. The main challenges associated with intercropping were related to the lack of information on crop variety performance and optimal yielding in mixtures, industry and policy requirements for seed purity, more complicated crop management and harvesting, and the economic risks associated with experimenting with novel mixtures. Nitrogen-fixing legumes; deep-rooted species, such as lucerne (Medicago sativa L.); special crops, such as herbs in forage mixtures; and autumn-sown winter oilseeds and cereals were highlighted as the most promising intercrops. Because the recognized potentials relate to the safeguarding of field cropping from anticipated climate change and the associated weather variability, we conclude that intercropping can serve as one adaptation strategy to strengthen the adaptive capacity of Finnish farms. However, assuring markets and policies that allow the development of intercropping, performing experiments to assess the benefits and implement options in practice, and providing farmers and farm advisors with more knowledge on the method represent the critical prerequisites for the broader adoption of intercropping.
Keywords: Adaptation planning; Adaptive capacity; Climate change; ecological intensification; intercropping; yield security

Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting. Framework & Key Concepts - Learning Lab (USAID, 2016)

Adaptive management: What it means for CSOs - O’Donnell, Michael (Bond, 2016)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning approaches in an adaptive management context - Tsui, Josephine (EPS PEAKS, ODI, 2016)

Building Democracy from Below: Lessons from Western Uganda - King, Sophie; Hickey, Sam (The Journal of Development Studies, 2016)
How to achieve democratisation in the neo-patrimonial and agrarian environments that predominate in sub-Saharan Africa continues to present a challenge for both development theory and practice. Drawing on intensive fieldwork in Western Uganda, this paper argues that Charles Tilly’s ‘democratisation as process’ provides us with the framework required to explain the ways in which particular kinds of association can advance democratisation from below. Moving beyond the current focus on how elite-bargaining and certain associational forms may contribute to liberal forms of democracy, this approach helps identify the intermediate mechanisms involved in building democracy from below, including the significance of challenging categorical inequalities, notably through the role of producer groups, and of building trust networks, cross-class alliances and synergistic relations between civil and political society. The evidence and mode of analysis deployed here help suggest alternative routes for supporting local efforts to build democracy from below in sub-Saharan Africa.
Keywords: FRUGAL

Delivering institutional reform at scale: Problem-driven approaches supported by adaptive programming - Manuel, Clare (DFID-LASER Programme, 2016)
LASER synthesis papers aim to help donors and other stakeholders better understand why and how to approach investment climate reform programming differently. The papers reflect emerging best practice and lessons learnt on what works and what does not work in doing development differently. The papers have been peer-reviewed by experts in the field including senior advisers at DFID, World Bank, IFC and the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (amongst others). Second synthesis paper - Delivering institutional reform at scale: problem-driven approaches supported by adaptive programming February 2016 Drawing on our experience on the ground, this peer-reviewed paper suggests how problem driven approaches, supported by adaptive programme management can be implemented at scale in relation to donor programming aimed at institutional reform and improving state capability.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Seeing (from) Digital Peripheries: Technology and Transparency in Kenya’s Silicon Savannah - Poggiali, Lisa (Cultural Anthropology, 2016)

Evidence Base for Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting: summary of the literature review (2016.08) - Learning Lab (USAID, 2016)
LEARN and USAID/PPL are managing an area of work known as Evidence Base for Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (EB4CLA). The purpose of this work is to answer key learning questions:

Building elevators for development mutants - Quaggiotto, Giulio (Disrupt & Innovate, 2016)
I recently had the opportunity to learn about General Mill’s (the US food giant) “emerging brands elevator” program (also known as 301 Inc). Traditionally, General Mills has grown either through mergers and acquisitions, or by building new businesses from the ground up. Increasingly, however, it found that small brands were much faster at innovation, so … Continue reading Building elevators for development mutants

This startup uses machine learning and satellite imagery to predict crop yields - Brokaw, Alex (The Verge, 2016)
Mark Johnson wants to beat the United States Department of Agriculture at its own game: predicting yields of America's crops. The USDA puts boots on the ground, deploying hundreds of workers to...

Understanding Social Accountability: Politics, Power and Building New Social Contracts - Hickey, Sam; King, Sophie (The Journal of Development Studies, 2016)
Calls to deepen levels of social accountability within social protection interventions need to be informed by the now extensive experience of promoting social accountability in developing countries. Drawing on a systematic review of over 90 social accountability interventions, including some involving social protection, this paper shows that politics and context are critical to shaping their success. We argue that the politics of social protection and of social accountability resonate strongly with the broader project of transforming state-society relations in developing countries. This requires a reconceptualisation of social accountability and social protection in terms of the broader development of ‘social contracts’, and that the current emphasis on promoting bottom-up forms of accountability needs to be balanced by efforts to strengthen and legitimise public authority in developing countries.

Payment by Results in Development Aid: All That Glitters Is Not Gold - Clist, Paul (The World Bank Research Observer, 2016)
Payment by Results (PbR), where aid is disbursed conditional upon progress against a pre-agreed measure, is becoming increasingly important for various donors. There are great hopes that this innovative instrument will focus attention on ultimate outcomes and lead to greater aid effectiveness by passing the delivery risk on to recipients. However, there is very little related empirical evidence, and previous attempts to place it on a sure conceptual footing are rare and incomplete. This article collates and synthesises relevant insights from a wide range of subfields in economics, providing a rich framework with which to analyze Payment by Results. I argue that the domain in which it dominates more traditional forms is relatively small and if it is used too broadly, many of the results it claims are likely to be misleading. The likelihood of illusory gains stems from the difficulty of using a single indicator to simultaneously measure and reward performance: ‘once a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.’ This does not mean PbR should not be used (indeed it will be optimal in some settings), but it does mean that claims of success should be treated with caution.
Keywords: Conditionality; Contract theory; F35; Foreign Aid; Multitask model; performance

Towards characterizing the adaptive capacity of farmer-managed irrigation systems: learnings from Nepal - Thapa, Bhuwan; Scott, Christopher; Wester, Philippus; Varady, Robert (Environmental change assessments, 2016)
Small-scale irrigation systems managed by farmers are facing multiple challenges including competing water demand, climatic variability and change, and socioeconomic transformation. Though the relevant institutions for irrigation management have developed coping and adaptation mechanisms, the intensity and frequency of the changes have weakened their institutional adaptive capacity. Using case examples mostly from Nepal, this paper studies the interconnections between seven key dimensions of adaptive capacity: the five capitals (human, financial, natural, social, and physical), governance, and learning. Long-term adaptation requires harnessing the synergies and tradeoffs between generic adaptive capacity that fosters broader development goals and specific adaptive capacity that strengthens climate-risk management. Measuring and addressing the interrelations among the seven adaptive-capacity dimensions aids in strengthening the long term sustainability of farmer-managed irrigation systems.

Adaptive programming in practice: shared lessons from the DFID-funded LASER and SAVI programmes - Derbyshire, Helen; Donovan, Elbereth (DFID-LASER Programme, 2016)
LASER synthesis papers aim to help donors and other stakeholders better understand why and how to approach investment climate reform programming differently. The papers reflect emerging best practice and lessons learnt on what works and what does not work in doing development differently. The papers have been peer-reviewed by experts in the field including senior advisers at DFID, World Bank, IFC and the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (amongst others).
Keywords: IMPORTANT; Practice