Emerging Technologies: Smarter ways to fight wildlife crime - Cressa, Douglas; Zommers, Zinta (Environmental Development, 2014)
The illegal trade of animals—for luxury goods, traditional medicine or cultural ceremonies, pets, entertainment, and even research—is a major threat to wildlife conservation and welfare (Baker et al., 2013). Poachers and illegal traders use highly sophisticated and rapidly changing techniques to avoid detection. To keep pace with the "war on wildlife", conservation and law enforcement communities have started to adopt cutting-edge military tools and techniques. High-tech equipment can magnify counter-poaching efforts without requiring armies of rangers or risking lives. Tools include acoustic traps, mobile technology, mikrokopters, radio frequency identification tags, encrypted data digital networks, camera traps, DNA testing, radio collars, metal scanners, and satellite imagery.

Introducción a Capacity WORKS + Proyectos de Cambio - Informe - Cuéllar, Daniel (GIZ, 2014)

Collaborative Outcome Mapping - Dart, J.; Roberts, M. (Better Evaluation, 2014)
Collaborative Outcomes Reporting (COR) is a participatory approach to impact evaluation based around a performance story that presents evidence of how a program has contributed to outcomes and impacts, that is then reviewed by both technical experts and program stakeholders, which may include community members. Collaborative Outcomes Reporting (COR) is a participatory approach to impact evaluation based around a performance story that presents evidence of how a program has contributed to outcomes and impacts, that is then reviewed by both technical experts and program stakeholders, which may include community members. Developed by Jess Dart, COR combines contribution analysis andMultiple Lines and Levels of Evidence (MLLE), mapping existing data and additional data against the program logic to produce a performance story. Performance story reports are essentially a short report about how a program contributed to outcomes. Although they may vary in content and format, most are short, mention program context and aims, relate to a plausible results chain, and are backed by empirical evidence (Dart and Mayne, 2005). The aim is to tell the ‘story’ of a program’s performance using multiple-lines of evidence. COR adds processes of review by an expert panel and stakeholders, sometimes including community members, to check for the credibility of the evidence about what impacts have occurred and the extent to which these can be credibly attributed to the intervention. It is these components of expert panel review (outcomes panel) and a collaborative approach to developing outcomes (through summit workshops) that differentiate COR from other approaches to outcome and impact evaluation.

Behavioral Design: A New Approach to Development Policy - Datta, Saugato; Mullainathan, Sendhil (Review of Income and Wealth, 2014)

Learning and adapting: the use of monitoring and evaluation in countering violent extremism: a handbook for practitioners - Dawson, Laura; Edwards, Charlie; Jeffray, Calum; Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, 2014)
IN 2013, the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) was awarded a grant under the Kanishka Project to develop a handbook for monitoring and evaluating counter violent extremism (CVE) policies and programmes. The aim of this handbook is to support CVE policy-makers and practitioners (those who design, manage and evaluate CVE programmes), by providing them with key terms regarding violent extremism and radicalisation, describing the purpose of evaluation, and providing examples of key methodologies they can employ to conduct monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in this emerging policy field. The handbook will enable readers to understand why, when and how to conduct an evaluation of a CVE policy, programme or project. .
OCLC: 1079851950

The case for thinking and working politically. The implications of 'doing development differently' - DLP (DLP, 2014)
This paper discusses the steps required to build a robust evidence base for 'thinking and working politically' (TWP) in development. It argues that better understanding what works, when and why is an important step in moving TWP into mainstream development programming. The paper reviews the existing evidence base on TWP, building on this and on other literature on public sector reform and 'pockets of effectiveness' to suggest research questions, case study selection criteria, and a four-level analytical framework: 1) political context; 2) sector; 3) organisation; and 4) individual. The framework aims to help build a 'rigorous enough' evidence base to show whether and how TWP happens and whether or not it influences the effectiveness of programme implementation and outcomes. The paper also calls for more focus on gender issues, and on different – and often more fragile – political contexts.

Information lives of the poor: fighting poverty with technology - Elder, Laurent; Samarajiva, Rohan; Gillwald, Alison; Galperin, Hernan (2014)

Empowerment evaluation - Fettermen, David (2014)

Capacity WORKS - GIZ (2014)
One of GIZ’s core competencies is understanding how cooperation works in societies, and supporting that process. The kind of process we mean is cooperation between state, civil society and private-sector actors who wish to jointly shape societal changes. GIZ has systematised its knowledge on how to achieve this, and made it available in the Capacity WORKS management model. The model describes how to manage cooperation systems.

Capacity Works - online training - GIZ (GIZ, 2014)

Participatory Approaches - Guijt, Irene (UNICEF, 2014)
This guide, written by Irene Guijt for UNICEF, looks at the use of participatory approaches in impact evaluation. Using participatory approaches means involving stakeholders, particularly those affected by intervention, in the evaluation process. This includes involvement in the design, data collection, analysis, reporting, and management of the study. Excerpt "By asking the question, ‘Who should be involved, why and how?’ for each step of an impact evaluation, an appropriate and context-specific participatory approach can be developed. Managers of UNICEF evaluations must recognize that being clear about the purpose of participatory approaches in an impact evaluation is an essential first step towards managing expectations and guiding implementation. Is the purpose to ensure that the voices of those whose lives should have been improved by the programme or policy are central to the findings? Is it to ensure a relevant evaluation focus? Is it to hear people’s own versions of change rather than obtain an external evaluator’s set of indicators? Is it to build ownership of the UNICEF programme? These, and other considerations, would lead to different forms of participation by different combinations of stakeholders in the impact evaluation."

Systemic Design Principles for Complex Social Systems - Jones, Peter H. (Social Systems and Design, 2014)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Introduction - Localising Governance: An Outlook on Research and Policy - Joshi, Anuradha; Schultze-Kraft, Markus (IDS Bulletin, 2014)

Monitoring and Evaluation in the Development Sector - KPMG (KPMG International, 2014)

Measuring Impact: A Learning Approach to Strengthening USAID Biodiversity Programs - Lauck, Liz (2014)

Steering E-Government Projects from Failure to Success: Using Design-Reality Gap Analysis as a Mid-Implementation Assessment Tool - Lessa, Lemma; Negash, Solomon; Belachew, Mesfin (Emerging Issues and Prospects in African E-Government:, 2014)
There are many e-government failures in developing countries. Most studies look at these after the event (post hoc), but this chapter takes an original approach to look mid-implementation (durante hoc) in order to provide recommendations for improvement. The authors chose a partial failure/partial success land management information system being implemented in one Ethiopian city. The project has made retrieval of land information quicker and simpler but is only partly implemented, and is still—on occasion—circumvented by public servants for personal gain. They used design-reality gap framework to understand why the project had partly failed. The authors used the design-reality gap analysis to propose an action plan that would help institutionalise the system, steering it from partial failure to success. They demonstrate the value of this framework as a tool for mid-implementation analysis of e-government projects. The authors recommend its usage on other ongoing e-government projects in developing countries.

Power, Violence, Citizenship and Agency - McGee, Rosemary (IDS Bulletin, 2014)

Political economy analysis: Topic Guide - Mcloughlin, Claire (GSDRC, University of Birmingham, 2014)
Political economy analysis (PEA) aims to situate development interventions within an understanding of the prevailing political and economic processes in society – specifically, the incentives, relationships, and distribution and contestation of power between different groups and individuals. Such an analysis can support more politically feasible and therefore more effective development strategies by setting realistic expectations …

Complexity-Aware Monitoring Discussion Note (Screencast) - Patsalides, Melissa; Britt, Heather (2014)
This screencast covers information included in the Complexity-Aware Monitoring Discussion Note. The topic is intended for those seeking cutting-edge solutions to monitoring complex aspects of strategies and projects. Most of the principles and promising approaches discussed here have a significant body of theory and practice behind them, but many have not been used to monitor USAID strategies and projects. We have much to learn about whether and how they can be applied successfully in the Agency. USAID's Office of Learning, Evaluation, and Research in the Bureau of Policy, Planning, and Learning has partnered with different groups through monitoring trials to build a body of evidence regarding which complexity-aware M&E approaches are most effective in the contexts of USAID programming.

Power Above and Below the Waterline: Bridging Political Economy and Power Analysis - Pettit, Jethro; Mejía Acosta, Andrés (IDS Bulletin, 2014)

Local First in practice - Pinnington, R (Peace Direct, 2014)

Participation Schemas: a tool to characterize collaborative participation - Prieto-Martín, Pedro (PDD2014, Contemporary difficulties and future prospects for Participatory and Deliberative Democracy, NewCastle, 2014)

Caracterizando la participación ciudadana en el marco del Gobierno Abierto - Prieto-Martín, Pedro; Ramírez-Alujas, Álvaro V. (Revista del CLAD. Reforma y Democracia, 2014)
Este artículo profundiza conceptualmente en las dimensiones del Gobierno Abierto, centrándose en el análisis y caracterización de su dimensión participativa. Se propone, en primer lugar, una tipología de actos participativos que muestra el efecto potenciador que las TIC ejercen sobre las distintas formas de participación. En segundo lugar, se presentan los denominados “Esquemas de participación” (EdP), un instrumento conceptual que facilita el análisis y la representación estandarizada de las dimensiones más importantes de la participación. Los EdP proporcionan así, por un lado, un modelo de categorización que extiende nuestra comprensión crítica de la participación y, por otro lado, una herramienta potente y flexible para la comunicación, el diseño y la evaluación de diversos tipos de iniciativas participativas.

Innovation teams and labs. A Practice Guide - Puttick, Ruth (Nesta, 2014)

From best practice to best fit: understanding and navigating wicked problems in international development - Ramalingam, Ben; Laric, Miguel; Primrose, John (ODI, 2014)

Adapting lean thinking to market systems development: Principles and practices for donors/funders - Rasmussen, Leanne (Engineers without borders, 2014)
The purpose of this paper is to provide funders and implementers of market systems development (MSD) projects with principles, practices, and structures that enables these projects to thrive. It is based on a book that has sold millions of copies worldwide, and a school of thought taught at institutions such as Harvard Business School and practiced in companies ranging from giants such as Toyota to the most successful tech start-ups in Silicon Valley. Published in 2011, Eric Ries wrote the Lean Startup as a remedy to the countless start-ups that create their own demises by getting started with the wrong goals, the wrong structures, and the wrong processes. He outlines an approach that enables the startup to navigate ambiguity and risk while using resources effectively. The conditions a MSD project faces are remarkably similar to those which a startup business faces; it needs structures and processes that are matched to the unpredictable, complex environment which it is attempting to influence. MSD projects can thus benefit from private-sector thought leadership on how start-ups can situate themselves for success. This paper starts with an overview of lean thinking, a concept that derives from lean manufacturing which is widely accepted as the leading approach to modern manufacturing. It explains how Ries’s Lean Startup adapts these principles, and then it in turn adapts these ideas for market systems development. The following three sections provide an overview of Lean Startup concepts, applying them to the development sector as appropriate. The final section summarizes and makes suggestions on next steps for funders who wish to set MSD projects up for success using a lean approach. Overall, the paper builds a case for how the Lean Startup’s approach can enable MSD projects to work successfully in ambiguity and increase their potential for achieving robust and sustainable results, all while using donor resources more efficiently.
Keywords: Adaptive Development; Lean

Theory of Change - Rogers, Patricia (UNICEF, 2014)

The politics of public sector performance: pockets of effectiveness in developing countries - Roll, Michael (Routledge, 2014)
OCLC: 869850351

Starting out on Social Return on Investment - SROI Network; Aitken, Hall (2014)
This guide, created by the SROI Network in collaboration with Hall Aitken, is aimed at providing guidance to those who have never used SROI on where to begin. The guide provides practical steps to beginning the process of SROI and includes links to tools aimed at supporting its implementation. Excerpt "Most public, private and third sector organisations have a pretty good idea of the costs of what they do. Annual accounts, management accounts, budget reports and a whole accountancy profession add up to a great deal of effort to make sure this is the case. Some organisations are quite good at counting what they do with these resources. They can track the number of users or contacts, or customers. Many can provide some evidence that these activities lead to some sort of change. But very few can explain clearly why all this matters. What would happen if they did not exist? What is the real value of what they do? Social Return on Investment sets out to redress the balance by looking at value not just cost." Contents Part one – why, what and how? Why does social value matter? What is SROI? How do I do SROI? Next steps Part two – progress tool Part three – practical next steps Steps to involve stakeholders Steps to understand what changes Steps to value the things that matter Steps to only include what is material Steps to avoid overclaiming Steps to be transparent Steps to verify the result

Beyond Ballotocracy: Citizens' Voices and the Many Faces of Unruly Politics - Tadros, Mariz (IDS Bulletin, 2014)

Organisational Performance Index - The Kenya Institute of Management (2014)
The OPI Business Excellence Model exists to help organizations improve their performance and succeed in the competitive global marketplace. We are dedicated to improving African organizations regardless of sector, size or structure. The OPI was developed in response to feedback from organization participating in Company of the Year Award (COYA) and SME of the Year Award (SMOYA), who called on the Kenya Institute of Management (KIM) to refine the assessment methodology in order to emphasize the relationship between instilling smart business processes and generating strong business results. Whilst there are numerous management tools and techniques commonly used, the OPI Excellence Model is a practical, non-prescriptive framework which provides a holistic view of the organisation and it can be used to determine how these different methods fit together and complement each other. The Model can therefore be used in conjunction with any number of these tools, based on the needs and function of the organisation, as an overarching framework for developing sustainable excellence. We also administer the Annual Company of the Year Awards (COYA) and the SME of the Year Awards (SMOYA). Our key services are to identify and recognize role-model organizations, share best management practices, and help organizations achieve best-in-class performance levels. The OPI is an excellence model that generates a rating between 1 and 10, which sets a minimum score that an organisation must attain to remain competitive. The attainment of a minimum Organisation Performance Index ( OPI) demonstrates that organisations have applied an organisational strategy that drives effectiveness and competitiveness; failure to attain the minimum OPI demonstrates the organisation has not engaged the processes required to enable world class organisational performance.

USAID’s Data Quality Standards & Conducting a DQA - USAID (2014)

Adaptive Management: From More Talk to Real Action - Williams, Byron K.; Brown, Eleanor D. (Environmental Management, 2014)
The challenges currently facing resource managers are large-scale and complex, and demand new approaches to balance development and conservation goals. One approach that shows considerable promise for addressing these challenges is adaptive management, which by now is broadly seen as a natural, intuitive, and potentially effective way to address decision-making in the face of uncertainties. Yet the concept of adaptive management continues to evolve, and its record of success remains limited. In this article, we present an operational framework for adaptive decision-making, and describe the challenges and opportunities in applying it to real-world problems. We discuss the key elements required for adaptive decision-making, and their integration into an iterative process that highlights and distinguishes technical and social learning. We illustrate the elements and processes of the framework with some successful on-the-ground examples of natural resource management. Finally, we address some of the difficulties in applying learning-based management, and finish with a discussion of future directions and strategic challenges.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Rapid outcome mapping approach: a guide to policy engagement and influence - Young, John; Shaxson, Louise; Jones, harry; Hearn, Simon; Datta, Ajoy; Cassidy, Caroline (ODI, 2014)

Kenya’s tech community will not save journalism - Benequista, Nicholas (Networked News Lab, 2014)

Assessing the use of technological tools and strategies by Oxfam Novib partners in Angola, Burundi, Egypt, Niger, Pakistan, Rwanda and Uganda - The Engine Room (2014)
This report presents findings and insights from the Oxfam Novib pilot module of TechScape, which assessed how Oxfam Novib partners in seven countries related to the use of technology in their work. This report does not aim to draw conclusions about the nature of technology use by Oxfam Novib partners per se, or even the partners included in this assessment. The dramatic difference in organizational activities, contexts and objectives are too great for that. Detailed analysis of how partners are relating to technology in their work, and specific recommendations for greater efficiency and impact are presented in the TechScape Country Briefs. This report aims instead: • to describe the context in which the assessments took place, • to propose insights gained from the cumulative process about measurement, learning and capacity development, and • to identify opportunities for Oxfam Novib to pursue capacity development and knowledge sharing between countries and across the network, through mechanisms that minimize resource demands and directly target documented needs.

Strategic framework for mainstreaming citizen engagement in World Bank Group operations : engaging with citizens for improved results - Rebolledo, Miguel; Seyedian, Aaron; Peixoto, Tiago; Hernandez, Zenaida; Zakhour, Jad; Mahmood, Syed A.; Masud, Harika; Manroth, Astrid; Hamad, Qays (The World Bank, 2014)
The objective of this strategic framework is to mainstream citizen engagement in World Bank Group (WBG)-supported policies, programs, projects, and advisory services and analytics to improve their development results and within the scope of these operations, contribute to building sustainable national systems for citizen engagement with governments and the private sector. This framework will capture the diverse experiences, assess lessons learned, and outline methods and entry points to provide a more systematic and results-focused approach for the WBG. Progress toward this objective will be assessed using indicators included in program, project, and corporate results frameworks. The WBG strategy incorporates citizen engagement, including beneficiary feedback, specifically in its treatment of inclusion, which entails empowering citizens to participate in the development process and integrating citizen voice in development programs as key accelerators to achieving results. This framework builds on stocktaking and lessons learned from WBG-financed operations across regions and sectors. A key lesson is the importance of country context, government ownership, and clear objectives for citizen engagement. The approach to mainstreaming citizen engagement in WBG-supported operations is guided by five principles: 1) it is results-focused; 2) it involves engaging throughout the operational cycle; 3) it seeks to strengthen country systems; 4) it is context-specific; and 5) it is gradual. Under the right circumstances, citizen engagement can contribute to achieving development outcomes in support of the goals the WBG aims to support through all of the operations it funds: eradicating extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner.

Probes, toolkits and prototypes: three approaches to making in codesigning - Sanders, Elizabeth B.-N.; Stappers, Pieter Jan (CoDesign, 2014)
The role of making in the design process has been growing, taking on new forms and involving new players over the past 10 years. Where we once primarily saw designers using making to give shape to the future, today we can see designers and non-designers working together, using making as a way to make sense of the future. In this paper, we describe the landscape of design research and practice at the end of 2013 with special attention to the role of making across these perspectives: approach (cultural probes, generative toolkits and design prototypes), mindset (designing for people and designing with people), focus in time (the world as it is, the near future and the speculative future) as well as variations in design intent (provoking, engaging and serving).

Aid on the Edge of Chaos: Rethinking International Cooperation in a Complex World - Ramalingam, Ben (Oxford University Press, 2014)
It is widely recognised that the foreign aid system - of which every country in the world is a part - is in need of drastic overhaul. There are conflicting opinions as to what should be done. Some call for dramatic increases to achieve longstanding promises. Others bang the drum for cutting it altogether, and suggest putting the fate of poor and vulnerable people in the hands of markets or business. A few argue that what is needed is creative, innovative transformation. The arguments in Aid on the Edge of Chaos are firmly in the third of these categories. In this ground-breaking book, Ben Ramalingam shows that the linear, mechanistic models and assumptions that foreign aid is built on are more at home in early twentieth century industry than in the dynamic, complex world we face today. The reality is that economies and societies are less like machines and more like ecosystems. Aid on the Edge of Chaos explores how thinkers and practitioners in economics, business, and public policy have started to embrace new, ecologically literate approaches to thinking and acting, informed by the ideas of complex adaptive systems research. It showcases insights, experiences, and dramatic results of a growing network of practitioners, researchers, and policy makers who are applying a complexity-informed approach to aid challenges. From transforming approaches to child malnutrition, to rethinking process of macroeconomic growth, from rural Vietnam to urban Columbia, Aid on the Edge of Chaos shows how embracing the ideas of complex systems thinking can help make foreign aid more relevant, more appropriate, more innovative, and more catalytic. It argues that taking on these ideas will be a vital part of the transformation of aid, from a post-WW2 mechanism of resource transfer, to a truly innovative and dynamic form of global cooperation fit for the twenty-first century.

Something’s Stopping All Voices From Counting… - McGee, Rosemary (Making All Voices Count, 2014)
An outline of Making All Voices Count's Research & Evidence component led by the Institute of Development Studies.

Manifesto for Half-Arsed Development Reforms - Ramalingam, Ben (Aid on the Edge of Chaos, 2014)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Understanding the Conditions for fostering the right kind of innovation - Edwards, Duncan (Making All Voices Count, 2014)
MAVC's Duncan Edwards reflects on the first in a series of thematic discussions led by the Institute of Development Studies. The second of two posts.

Inclusion in Making All Voices Count - Kelbert, Alexandra (Making All Voices Count, 2014)
Part of a sequenced learning process for MAVC's Research and Evidence Component, the summary of a thematic discussion led by researcher Evangelia Berdou.

From ‘Feedback Loops’ to ‘Responsive Governance’ - McGee, Rosie (Making All Voices Count, 2014)
Part of a sequenced learning process for MAVC's Research and Evidence Component, the summary of a thematic discussion led by researcher Rosemary McGee.

Which Voices Are Heard and By Whom? - Oswald, Katy (Making All Voices Count, 2014)

The origins, development, and application of Qualitative Comparative Analysis: the first 25 years - Marx, Axel; Rihoux, Benoît; Ragin, Charles (European Political Science Review, 2014)
A quarter century ago, in 1987, Charles C. Ragin published The Comparative Method, introducing a new method to the social sciences called Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). QCA is a comparative case-oriented research approach and collection of techniques based on set theory and Boolean algebra, which aims to combine some of the strengths of qualitative and quantitative research methods. Since its launch in 1987, QCA has been applied extensively in the social sciences. This review essay first sketches the origins of the ideas behind QCA. Next, the main features of the method, as presented in The Comparative Method, are introduced. A third part focuses on the early applications. A fourth part presents early criticisms and subsequent innovations. A fifth part then focuses on an era of further expansion in political science and presents some of the main applications in the discipline. In doing so, this paper seeks to provide insights and references into the origin and development of QCA, a non-technical introduction to its main features, the path travelled so far, and the diversification of applications.

Making Sense of ‘Messiness’. Monitoring and measuring change in market systems: a practitioner's perspective - Ripley, Matthew; Nippard, Daniel (2014)

Assessing the strength of Evidence - DFID (2014)

Global Delivery at the World Bank Group - GDI (Global Delivery Initiative, 2014)

DIY - Development Impact and You: Practical Tools to Trigger and Support Social Innovation - Nesta (NESTA, 2014)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Monitoring and evaluation of policy influence and advocacy - Tsui, Josephine; Hearn, Simon; Young, John (ODI, 2014)
Policy influence and advocacy are increasingly regarded as a means of creating sustainable policy change in international development. It is often also seen as a difficult area to monitor and evaluate. Yet there is an increasingly rich strand of innovation in options to monitor, evaluate and learn from both the successes and failures of policy influence and advocacy interventions. This paper explores current trends in monitoring and evaluating policy influence and advocacy; discusses different theories of how policy influence happens; and presents a number of options to monitor and evaluate different aspects of advocacy interventions. Case studies describe how some organisations have used these options in practice to understand their impact and improve their advocacy strategies.

Participatory Budgeting as if Emancipation Mattered - Baiocchi, Gianpaolo; Ganuza, Ernesto (Politics & Society, 2014)
Participatory Budgeting has by now been widely discussed, often celebrated, and is now instituted in at least 1,500 cities worldwide. Some of its central features—its structure of open meetings, its yearly cycle, and its combination of deliberation and representation—are by now well known. In this article, however, we critically reflect on its global travel and argue for more careful consideration of some of its less well-known features, namely the coupling of the budgeting meetings with the exercise of power. We disaggregate PB into its communicative and empowerment dimensions and argue that its empowerment dimensions have usually not been part of its global expansion—and this is cause for concern from the point of view of emancipation. We thus discuss the specific institutional reforms associated with empowerment in the original version as well as its analytic dimensions. We also address some of the specific dangers of a communication-only version of PB as well as some suggestions for reintroducing empowerment.
Publisher: SAGE Publications Inc

Does Foreign Aid Really Work? An Updated Assessment - Riddell, Roger C. (Social Science Research Network, 2014)
This paper draws widely from the book Does foreign aid really work?, building on that discussion to provide an updated answer to the question based on recent evidence and contemporary debates on aid effectiveness. It starts with a brief discussion (Section 2) of the question: ‘does emergency aid work?’ This is important to the wider debate for two linked reasons. Firstly, the harshest critics of development aid are all supportive of emergency aid, with a number calling for its expansion in spite of evidence of major weaknesses and failures. Secondly, the sharp historical distinction made between emergency and development aid is becoming increasingly strained, as more emergency aid is being used a year or more after emergencies strike to rebuild lives and restore livelihoods, while more development aid is used to directly save lives.The rest of the paper focuses exclusively on development aid. Section 3 provides a rapid overview of the evidence of the impact of individual aid projects, including those of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). The picture is overwhelmingly positive: well over 75% of projects meet their immediate objectives and impact has improved, even though sustaining benefits remains a challenge and there continue to be aid failures. Section 4 reviews the evidence of the wider and long-term impact of aid at the sectoral and country level, including a brief discussion of academic studies on aid and growth. Though there are still major gaps in our knowledge, the quality of the data is improving. However, there is little firm, quantitative evidence to show the specific contribution that aid has made to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are a central purpose of many current donor programmes (Section 4.2). More widely, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that aid has contributed positively to both growth and wider development at the sector and country level, though some studies suggest aid has had little or no impact. Overall, the contribution that aid makes to aggregate development is lower than the public has been led to believe (Sections 4.1, 4.3. and 4.4). Assessments of the overall impact of the aid provided by NGOs are rare, but a recent study suggests it has been positive (Section 4.5). More attention is now given to the issues of corruption in aid. Although there is evidence of aid funds being used for corrupt purposes and of aid worsening corruption, on balance it remains a minor issue. Aid has had significant successes in helping the poor affected by corruption (Section 4.6). The second half of the paper shifts focus to the large gap between what aid has done and what it might do. Section 5 discusses a range of inefficiencies within and across the aid system and their costs in terms of reduced impact, including the way aid is allocated, its growing complexity, and the volatility and unpredictability of aid flows (Section 5.1 and 5.2). These inefficiencies place in a different light the evidence of aid’s overall positive impact. The paper looks at the different initiatives that have been mounted to begin to address these weaknesses and failures, including the 2005 Paris Declaration, and discusses why donors have failed to honour the promises they have made to change the ways that they give aid.In Section 5.3, the paper argues that the most critical debate about whether aid works concerns the assessment of whether the short-term, immediate and extensive benefits that aid undoubtedly brings are outweighed by the direct and indirect systemic problems that it risks creating or accentuating. As increasingly over the last decade donors have channelled more of their aid into short-term, quick-impact projects, assessing the wider negative systemic effects of aid has become even more important. Some recent studies suggest that aid’s systemic problems are large and growing, narrowing the gap between aid’s harshest critics and broader analyses of aid impact. Against the backdrop of already too many proposals of how to make aid work better, Section 6 lays out nine concrete proposals for doing this: deepening knowledge of local contexts; ensuring short-term uses of aid are consistent with and supportive of long-term development, and that all aid is more closely related to overall recipient development goals and processes; helping build local capacities for recipients to be able to coordinate aid better; moving from rhetoric to reality in learning lessons from aid; using aid to help the poor in middle income countries; reducing volatility in aid at the country level; encouraging budget support by addressing donor-country political concerns; and rethinking ways of communicating about aid. Section 7 concludes. It suggests that, paradoxically, aid’s impact may well have been harmed by focussing too narrowly on trying to make short-term aid work better, and that the main focus of attention needs to widen to assess how aid can contribute more to a recipient’s own development goals. Additionally, donors need to help build the capacity of developing countries and developing country scholars to enable them to play a bigger role in helping to answer the question of whether aid works; unsettling though their assessments may be.

Six Simple Rules: How to Manage Complexity without Getting Complicated - Morieux, Yves; Tollman, Peter (Harvard Business Review Press, 2014)
New tools for managing complexityDoes your organization manage complexity by making things more complicated? If so, you are not alone.According to The Boston Consulting Group’s fascinating Complexity Index, business complexity has increased sixfold during the past sixty years. And, all the while, organizational complicatedness—that is, the number of structures, processes, committees, decision-making forums, and systems—has increased by a whopping factor of thirty-five. In their attempt to respond to the increasingly complex performance requirements they face, company leaders have created an organizational labyrinth that makes it more and more difficult to improve productivity and to pursue innovation. It also disengages and demotivates the workforce.Clearly it’s time for leaders to stop trying to manage complexity with their traditional tools and instead better leverage employees' intelligence. This book shows you how and explains the implications for designing and leading organizations.The way to manage complexity, the authors argue, is neither with the hard solutions of another era nor with the soft solutions—such as team building and feel-good “people initiatives”—that often follow in their wake. Based on social sciences (notably economics, game theory, and organizational sociology) and The Boston Consulting Group’s work with more than five hundred companies in more than forty countries and in various industries, authors Yves Morieux and Peter Tollman recommend six simple rules to manage complexity without getting complicated.Showing why the rules work and how to put them into practice, Morieux and Tollman give managers a much-needed tool to reinvigorate people in the face of seemingly endless complexity. Included are detailed examples from companies that have achieved a multiplicative effect on performance by using them.It’s time to manage complexity better. Employ these six simple rules to foster autonomy and cooperation and to effectively handle business complexity. As a result, you will improve productivity, innovate more, reengage your workforce, and seize opportunities to create competitive advantage.
Keywords: Complexity; Design Thinking

How DFID learns - ICAI (Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), 2014)
Excellent learning is essential for UK aid to achieve maximum impact and value for money. We take learning to mean the extent to which DFID uses information and experience to influence its decisions. Each ICAI review assesses how well learning takes place. Our reports to date indicate a mixed performance. This review seeks to identify the way DFID learns and what inhibits it from doing so consistently. We drew on our reviews, assessed data from DFID’s own surveys and carried out interviews inside and outside the department. Review DFID generates considerable volumes of information, much of which, such as funded research, is publicly available. DFID does not clearly or consistently link this investment to how it can deliver better impact. We made five recommendations and gave an amber-red score. Findings DFID does not clearly identify how its investment in learning links to its performance and delivering better impact. DFID has the potential to be excellent at organisational learning if its best practices become common. DFID staff learn well as individuals. They are highly motivated and DFID provides opportunities and resources for them to learn. DFID is not yet, however, managing all the elements that contribute to how it learns as a single, integrated system. DFID does not review the costs, benefits and impact of learning. Insufficient priority is placed on learning during implementation. The emphasis on results can lead to a bias to the positive. Learning from both success and failure should be systematically encouraged. Recommendations DFID needs to focus on consistent and continuous organisational learning based on the experience of DFID, its partners and contractors and the measurement of its impact, in particular during the implementation phase of its activities. All DFID managers should be held accountable for conducting continuous reviews from which lessons are drawn about what works and where impact is actually being achieved for intended beneficiaries. All information commissioned and collected (such as annual reviews and evaluations) should be synthesised so that the relevant lessons are accessible and readily usable across the organisation. The focus must be on practical and easy-to-use information. Knowhow should be valued as much as knowledge. Staff need to be given more time to acquire experience in the field and share lessons about what works and does not work on the ground. DFID needs to continue to encourage a culture of free and full communication about what does and does not work. Staff should be encouraged always to base their decisions on evidence, without any bias to the positive.

Beyond the Pioneer: Getting inclusive industries to scale - Koh, Harvey; Hedge, Nidhi; Karamchandani, Ashish (Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Private Ltd (DTTIPL), 2014)

Working Politically: A story of Change about the contribution of research evidence to the new Village Law in Indonesia - Pellini, Arnaldo; Angelina, Maesy; Purnawati, Endah (Austrialian Community Development and Civil Society Strenghtening Scheme (ACCESS), 2014)
On 18 December 2013, the Indonesian House of Representatives passed the new Village Law, a vote that was the culmination of a journey that had started in 2007. This Story of Change takes the passing of the Village Law as its starting point and describes the relative influence that research-based evidence, produced by the Institute for Research and Empowerment (IRE), has had at critical junctions of the legislative process. This Story of Change concludes that good quality, research-based evidence is necessary but not sufficient to influence policy-making processes. Researchers and research organisations need to think and work politically to achieve their influencing goals and to adapt to changes in local circumstances.

Problem-driven iterative approaches and wider governance reform - Rao, Sumedh (GSDRC, University of Birmingham, 2014)
Identify evidence which suggests that problem-driven, iterative approaches to public sector reform can deliver more substantial, wider, long-term governance reform.

Achieving reforms in oligarchical democracies: the role of leadership and coalitions in the Philippines - Sidel, John T. (Developmental Leadership Program, 2014)
This paper examines the role of developmental leadership in two major reforms introduced in the Philippines in 2012: the passage into law in December of excise tax reform which significantly raised taxes on cigarettes and alcohol – generally referred to as the Sin Tax Reform – and, in July, the re-registration of voters in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). These reforms have a) strengthened government finances and healthcare; and b) improved the quality of elections and promoted good governance and conflict resolution in the southern Philippines. Key points: These reforms were not achieved exclusively through the executive leadership of Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, this paper argues. A broader form of developmental leadership was critical to their passage into legislation and their subsequent implementation, made up of reform coalitions that incorporated elements of government, the legislature, and civil society. While these coalitions were diverse and flexible in their form and composition, their core strength came from established advocacy groups and experienced activists. These groups and activists used highly labour-intensive, specialized and complex forms of mobilization. The success of these reform coalitions, it is argued, has implications for economic and governance reform in the developing world, particularly in systems characterised by oligarchical democracy, where competition for elected office is closely linked to the entrenched interests of business and industry.

Local Systems: a framework for supporting sustained development - USAID (USAID, 2014)

Into the unknown: explorations in development practice - Chambers, Robert (Practical Action Publishing, 2014)
Into the Unknown reflects on the journey of learning, and encourages readers to learn from observation, curiosity, critical feedback, play and fun. This book will be of interest to development professionals, including academics, students, NGO workers and the staff of international agencies

Aiding Institutional Reform in Developing Countries: Lessons from the Philippines on what works, what doesn't and why - Booth, David (The Asia Foundation, 2014)

Thinking and working politically in the transparency and accountability field - Halloran, Brendan (Transparency & Accountability Initiative, 2014)

Complexity and the Art of Public Policy: Solving Society's Problems from the Bottom Up - Colander, David; Kupers, Roland (Princeton University Press, 2014)
Complexity science–made possible by modern analytical and computational advances–is changing the way we think about social systems and social theory. Unfortunately, economists' policy models have not kept up and are stuck in either a market fundamentalist or government control narrative. While these standard narratives are useful in some cases, they are damaging in others, directing thinking away from creative, innovative policy solutions. Complexity and the Art of Public Policy outlines a new, more flexible policy narrative, which envisions society as a complex evolving system that is uncontrollable but can be influenced. David Colander and Roland Kupers describe how economists and society became locked into the current policy framework, and lay out fresh alternatives for framing policy questions. Offering original solutions to stubborn problems, the complexity narrative builds on broader philosophical traditions, such as those in the work of John Stuart Mill, to suggest initiatives that the authors call "activist laissez-faire" policies. Colander and Kupers develop innovative bottom-up solutions that, through new institutional structures such as for-benefit corporations, channel individuals' social instincts into solving societal problems, making profits a tool for change rather than a goal. They argue that a central role for government in this complexity framework is to foster an ecostructure within which diverse forms of social entrepreneurship can emerge and blossom.

ALL - The question of inclusiveness in ICT-mediated citizen engagement - Berdou, Evangelia (MAVC, 2014)

The politics of legal empowerment: Legal mobilisation strategies and implications for development - Domingo, Pilar; O'Neil, Tam (ODI, 2014)
 Legal mobilisation can improve the lives of poor or marginalised people by: o contributing to pro-poor change in policy, law and regulation of service delivery across different sectors; o advancing the realisation of rights, and achieving redress for rights violations; o contesting unjust and illegal practices of resource allocation and power relations, including in relation to land and natural resources; o enabling citizens to exercise social accountability through legal action.  The outcomes of legal empowerment of the poor are not politically neutral and need to be understood within broader social and political environments;  Better coordination between justice, sector and governance interventions will maximise the development and social impact of international support for legal empowerment.

MAKING - Fostering new ideas for social inclusion and accountable, responsive governance - Edwards, Duncan (MAVC and IDS, 2014)

COUNT - Understanding the challenge of government responsiveness - McGee, Rosemary (MAVC and IDS, 2014)

VOICES - On speaking, mediation, representation and listening - Oswald, Katy (MAVC, 2014)

Beyond 'Technology for Development' and 'Sustainability' towards Systemic and Holistic Rural Innovation: Success Factors from the Southern African Experience over 20 years - Buisson, Uys Du; Cronje, Braam; Marais, Mario; Haruperi, Emmanuel; Rensburg, Johann (2014)
Abstract: This paper describes essential, real-world activities and processes needed to develop and deploy people-centred networks enabled with innovative technologies that in turn produce "...

Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making - Kaner, Sam (John Wiley & Sons, 2014)
Unleash the transformative power of face to face groups The third edition of this ground–breaking book continues to advance its mission to support groups to do their best thinking. It demonstrates that meetings can be much more than merely an occasion for solving a problem or creating a plan. Every well–facilitated meeting is also an opportunity to stretch and develop the perspectives of the individual members, thereby building the strength and capacity of the group as a whole. This fully updated edition of The Facilitator′s Guide to Participatory Decision–Making guides readers through the struggle and the satisfaction of putting participatory values into practice, helping them to fulfill the promise of effective group decision–making. With previous editions already embraced by business and community leaders and consulting professionals around the world, this new book is even more insightful and easy to use. New for this edition: 60 pages of brand new skills and tools Many new case examples Major expansion and reorganization of the advanced sections of the book. New chapter: Teaching A Group About Group Dynamics Doubled in size: Classic Facilitator Challenges. Substantially improved: Designing Realistic Agendas now three chapters, with wise, insightful answers to the most vexing questions about meeting design.

Why Learning & Adaptation are Central to Making All Voices Count - Halloran, Brendan (Making All Voices Count, 2014)

Lessons Learned from the Forest, Climate and Communities Alliance - Boshoven, Judy (USAID, 2014)
The Forest, Climate, and Communities Alliance (FCCA) was an initiative funded by USAID’s Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and the Environment/Office of Forestry and Biodiversity (E3/FAB) under the USAID Global Development Alliance (GDA)1 between 2009 and 2013. FCCA was one of the first USAID-funded projects for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+). The Rainforest Alliance (RA) implemented FCCA in Ghana and Honduras. Operating in two different contexts allowed FCCA to generate important lessons learned that may be useful as countries around the world search for approaches to prepare for and implement successful REDD+ mechanisms. In 2013, as FCCA was coming to an end, USAID tasked the Measuring Impact (MI) initiative with an independent review to generate lessons learned from FCCA. In capturing and disseminating lessons from the FCCA project, the Agency intends to contribute to the understanding of what may be effective, and under what conditions, when promoting REDD+ in conjunction with forest and agricultural product certification. MI is a five-year USAID project executed by the E3/FAB Office designed to improve the Agency’s practice of conservation by building USAID’s capacity to better design, manage, evaluate, and learn from biodiversity conservation initiatives. As such, MI was tasked with carrying out this review of lessons learned from FCCA while using RA’s general hypothesis as the basis to describe the project and its lessons.

Sensing and Cyberinfrastructure for Smarter Water Management: The Promise and Challenge of Ubiquity - Hill David; Kerkez Branko; Rasekh Amin; Ostfeld Avi; Minsker Barbara; Banks M. Katherine (Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 2014)

Evaluating megaprojects: From the ‘iron triangle’ to network mapping - Lehtonen, Markku (Evaluation, 2014)
Evaluation literature has paid relatively little attention to the specific needs of evaluating large, complex industrial and infrastructure projects, often called ‘megaprojects’. The abundant megaproject governance literature, in turn, has largely focused on the so-called ‘megaproject pathologies’, i.e. the chronic budget overruns, and failure of such projects to keep to timetables and deliver the expected social and economic benefits. This article draws on these two strands of literature, identifies shortcomings, and suggests potential pathways towards an improved evaluation of megaprojects. To counterbalance the current overemphasis on relatively narrowly defined accountability as the main function of megaproject evaluation, and the narrow definition of project success in megaproject evaluation, the article argues that conceptualizing megaprojects as dynamic and evolving networks would provide a useful basis for the design of an evaluation approach better able to promote learning and to address the socio-economic aspects of megaprojects. A modified version of ‘network mapping’ is suggested as a possible framework for megaproject evaluation, with the exploration of the multiple accountability relationships as a central evaluation task, designed to reconcile learning and accountability as the central evaluation functions. The article highlights the role of evaluation as an ‘emergent’ property of spontaneous megaproject ‘governing’, and explores the challenges that this poses to the role of the evaluator.

A conceptual map of political participation - van Deth, Jan W. (Acta Politica, 2014)
How would you recognize a mode of participation if you see one? Owing to the rapid expansion of political activities in the last decades this question has become increasingly difficult to answer. Neither the development of all-embracing nominal definitions, nor deductive analyses of existing modes of participation seem to be helpful. In addition, the spread of expressive modes of participation makes it hard to avoid purely subjective definitions. The aim of this discussion paper is to develop an operational definition of political participation, which allows us to cover distinct conceptualizations systematically, efficiently and consistently. This goal can only be arrived at if the conventional approach of presenting nominal definitions to solve conceptual problems is left behind. Instead, available definitions are included in a set of decision rules to distinguish three main variants of political participation. A fourth variant is distinguished for non-political activities used for political purposes. Together, the four variants of political participation cover the whole range of political participation systematically without excluding any mode of political participation unknown yet. At the same time, the endless expansion of the modes of political participation in modern democracies does not result in an endless conceptual expansion. Implications for research and various examples are discussed.

Adaptive Learning - Guerzovich, Florencia; Poli, Maria (Global Partnership for Social Accountability, 2014)

Theories of change in international development: Communication, learning, or accountability? - Valters, Craig (JSRP, 2014)

Time for a Donor Funding Charter? - kiwanja.net (Donor's Chapter, 2014)

Agile, is it just a delivery mechanism? - Carignan, Louis-Philippe (Scrum.org Community Blog, 2014)
As a Agile coach, I refer to a few tools to help me think about where my Scrum teams should go next on their path to Agility. One of these tools is the Agile subway map, a list of Agile practices grouped in different categories. It helps me think how a specific practice could help …

Learning, Adaptation & Change: the future of Making All Voices Count - MAVC (Making All Voices Count, 2014)
Learning, Adaptation & Change: what Making All Voices Count has learned since September 2013 and how the programme will adapt and change in the future.

Politically smart, locally led development - Booth, David; Unsworth, Sue (ODI, 2014)
Aid donors have found it hard to move from thinking politically to working differently, but there is evidence that they can do so and that this improves outcomes. This paper presents seven examples of where adopting a politically smart, locally led approach has led to better outcomes.
Keywords: Practice

Taking Innovations to Scale: Methods, Applications and Lessons - Cooley, Larry; Linn, Johannes F. (R4D, 2014)
The international development community increasingly recognizes the need to go beyond fragmented, one-of projects. In response, there is now much talk and some action on scaling up successful innovations and pilot projects with an explicit goal of achieving sustainable impact at scale. However, many questions remain about the practical implications of pursuing a systematic scaling up approach and about how the approaches being pursued by diferent institutions and practitioners relate to each other.

Constituent Voice: Technical Note 1 - Keystone Accountability (Keystone Accountability, 2014)

How useful are RCTs in evaluating transparency and accountability projects? - Leavy, Jennifer (IDS, 2014)

Emerging Opportunities: Monitoring and Evaluation in a Tech-Enabled World - Raftree, Linda; Bamberger, Michael (ITAD & Rockefeller Foundation, 2014)
Monitoring and evaluation practice is using information and communication technologies for more timely data, and more inclusive voice and feedback.

The direction of evolution: The rise of cooperative organization - Stewart, John E. (Biosystems, 2014)
Two great trends are evident in the evolution of life on Earth: towards increasing diversification and towards increasing integration. Diversification has spread living processes across the planet, progressively increasing the range of environments and free energy sources exploited by life. Integration has proceeded through a stepwise process in which living entities at one level are integrated into cooperative groups that become larger-scale entities at the next level, and so on, producing cooperative organizations of increasing scale (for example, cooperative groups of simple cells gave rise to the more complex eukaryote cells, groups of these gave rise to multi-cellular organisms, and cooperative groups of these organisms produced animal societies). The trend towards increasing integration has continued during human evolution with the progressive increase in the scale of human groups and societies. The trends towards increasing diversification and integration are both driven by selection. An understanding of the trajectory and causal drivers of the trends suggests that they are likely to culminate in the emergence of a global entity. This entity would emerge from the integration of the living processes, matter, energy and technology of the planet into a global cooperative organization. Such an integration of the results of previous diversifications would enable the global entity to exploit the widest possible range of resources across the varied circumstances of the planet. This paper demonstrates that it's case for directionality meets the tests and criticisms that have proven fatal to previous claims for directionality in evolution.
Keywords: Direction of evolution; Evolution of a global entity; Evolution of cooperation; Evolutionary progress; Major evolutionary transitions

Measuring Results & the DCED Standard - Tanburn, Jim (2014)
This page gives an introduction to the DCED Standard, which is a framework that helps practitioners to measure results in Private Sector Development (PSD).

Realist Impact Evaluation: An introduction - Westhorp, Gill (Methods Lab, 2014)
• Realist evaluation is a member of a family of theory-based evaluation approaches which begin by clarifying the ‘programme theory’: the mechanisms that are likely to operate, the contexts in which they might operate and the outcomes that will be observed if they operate as expected. • Realist approaches assume that nothing works everywhere for everyone: context makes a big difference to programme outcomes. A realist evaluation asks not ‘what works?’ but ‘how or why does this work, for whom, in what circumstances?’ • Realist impact evaluation is most appropriate for evaluating new initiatives or programmes that seem to work but where ‘how and for whom’ is not yet understood; programmes that have previously demonstrated mixed patterns of outcomes; and those that will be scaled up, to understand how to adapt the intervention to new contexts.

What is Outcome Harvesting? - Wilson-Grau, Ricardo (2014)
Ricardo Wilson-Grau, former Chair of the Board of Stewards of the Outcome Mapping Learning Community, introduces Outcome Harvesting, an approach for retrospective identification of outcomes based on the principles of Outcome Mapping. More details here: http://www.outcomemapping.ca/nuggets/outcome-harvesting

Reading the Local Context: A Causal Chain Approach to Social Accountability - Joshi, Anuradha (IDS Bulletin, 2014)
There is a general consensus that ‘context’ matters for development outcomes, yet we have little understanding of how exactly ‘context’ affects outcomes. This article focuses on the question of ‘context’ in social accountability (SA) initiatives by separating macro- and micro-contextual factors. On the macro side (country level), accountability processes need to take into account broad factors such as national histories of citizen–state engagement. On the micro side, local factors can drive the extent to which SA initiatives are successful, even within otherwise broadly similar national contexts. The article outlines the basic components of accountability and proposes a ‘causal chain'strategy to better understand the micro-context. This would allow existing evidence to be reorganised to assess the promise of existing and new initiatives by deconstructing the various mini-causal pathways (i.e. in the micro-context) and understanding the contextual conditions that make them work.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Perverse Payment by Results: frogs in a pot and straitjackets for obstacle courses - Chambers, Robert (IDS - Participation, Power and Social Change, 2014)
Posts about Robert Chambers written by idsppsc

Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time - Sutherland, Jeff (Crown Business, 2014)
We live in a world that is broken. For those who believe that there must be a more agile and efficient way for people to get things done, here from Scrum pioneer Jeff Sutherland is a brilliantly discursive, thought-provoking book about the leadership and management process that is changing the way we live. In the future, historians may look back on human progress and draw a sharp line designating "before Scrum" and "after Scrum." Scrum is that ground-breaking. It already drives most of the world's top technology companies. And now it's starting to spread to every domain where leaders wrestle with complex projects. If you've ever been startled by how fast the world is changing, Scrum is one of the reasons why. Productivity gains of as much as 1200% have been recorded, and there's no more lucid - or compelling - explainer of Scrum and its bright promise than Jeff Sutherland, the man who put together the first Scrum team more than twenty years ago. The thorny problem Jeff began tackling back then boils down to this: people are spectacularly bad at doing things with agility and efficiency. Best laid plans go up in smoke. Teams often work at cross purposes to each other. And when the pressure rises, unhappiness soars. Drawing on his experience as a West Point-educated fighter pilot, biometrics expert, early innovator of ATM technology, and V.P. of engineering or CTO at eleven different technology companies, Jeff began challenging those dysfunctional realities, looking for solutions that would have global impact. In this book you'll journey to Scrum's front lines where Jeff's system of deep accountability, team interaction, and constant iterative improvement is, among other feats, bringing the FBI into the 21st century, perfecting the design of an affordable 140 mile per hour/100 mile per gallon car, helping NPR report fast-moving action in the Middle East, changing the way pharmacists interact with patients, reducing poverty in the Third World, and even helping people plan their weddings and accomplish weekend chores. Woven with insights from martial arts, judicial decision making, advanced aerial combat, robotics, and many other disciplines, Scrum is consistently riveting. But the most important reason to read this book is that it may just help you achieve what others consider unachievable - whether it be inventing a trailblazing technology, devising a new system of education, pioneering a way to feed the hungry, or, closer to home, a building a foundation for your family to thrive and prosper.

Navigating complexity: Adaptive management in the Northern Karamoja Growth, Health & Governance program - Allana, Amir (MercyCorps, 2014)
Development actors increasing agree that managing programs adaptively – especially complex interventions – can improve their effectiveness. But what does adaptive management look like in practice?
Keywords: IMPORTANT; Practice

The SAVI programme in Nigeria: Towards politically smart, locally led devlopment - Booth, David; Chambers, Victoria (ODI, 2014)
 More examples are needed of aid programming that works by being responsive to country realities: politically smart, problem-driven and locally led  DFID’s SAVI programme has revealed a hitherto untapped potential for change leading to better development results at state level in Nigeria  SAVI provides low-profile support to state-level organisations and partnerships, building their capacity to engage constructively with government  It avoid the pitfalls of a donor-driven approach by ‘taking the money off the table’  This illustrates the power of facilitated multi-stakeholder engagement and the disadvantages of seeing this in terms of ‘supply side’ and ‘demand side’ governance  The set-up of the DFID suite of state-level programmes, with separately managed sector support and ‘governance’ initiatives, has limited realisation of the potential  Key enabling conditions were that DFID provided space for an experience-based design process and permitted tangible results to be judged retrospectively, not pre-programmed

Accountability, transparency, Participation, and Inclusion. A New Development Consensus? - Carothers, Thomas; Brechenmacher, Saskia (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2014)
The wide-reaching consensus around the normative and instrumental value of accountability, transparency, participation, and inclusion remains less solid than enthusiasts of these concepts might wish.

Beyond magic bullets in governance reform - de Gramont, Diane (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2014)

‘We have the solutions to our own problems’: supporting civil society in Nigeria - Overseas Development Institute (ODI, 2014)
Development assistance programmes that start from careful analysis of what works and what does not in country contexts are still remarkably rare. One reason for this is the lack of well documented examples of ‘politically’ smart aid programming. To this end, this film outlines the experience of the State Accountability and Voice Initiative (SAVI), a DFID-funded programme in Nigeria providing support to civil society, media and governmental organisations.

Theory of Action: Creating Craddle to Career Proof Points - Strive Together (Strive Together, 2014)
StriveTogether’s Theory of Action provides a framework for improving educational outcomes and ensuring a community transforms how it serves children.

CLA for More Effective Development Programs (video) - USAID (USAID LearningLab, 2014)
This presentation features USAID/PPL's Stacey Young discussing the history of learning at USAID; how collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) can enhance development outcomes, and the role of implementing partners in supporting this vision.

Scaling up co-design - Dearden, Andrew; Light, Ann; Zamenopoulos, Theodore; Graham, Paula; Plouviez, Emma; de Sousa, Sophia (PDC 2014 : Reflecting connectedness : proceedings of the 13th Participatory Design Conference, 2014)
In this paper we reflect on our experiences in a project where academic researchers and social change organizations are working together to explore how participatory and co-design practices can be disseminated and spread within the 'third sector'. The research project is itself co-designed and co-produced, but within various constraints arising from research funding models. We explore both our immediate outputs and our learning about successful co-research models for this challenge.

40 Agile Methods in 40 Minutes - Smith, Craig (2014)
My presentation from Scrum Australia 2014 called “40 Agile Methods in 40 Minutes” is available on Slideshare. With 73% of the world using Scrum as their predominant Agile method, this session will …

A workshop on Doing Development Differently - CID (CID at Harvard University and ODI, 2014)
October 22-23, 2014 A workshop on Doing Development Differently Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA Hosted by the Building State Capability (BSC) program at the Center for International Development at Harvard University, and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) with funding from the Governance Partnership Facility.

Can policy-makers think like designers? - Adler, Natalia (2014)
This is the poster used by Natalia Adler, from Unicef, at the Doing Development Differently workshop in 2014. Can policy-makers think like designers? Since 2012, UNICEF has been supporting two autonomous governments in Nicaragua to develop empathy-driven policies for children. While policies are the final product, the goal of the Designing for Children Initiative is to make government officials think like designers. A good policy or service is nothing without active and engaged frontline workers. From the onset, our objective was to transform public employees into ‘public entrepreneurs.’ In doing so, we have disrupted the traditional assumptions about participatory governance, where it normally suffices to hold a meeting and have people talk about their needs and aspirations. For participation to work, government officials have to relearn how to listen. They have to let go of pre-determined assumptions and their expert status, and put themselves in the shoes of the people they are trying to reach. This is the process of empathy-driven policy-making. For the past two years, we have used a Human Centered Design (HCD) approach to make this happen. While HCD is often seen as an innovation in itself, for us, it’s just a means to an end: common-sense development.

The Doing Development Different Manifesto - DDD Community (DDD Community, 2014)
Statement from the October 2014 ‘Doing Development Differently’ workshop Too many development initiatives have limited impact. Schools are built but children do not learn. Clinics are built but sic…

Making All Voices Count's Research & Evidence Strategy (2014)
Building an evidence-base on what works in technology for voice, transparency and accountability, how, and why.

Evaluating Complexity. Propositions for improving practice - Preskill, Hallie; Gopal, Srik (FSG, 2014)
9 propositions can help evaluators measure progress on complex social problems.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Bridging & Bonding: Improving Links between Transparency & Accountability Actors - Wanjiku Kelbert, Alexandra (2014)

Social Design and Neocolonialism - Janzer, Cinnamon L.; Weinstein, Lauren S. (Design and Culture, 2014)
This article examines the current field of social design: its claims, practices, and methodologies. Findings discovered through qualitative research illuminate the current application of social design practices and offer critique around their use in the social sphere. This article argues that designers must be sensitive to a variety of complex social and cultural cues and structures or they risk contributing to, or practicing, design neocolonialism. The article offers two key theoretical suggestions to further the emerging field's progress. First, social design must shift its focus from one that is human-centered to one that is situation-centered. Second, it is imperative that social design develops a shared framework for understanding, executing, and evaluating its initiatives and interventions. Additionally, this article introduces a matrix to serve as an early iteration of a shared framework.
Keywords: Design Methodology; Design Thinking; Framework; Human-centered design; IMPORTANT; social design

Conjunctions: Introducing Cultural Participation as a Transdisciplinary Project - Reestorff, Camilla Møhring; Fabian, Louise; Fritsch, Jonas; Stage, Carsten; Stephensen, Jan Løhmann (Conjunctions. Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation, 2014)
In the introduction of Conjunction: Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation we introduce 1) the aim of the journal, 2) the journal’s conception of transdisciplinarity as an important precondition for understanding contemporary processes and dilemmas of participation, 3) important trajectories in the existing literature on participation that focus on participation as linked to technological changes, to democratic processes of transferring power, and to complex social situations calling for analytical and evaluative frameworks able to grasp multiplicity and competing interests, and 4) the theme and articles of the this special issue: cultural participation and citizenship.
Keywords: Cultural participation; Participatory citizenship; Power dynamics; democracy; transdisciplinarity

Practical Program Evaluation: Theory-Driven Evaluation and the Integrated Evaluation Perspective - Chen, Huey (SAGE Publications, Inc, 2014)
The Second Edition of Practical Program Evaluation shows readers how to systematically identify stakeholders’ needs in order to select the evaluation options best suited to meet those needs. Within his discussion of the various evaluation types, Huey T. Chen details a range of evaluation approaches suitable for use across a program’s life cycle. At the core of program evaluation is its body of concepts, theories, and methods. This revised edition provides an overview of these, and includes expanded coverage of both introductory and more cutting-edge techniques within six new chapters. Illustrated throughout with real-world examples that bring the material to life, the Second Edition provides many new tools to enrich the evaluator’s toolbox.

Stop Trying to Save the World: Big ideas are destroying international development - Hobbes, Michael (New Republic, 2014)
Gives some examples of poorly designed interventions (e.g. The play pump)

The Internet and Democracy Building in Lusophone African Countries - Salgado, Dr Susana (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2014)
This timely book fills an important gap in the literature on the influence of the Internet and new media in Portuguese speaking African countries. Based on extensive field work throughout the region the author examines the influence of the Internet in the transition to democracy in Africa, and asks whether there are new possibilities for popular activism to emerge from evolving communication environments and media systems.The book analyses the different forms of democracy, the concept of development, and addresses the debate about the relationship between democracy and development and explores the influence of the media in the democratization process, the promises that digital media bring to this process and to development and the implications of the African digital divide. In certain countries in this region democracy and independent news media are in their infancy but are starting to take hold, giving an excellent opportunity to observe the dynamics of civil society and the influence of increased freedom, new voting powers and new media in particular. The book offers important insights into the roles and functions that the media in general, and the Internet in particular, can perform in the creation of a more democratic society, as well as in empowering and educating citizens in democratic values.
Google-Books-ID: WC3jBAAAQBAJ
Keywords: Business & Economics / Industries / Computers & Information Technology; History / Africa / General; Political Science / Political Ideologies / Democracy

Development entrepreneurship: how donors and leaders can foster institutional change - Faustino, Jaime; Booth, David (The Asia Foundation, 2014)
Various communities of practice have been established recently to advance the general idea of thinking and working politically in development agencies. This paper makes a contribution by describing the practice of what has been called development entrepreneurship and explaining some of the ideas from outside the field of development that have inspired it.

Sustainability and Value through Improved Decision-making - Meyer, Isabel; Marais, Mario (Designing and implementing an Information and Communication Technology for Rural Education Development (ICT4RED) initiative in a resource-constrained environment: Nciba school district, Eastern Cape, South Africa, 2014)

Virtuous cycles of learning: Using formative, embedded, and diagnostic developmental assessments in a large-scale leadership program - Stein, Z.; Dawson, Theo; Van Rossum, Zachary; Rothaizer, Joel; Hill, S. (Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 2014)
This article presents preliminary results from a series of ongoing action-research projects involving the use of embedded diagnostic developmental assessments (called LectaTests™) in leadership education contexts. These findings are presented to support a particular metatheoretical approach to learning and education in which embedded assessments form a crucial part of ongoing virtuous cycles of action, feedback, support, and learning. We present two types of evidence. First, we compare developmental growth across eight program evaluations in which LectaTests were and were not embedded. Second, we examine how embedding LectaTests in a large-scale leadership development program affected the growth of managers and their direct reports. We review these findings with an eye toward detecting the benefits of using developmental assessment as embedded diagnostics alongside their use as research instruments. We begin by using Integral Theory to structure a discussion about the ideal function of developmental assessments in educational contexts.

Strategic Framework for mainstreaming citizen engagemente in World Bank Group operations - World Bank (The World Bank, 2014)

Transparency, Participation, & Accountability Grantmaking Strategy (THE WILLIAM AND FLORA HEWLETT FOUNDATION, 2015)

Agile Glossary and Terminology - Agile Alliance (Agile Alliance, 2015)
Learn the unique terminology used in Agile development from the experts at Agile Alliance.

Subway Map to Agile Practices - Agile Alliance (Agile Alliance, 2015)
AGILE 101

Afterword: Alabert Hirschman observed - Alacevich, Michele (Development Projects Observed, 2015)
Albert Hirschman considered Development Projects Observed a natural sequel to his earlier work. As Hirschman put it to an old acquaintance at the World Bank, his previous books identified the inner and often hidden mechanisms of development sequences: “Having worked out a few basic hypotheses …, I could perhaps test them (and hit on some new ones) by looking at Bank-financed projects that have had enough time to give rise to such sequences.”¹ But as much as it appeared as the logical evolution of Hirschman’s intellectual trajectory, this new research was also the offshoot of an important crisis in development

Doing Problem Driven Work - Andrews, Matt; Pritchett, Lant; Woolcock, Michael (Harvard University, 2015)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Appreciative Inquiry Australia - Appreciative Inquiry Australia (2015)
The site provides news and information on AI events and learning opportunities in Australia and also provides an archive of articles and discussions centred on the use of AI.

Digital lives in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda - Bailur, Savita; Donner, Jonathan; Locke, Chris; Schoemaker, Emrys; Smart, Charlotte (Caribou Digital, 2015)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Institutional Change, Political Economy, and State Capabilities : Learning from Edo State, Nigeria - Bain, Katherine; Porter, Doug; Watts, Michael (World Bank, 2015)
This paper is one of a series aimed at deepening the World Bank’s capacity to follow through on commitments made in response to the World Development Report (WDR) 2011, which gave renewed prominence to the nexus between conflict, security, and development. Nigeria is a remarkable illustration of how deeply intractable the cycle of poverty, conflict, and fragility can become when tied to the ferocious battles associated with the political economy of oil. This paper places the corpus of analytic and programmatic work concerning institutional reform in conversation with a now substantial body of work on resource politics and most especially, the debate over the politico-institutional character (sometimes called political settlements or pacting arrangements associated with the order of power) and reform landscape of the petro-state. Recent institution reform policy writing appears to have little to say about the political and economic conditions in which crises and institutional disjunctures may authorize, and thereby enable, agents to embark on institutional reforms. The authors focus on Edo state for two reasons. First, it does not on its face appear to be an obvious location in which to explore a reform experience, given its entanglement in the Niger Delta conflict and the maladies typically associated with state fragility. Second, Edo is of interest also because of the changes that its experience is contributing to the World Bank country team’s effort to engage operationally across all its instruments with the political economy of institutional reform in Nigeria, its largest client country in Africa.

Introduction - Towards Systemic Approaches to Evaluation and Impact - Befani, Barbara; Ramalingam, Ben; Stern, Elliot (IDS Bulletin, 2015)

Still watering white elephants? The blueprint versus process debate thirty years on - Booth, David (Perspectives on politics, production and public administration in Africa: essays in honour of Ole Therkildsen, 2015)
OCLC: 913447024

Impact assessment and the quest for the Holy Grail - Bymolt, Roger (KIT Royal Tropical Institute, 2015)

Appreciative Inquiry Principles - Coaching Leaders (2015)
This article, written by Emotional Intelligence Coach Andy Smith, describes the anticipatory principle which is one of the underpinnings of Appreciative Inquiry (AI). It argues that it is easier and more effective to move towards a positive imagined future than away from a negative one. It is principle number 4 in a series of principles outlined. More principle are listed below.

The Advocacy Strategy Framework. A tool for articulating an advocacy theory of change - Coffman, Julia; Beer, Tanya (Center for Evaluation Innovation, 2015)

Five Ways to Make a Difference: Perceptions of Practitioners Working in Urban Neighborhoods - Durose, Catherine; van Hulst, Merlijn; Jeffares, Stephen; Escobar, Oliver; Agger, Annika; de Graaf, Laurens (Public Administration Review, 2015)

Social learning and climate change adaptation: evidence for international development practice - Ensor, Jonathan; Harvey, Blane (Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 2015)
The potential for social learning to address complex, interconnected social and environmental challenges, such as climate change adaptation, is receiving increasing attention in research and practice. Social learning approaches vary, but commonly include cycles of knowledge sharing and joint action to co-create knowledge, relationships, and practices among diverse stakeholders. This results in learning and change that goes beyond the individual into communities, networks, or systems. Many authors have focused on analysis of case studies to better understand the contexts in which such learning occurs. In this paper, we look across this literature to draw out lessons for international development practice. To support those looking to purposively design social learning interventions for adaptation, we focus on four areas: lessons learned and the principles adopted when using a social learning approach, examples of tools and methods used, approaches to evaluating social learning, and examples of its impact. While we identify important lessons for practice within each of these areas, three cross-cutting themes emerge. These are: the importance of developing a shared view among those initiating learning processes of how change might happen and of how social learning fits within it, linking this locus of desired change to the tools employed; the centrality of skilled facilitation and in particular how practitioners may shift toward being participants in the collective learning process; and the need to attend to social difference, recognizing the complexity of social relations and the potential for less powerful actors to be co-opted in shared decision making. WIREs Clim Change 2015, 6:509–522. doi: 10.1002/wcc.348 This article is categorized under: Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Learning from Cases and Analogies Climate and Development > Knowledge and Action in Development

Producer-led value chain analysis: The missing link in value chain development - Ghore, Yogesh (Coady, 2015)
Introduction and rationale The concept of a value chain is increasingly being applied in the design and implementation of development programs aimed at poverty reduction. As an analytical tool, it provides a useful framework for understanding key activities, relationships, and mechanisms that allow producers, processors, buyers, sellers, and consumers—separated by time and space—to gradually add value to products and services as they pass from one link of the chain to another, making it a “value chain” (UNIDO, 2009). While it has been popular in the private sector ever since it was conceptualized by Michael Porter in the 1980s, more recently various donors and governments have shown interest in its use and have applied it to a range of development interventions, particularly in the area of sector development, livelihoods promotion, small and medium enterprise (SME) development, and rural and economic development. Academics and development organizations have designed numerous instruments for value chain analysis (VCA) and implementation. Beginning in the early 2000s, international organizations and donor agencies have sponsored the development of these tools, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the International Labour Organization (ILO). These guides and tools have been used in many development programs to address organizational, donor and local and regional priorities for development. While VCA guides and tools are important in understanding markets and relationships among key stakeholders, a recent comparative review of popularly used guides by Donovan et al. (2013) suggests that most of these guides are designed to be implemented independently of the local context and do not sufficiently focus on mutual learning, whether related to tool design or to the outcomes and impacts of the designed project activities. VCA is often conducted by external experts and the knowledge generated in the process is often confined to reports. Without the capacity building and effective participation of women and men producers—smallholder farmers who hold critical knowledge about the local context—an important link is missing in the entire process of VCA. The insufficient attention to the human, social, and other contextual factors undermines the full potential of the value chain systems approach, not only for economic outcomes, but for the long term sustainability of the intended benefits. So what are the ways to effectively engage producers in the community in the VCA? The producer-led process described here tries to address this basic question. It introduces simplified tools and an approach that ensures farmer participation in data collection, analysis, and identification of opportunities and constraints, and design of value chain interventions. This participation requires: a) an environment in which they feel comfortable to share their knowledge and insights, which is often not the case when extractive surveys and questionnaires are administered to collect information; and b) the use of simple and participatory tools that will allow them to provide inputs into the process of VCA and also help them to understand complex value chain systems and use this understanding for making livelihood decisions. The key steps and tools described are aimed at empowering the women and men farmers to make informed decisions about their own enterprises and how they relate to the value chain, thereby directly contributing to, and influencing, the overall process of value chain development. The process of VCA involving these steps and tools was developed at Coady Institute and first tested with Oxfam Canada and its local partners in Ethiopia in August 2012.

Cooperation Management for Practitioners: Managing Social Change With Capacity Works - GIZ (Springer Gabler, 2015)
OCLC: 893897509

Opening the black box: the contextual drivers of social accountability - Grandvoinnet, Helene; Aslam, Ghazia; Raha, Shomikho (World Bank Group, 2015)
Keywords: Social accounting

Can SMS-Mobilization Increase Citizen Reporting of Public Service Deficiencies to Politicians? - Grossman, Guy; Michelitch, Kristin; Santamaria, Marta (2015)

Navigating the Evidence on Transparency, Participation and Accountability: What Insights Have Emerged? What Gaps Remain? - Terms of reference for the Consultant Author(s) - Halloran, Brendan (2015)
Example of Terms of Reference for a Report on TAP.

HERMES (Highly Extensible Resource for Modeling Event-Driven Supply Chains) - HERMES (hermes.psc.edu, 2015)
Systems modeling is a tool for policymakers and program managers to capture all the direct and indirect effects of changes to a supply chain, identify sustainable solutions to the root causes of issues and save time, effort and resources in costly trial and error. Without systems modeling, evaluating the supply chain, identifying gaps, and implementing solutions can be insufficient, unsustainable and costly. Stock2 Vaccine supply chains are complex systems, comprising all the equipment, personnel, policies and processes needed to deliver a vaccine from its point of origin to the population. Understanding how the various components of a vaccine supply chain interact with each other is critical to evaluating supply chain function, identifying the root causes of issues and formulating sustainable solutions. HERMES (Highly Extensible Resource for Modeling Event-Driven Supply Chains) is a software program that allows users to generate a detailed computer simulation model of a supply chain

Logics of Government Innovation and Reform Management in China - Husain, Lewis (STEPS centre, 2015)
Since the beginning of reforms in the late 1970s, China has developed rapidly, transforming itself into a middle-income country, raising hundreds of millions out of poverty and, latterly, developing broad-based social protection systems. The country’s approach to reform has been unorthodox, leading many to talk of a specific Chinese model of development. This paper analyses the role of innovation (chuangxin) and experimentation in the Chinese government repertoire and their contribution to management of change during the rapid, complex and interconnected reforms that China is undergoing. ‘Innovation’ is understood as the process of generation, putting into use, and spread, of new ideas. This contemporary focus on innovation is an extension of an older Chinese government attachment to sub-national initiative in policy formulation and development that goes back to the beginnings of the PRC and before. Central government backing for, and endorsement of, proactive agency on the part of sub-national governments responds to a belief that China is too large, and conditions around the country too diverse, to allow adoption of ‘one size fits all’ policy. Sub-national governments are expected to show initiative in adapting policy locally, and creating locally-useable policy solutions within the overall scope of central policy mandates/ paradigms. The paper argues that innovation by sub-national government is systemically embedded: while central government sets the policy agenda, local governments are frontline managers, and develop a range of policy practices. Differences in conditions between localities mean that multiple variant policy practices are often in circulation at any one time. While innovation is not quantifiable in the aggregate, there is much controlled experimentation, freewheeling innovation, and trial and error, all of which are part of a search for new policy fixes and institutional solutions. Many forms of policy transfer and learning are in evidence, including much central learning from sub-national models, as well as sub-national circulation of a range of innovative policy practices. While much government innovation is not ‘original’, and may be ‘inefficient’ or of little systemic usefulness, overall, the churn of government innovation remains valuable in underpinning systemic adaptation and reform. The paper situates the analysis of government innovation within a larger framework on the functioning of Chinese government and international literature on policy transfer, and outlines an agenda for future research on the structural bases of Chinese government innovation and its contribution to adaptive management.

Enabling citizen-driven improvement of public services. Leveraging Technology to Strengthen Accountability in Nigerian Healthcare - ICT4SA (World Bank and Reboot, 2015)
Effective public service delivery begins with knowing whether the services offered are working as intended. We launched a system to enable citizen input on the delivery of public services.

The field guide to human-centered design: design kit - IDEO (IDEO, 2015)
Keywords: Design; IMPORTANT; Methode

Facilitating collaborative problem solving with human-centred design: the Making All Voices Count governance programme in 12 countries of Africa and Asia - Jackson, Carl (Knowledge Management for Development Journal, 2015)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Mobilizing Accountability: A Learning Agenda for Grassroots Organizations and Social Movements Addressing State Accountability - Joyce, Mary; Halloran, Brendan (Transparency & Accountability Initiative, 2015)

Bradford Hill Criteria for Causal Inference - King, Julian (2015)
We think we’re good at determining causality, but we suck at it One of the great challenges in evaluation is determining whether the results we’re seeing are because of the program we’re evaluating, some other influences out there in the big world, or random chance. At one level, this is an everyday, common sense task. As a species we’ve been making judgments about causation for a million years or so. Unfortunately, though, the way we are wired does not predispose us to logical thinking. We are inclined to be led astray by all sorts of biases and heuristics. Over time, the rocket science for dealing with causation has become more sophisticated – a key example being the experimental study design or randomised controlled trial (RCT). And our evidence base about what works has been enriched as a result. But deep down we’re still biased, heuristical beings and not very good at thinking things through. We’ve become so enthusiastic about experimental designs we’re a little inclined to think they are the only way to determine whether A causes B. Such a rigid view is no much use in the real world, where there are all sorts of ethical, conceptual, practical and economic barriers that mean we can’t always conduct RCTs. Even where technically possible, they are not necessarily the best tool for every job.

Improving development aid design and evaluation: Plan for sailboats, not trains - Kleinfeld, Rachel (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2015)
How do reforms that require political engagement differ from traditional technical reforms? Why is political engagement different, and what are the implications for design and evaluation? How should development programmes that engage politics be designed? And how can those who fund or implement such programmes evaluate whether their efforts are contributing to reform? This report …
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Before the Backlash, Let’s Redefine User-Centered Design - Lee, Panthea (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2015)
We must better understand user-centered design’s limitations—not just its strengths—in the context of international development. And we must adapt it from its original uses designing commercial products to solving for social good.

Are unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) the future of wildlife monitoring? A review of accomplishments and challenges - Linchant, Julie; Lisein, Jonathan; Semeki, Jean; Lejeune, Philippe; Vermeulen, Cédric (Mammal Review, 2015)
Regular monitoring of animal populations must be established to ensure wildlife protection, especially when pressure on animals is high. The recent development of drones or unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) opens new opportunities. UASs have several advantages, including providing data at high spatial and temporal resolution, providing systematic, permanent data, having low operational costs and being low-risk for the operators. However, UASs have some constraints, such as short flight endurance. We reviewed studies in which wildlife populations were monitored by using drones, described accomplishments to date and evaluated the range of possibilities UASs offer to provide new perspectives in future research. We focused on four main topics: 1) the available systems and sensors; 2) the types of survey plan and detection possibilities; 3) contributions towards anti-poaching surveillance; and 4) legislation and ethics. We found that small fixed-wing UASs are most commonly used because these aircraft provide a viable compromise between price, logistics and flight endurance. The sensors are typically electro-optic or infrared cameras, but there is the potential to develop and test new sensors. Despite various flight plan possibilities, mostly classical line transects have been employed, and it would be of great interest to test new methods to adapt to the limitations of UASs. Detection of many species is possible, but statistical approaches are unavailable if valid inventories of large mammals are the purpose. Contributions of UASs to anti-poaching surveillance are not yet well documented in the scientific literature, but initial studies indicate that this approach could make important contributions to conservation in the next few years. Finally, we conclude that one of the main factors impeding the use of UASs is legislation. Restrictions in the use of airspace prevent researchers from testing all possibilities, and adaptations to the relevant legislation will be necessary in future.
Keywords: detection; drone; survey; wildlife

ICT4D and Sustainability - Marais, Mario (The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society, 2015)

Useful Theory of Change Models - Mayne, John (Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 2015)
Although theories of change are frequently discussed in the evaluation literature and there is general agreement on what a theory of change is conceptually, there is actually little agreement beyond the big picture of just what a theory of change comprises, what it shows, how it can be represented, and how it can be used. This article outlines models for theories of change and their development that have proven quite useful for both straightforward and more complex interventions. The models are intuitive, flexible, and well-defined in terms of their components, and they link directly to rigorous models of causality. The models provide a structured framework for developing useful theories of change and analyzing the intervention they represent.

The Promise of Lean Experimentation - Murray, Peter; Ma, Steve (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2015)
By adopting a model from business, nonprofit organizations can launch, test, and implement new programs and services more efficiently. Includes magazine extras.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Monitoring and Adaptive Management - Ossi, Damien (District of Columbia Wildlife Action Plan - 2015, 2015)

Organizational Performance Index (OPI) Handbook: A practical guide to the OPI tool for practitioners and development professionals - Pact (Pact, 2015)
This handbook is intended to help development practitioners understand how to use and what can be achieved by Pact’s Organizational Performance Index (OPI) tool. This document will provide practitioners and managers with information on how the Pact OPI works and how best to incorporate it in their country strategy or program.

Adaptive Management: Responding to the evolving needs of PRIME's complex systems - Picon, Diana; Wild, Lorenz (Mercy Corps, 2015)

A Call for Innovation in International Development - R4D (Results for Development, 2015)

Strengthening the Humanitarian Innovation Ecosystem - Ramalingam, Ben; Rush, Howard; Bessant, John; Marshall, Nicholas; Gray, Bill; Hoffman, Kurt; Bayley, Simon; Warren, Kim (University of Brighton, 2015)

Introduction to SAVI's way of working - State Accountability and Voice Initiative (SAVI) - SAVI (DFID, 2015)
We are piloting a new approach to identifying and supporting our partners. This breaks with convention in many ways in order to improve impact. SAVI Approach Papers summarise key aspects of SAVI’s way of working. They explain what we do, and why – and link to relevant tools and frameworks. Our approach is summarized in...
Keywords: Practice

The 2015 State of Scrum Report: How the world is applying the most popular Agile approach to projects - Scrum Alliance (Scrum Alliance, 2015)

Peacebuilding and Statebuilding Strategy for SDC’s work in fragile and conflict contexts - SDC (Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC, 2015)

USAID/Colombia Introduces Political Economy Analysis to Better Adapt Programming to Local Contexts - Sharp, Preston (USAID, 2015)

Chaos Report 2015 - Standish Group (Standish Group, 2015)

2015 Rhode Island Wildlife Action Plan - Chapter 5 Monitoring and Adaptive Management - Terwilliger Consulting (State of Rhode Island, 2015)

The Operational Guide - for the making markets work for the poor (M4P) approach (Second Edition) - The Springfield Centre (SDC & DFID, 2015)
In 2008, SDC and DFID published three documents aimed at improving the understanding and use of the Making Markets Work for the Poor (M4P) approach: the M4P Synthesis, M4P Perspectives and M4P Operational Guide. Since then the field has grown, diversified and, importantly, learned much more. A second edition was commissioned to capture that learning, maintain the momentum and realise the ambition that development can still 'do better'. The second edition provides an accessible resource to help practitioners put the market systems development approach into practice. It explains the key principles and frameworks which guide effective intervention in – and development of – market systems. It addresses common challenges with examples of good practice based on practitioner experience. Who is it for? The Operational Guide is for people whose job entails trying to make market systems work better for poor women and men. These people include: Individuals currently involved in funding or implementing the approach. Development agencies wishing to incorporate market systems thinking and practice in their work. National stakeholders that wish to play a more strategic and catalytic role within market systems. What is new? Application, application, application! Whilst the key principles and frameworks will be familiar, the advice on their operational application – from start to finish – has been significantly bolstered Enhanced guidance on facilitation. Greater emphasis on what constitutes good facilitation practice, building on a wealth of practitioner experience More real-life examples. The Operational Guide is laced with examples from programmes past and present, working in a diverse array of systems Peer learning focus. Direct insights from practitioners, highlighting 'bumps in the road' and how to avoid them. The Guide aims to provide an accessible operational resource to help practitioners put the market systems development approach into practice. It explains the key principles and frameworks which guide the process of effective intervention in – and development of – market systems, addressing common challenges with examples of good practice based on practitioner experience. HOW SHOULD IT BE USED? The Guide explores, sequentially, the key elements of the implementation process: strategy, diagnosis, vision, intervention, measurement and management. It is not intended to be read from cover to cover; readers can go directly to the chapter most relevant to their needs without having read preceding chapters. However each chapter does build upon the preceding one and may refer to other chapters. THE GUIDE IS STRUCTURED AS FOLLOWS: INTRODUCTION Overview of the objectives, structure and format of the Guide CONTEXT A reminder of what market systems development means 1. STRATEGY Core principles and framework for setting programme strategy 2. DIAGNOSIS Core principles and framework for diagnosing system constraints 3. VISION Core principles and frameworks for defining and planning intervention 4. INTERVENTION Core principles and framework to guide effective intervention 5. MEASUREMENT Core principles and framework for measuring results 6. MANAGEMENT Key considerations in managing market systems development programmes GLOSSARY Definition of key terms used in market systems development

A Practical Guide for Collective Action against Corruption - UN Global Compact (UN Global Compact, 2015)
All anti-corruption professionals looking to better understand the relationship between collective action and corruption should refer to these two comprehensive guides that the UN Global Compact published. The 2015 guide has modules that cover theoretical concepts, practical recommendations for undertaking CA initiatives, and multiple in-depth case studies of CA projects around the world.

Feasibility Study: Crowdsourcing High-frequency food price data in rural Indonesia - UN Global Pulse (2015)

Collaborate Learn Adapt - Case Competition - USAID (USAID Learning Lab, 2015)

Using Systemic M&E Tools in Feed The Future Uganda: Sensemaker ® - Webinar - USAID Learning Lab (2015)
This webinar is part of a series organized by SEEP's Market Facilitation Initiative (MaFI), USAID's LEO project and the BEAM Exchange as a part of the "Learning with the Toolmakers" webinar series. As part of a new cycle of webinars focusing on inclusive market facilitation tools. In this series, Eric Derks and Leanne Rasmussen will share learning from this five-year, multi-million dollar USAID program, the objective of which is to increase Ugandan farmers’ use of good quality agro-inputs by fostering more inclusive systemic changes in the agro-inputs industry. Using Systemic M&E Tools in Feed The Future Uganda: Sensemaker ® This third webinar in the series, titled “,” will look at how the project team used this tool and method to monitor systemic change. Leanne and Eric will share their experiences with using the tool and give recommendations to other practitioners who are interested in applying it. What is Sensemaker ®? SenseMaker combines an innovative research methodology with patented software to collect and analyze large quantities of narratives in order to understand complex change. It brings together insights from complexity sciences, anthropology, and cognitive science. It uses participants’ narratives to uncover foundational attitudes and norms that inform and influence behavior. This webinar is organized by SEEP's Market Facilitation Initiative (MaFI), USAID's LEO project and the BEAM Exchange as a part of the "Learning with the Toolmakers" webinar series.

Developing an effective adaptive monitoring network to support integrated coastal management in a multiuser nature reserve - Vugteveen, Pim; van Katwijk, Marieke M.; Rouwette, Etiënne; Lenders, H. J. Rob; Hanssen, Lucien (Ecology and Society, 2015)
ABSTRACT. We elaborate the necessary conceptual and strategic elements for developing an effective adaptive monitoring network to support Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) in a multiuser nature reserve in the Dutch Wadden Sea Region. We discuss quality criteria and enabling actions essential to accomplish and sustain monitoring excellence to support ICM. The Wadden Sea Long-Term Ecosystem Research project (WaLTER) was initiated to develop an adaptive monitoring network and online data portal to better understand and support ICM in the Dutch Wadden Sea Region. Our comprehensive approach integrates ecological and socioeconomic data and links research-driven and policy-driven monitoring for system analysis using indicators of pressures, state, benefits, and responses. The approach and concepts we elaborated are transferable to other coastal regions to accomplish ICM in complex social-ecological systems in which scientists, multisectoral stakeholders, resource managers, and governmental representatives seek to balance long-term ecological, economic, and social objectives within natural limits.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

MSP Guide - Wageningen University (MSP Guide, 2015)
The MSP Guide Designing and facilitating effective multi-stakeholder partnerships Get started Download now The MSP Guide(EN, FR, ES) Explore the rationale, principles and process of designing and facilitating effective MSPs Get it now The MSP Tool Guide Detailed descriptions of 60 tried-and-tested tools to facilitate multi-stakeholder partnerships Get it now Reflection Methods: Practical Guide Proven…

Testing the Waters: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of the Factors Affecting Success in Rendering Water Services Sustainable Based on ICT Reporting - Welle, Katharina; Williams, Jennifer; Pearce, Joseph; Befani, Barbara (MAVC, 2015)
This research conducted by WaterAid, Itad and IRC aims to understand the factors that facilitate and inhibit the success of ICT-based reporting to improve rural water supply sustainability.

Change in challenging contexts - Williamson, Tim (ODI, 2015)
This report explores how genuine institutional change takes place in fragile and conflict-affected states reforms can be supported.

Outcome Harvesting - Wilson-Grau, R. (Better Evaluation, 2015)
Outcome Harvesting collects (“harvests”) evidence of what has changed (“outcomes”) and, then, working backwards, determines whether and how an intervention has contributed to these changes. Outcome Harvesting has proven to be especially useful in complex situations when it is not possible to define concretely most of what an intervention aims to achieve, or even, what specific actions will be taken over a multi-year period.

Learning and Results in World Bank Operations: Toward a New Learning Strategy - World Bank (IEG , The World Bank, 2015)
This report is the second in a program of evaluations that the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) is conducting on the learning that takes place through World Bank projects. Learning and knowledge are treated as parts of a whole and are presumed to be mutually reinforcing.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behavior - World Bank (The World Bank, 2015)
Development economics and policy are due for a redesign. In the past few decades, research from across the natural and social sciences has provided stunning insight into the way people think and make decisions. Whereas the first generation of development policy was based on the assumption that humans make decisions deliberatively and independently, and on the basis of consistent and self-interested preferences, recent research shows that decision making rarely proceeds this way. People think automatically: when deciding, they usually draw on what comes to mind effortlessly. People also think socially: social norms guide much of behavior, and many people prefer to cooperate as long as others are doing their share. And people think with mental models: what they perceive and how they interpret it depend on concepts and worldviews drawn from their societies and from shared histories.The World Development Report 2015 offers a concrete look at how these insights apply to development policy. It shows how a richer view of human behavior can help achieve development goals in many areas, including early childhood development, household finance, productivity, health, and climate change. It also shows how a more subtle view of human behavior provides new tools for interventions. Making even minor adjustments to a decision-making context, designing interventions based on an understanding of social preferences, and exposing individuals to new experiences and ways of thinking may enable people to improve their lives.The Report opens exciting new avenues for development work. It shows that poverty is not simply a state of material deprivation, but also a “tax” on cognitive resources that affects the quality of decision making. It emphasizes that all humans, including experts and policy makers, are subject to psychological and social influences on thinking, and that development organizations could benefit from procedures to improve their own deliberations and decision making. It demonstrates the need for more discovery, learning, and adaptation in policy design and implementation. The new approach to development economics has immense promise. Its scope of application is vast. This Report introduces an important new agenda for the development community.

Qualitative Comparative Analysis - A Rigorous Qualitative Method for Assessing Impact - Baptist, Carrie; Befani, Barbara (Coffey, 2015)

Who is ICT innovation for? Challenges to existing theories of innovation, a Kenyan Case Study - Marchant, Eleanor (University of Pennsylvania, 2015)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Towards informed and multi-faceted wildlife trade interventions - Challender, Daniel W.S.; Harrop, Stuart R.; MacMillan, Douglas C. (Global Ecology and Conservation, 2015)
International trade in wildlife is a key threat to biodiversity conservation. CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, seeks to ensure international wildlife trade is sustainable, relying on trade bans and controls. However, there has been little comprehensive review of its effectiveness and here we review approaches taken to regulate wildlife trade in CITES. Although assessing its effectiveness is problematic, we assert that CITES boasts few measurable conservation successes. We attribute this to: non-compliance, an over reliance on regulation, lack of knowledge and monitoring of listed species, ignorance of market forces, and influence among CITES actors. To more effectively manage trade we argue that interventions should go beyond regulation and should be multi-faceted, reflecting the complexity of wildlife trade. To inform these interventions we assert an intensive research effort is needed around six key areas: (1) factors undermining wildlife trade governance at the national level, (2) determining sustainable harvest rates for, and adaptive management of CITES species, (3) gaining the buy-in of local communities in implementing CITES, (4) supply and demand based market interventions, (5) means of quantifying illicit trade, and (6) political processes and influence within CITES.
Keywords: CITES; Community conservation; Compliance; Economics; Regulation; Wildlife trade

Management not models: adaptability, responsiveness, and a few lessons from football - Maclay, Christopher (Development in Practice, 2015)
Despite a swathe of critiques of logframes and other blueprint approaches to development over the last 30 years, most aid infrastructure continues to concentrate on the design and subsequent implementation of closed models. This article does not propose an alternative to blueprints, but challenges the inflexibility of their implementation, which is inadequate given the complex nature of social change. It proposes a supplementary management and learning approach which enables implementers to be dynamic, adaptive, and responsive to problems and opportunities. Emphasising the role of donors, the paper presents a case study of one donor-led programme in Bangladesh doing just this.
Publisher: Routledge _eprint: https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2015.983460

Thoughts on the use of hypotheses in adaptive management - Sparkman, Timothy (BEAM Exchange, 2015)
New insights, opinions and perspectives on market systems development, from experts and practitioners.

The limits of agile - can we apply it to policy making? - Ollerhead, Lisa (2015)
Bringing new policy tools and techniques to the UK Government

(Breaking) The Iron Triangle of Evaluation - Reynolds, Martin (IDS Bulletin, 2015)
Keywords: Evaluation; impact

Meant to Keep Malaria Out, Mosquito Nets Are Used to Haul Fish In - Gettleman, Jeffrey (The New York Times, 2015)
Nets like his are widely considered a magic bullet against malaria — one of the cheapest and most effective ways to stop a disease that kills at least half a million Africans each year. But Mr. Ndefi and countless others are not using their mosquito nets as global health experts have intended. Nobody in his hut, including his seven children, sleeps under a net at night. Instead, Mr. Ndefi has taken his family’s supply of anti-malaria nets and sewn them together into a gigantic sieve that he uses to drag the bottom of the swamp ponds, sweeping up all sorts of life: baby catfish, banded tilapia, tiny mouthbrooders, orange fish eggs, water bugs and the occasional green frog

Understanding Indicators And Monitoring For Sustainability In The Context Of Complex Social-Ecological Systems - Haider, L. Jamila; Iribarrem, Alvaro; Gardner, Toby; Latawiec, Agnieszka E; Alves-Pinto, Helena; Strassburg, Bernardo (De Gruyter Open, 2015)

Introduction to Project Management - The Case of GIZ Projects - Lacroix, Eric J. (Khulna University, 2015)
In this course, we will try to understand the complexity and the structure of the management of a development project implemented by the GIZ for the German Development cooperation. We will first define the frame of management and project to enter in the map of two logics. Then, we will overfly the 5 success factors of Capacity WORKS, with concrete examples in annexe. It will bring us to the monitoring, the standard processes in GIZ cooperation projects, the basic tools for project implementation and the evaluation. The team building will allow us to enter in a specific aspect of project management.

Adapting development: improving services to the poor - Wild, Leni; Booth, David; Cummings, Clare; Foresti, Marta; Wales, Joseph (ODI, 2015)
On current trends, it will take decades or longer to bring basic services to the world’s most disadvantaged people. Meeting this challenge means recognising the political conditions that enable or obstruct development progress - a radical departure from the approach of the Millennium Development Goals.
Keywords: Practice

The journey from rhetoric to reality: participatory evaluation in a development context - Chouinard, Jill Anne; Cousins, J. Bradley (Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 2015)
In this paper, we focus on participatory evaluation in the context of international development and specifically on the emerging empirical knowledge base. In a prior review and critique of research on participatory evaluation (Cousins and Chouinard 2012), we examined 121 studies, with only 21 (17 %) situated in development contexts. However, the circumstances and challenges for international development and for development evaluation are distinct from those found in developed countries and therefore warrant separate consideration. To provide a more focused and detailed understanding of participatory evaluation in international development contexts, in this paper we augment our initial sample to a total of 40 studies on participatory evaluation in development published over the past 16.5 years. Based on an analysis of this research and related theoretical and conceptual contributions we identify and discuss eight emergent themes: multiplicity of relationships, consequences of stakeholder selection, characterization of participation, contextual complexity, methodological requirements, cultural influence, politics and power and learning and capacity building. We conclude with some reflections on an agenda for research.

Analysing ICT and Development from the Perspective of the Capabilities Approach: A Study in South Brazil - Coelho, Taiane Ritta; Segatto, Andréa Paula; Frega, José Roberto (The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 2015)
Certain international agencies propose that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) allows development to be reached more efficiently and quickly. While there are success stories galore, there is acknowledgement of not all investments in ICT bringing positive effects towards development. Following the Capabilities Approach, this paper discusses how the use of ICT can promote a more effective development by studying the case of Sudotec (association for technological and industrial development), a non-profit organization that saw in ICT the opportunity to change the local scenario. The results revealed positive effects of the use of ICT in social, economical and cultural spheres, but not presenting political effect.

Citizens’ Use of New Media in Authoritarian Regimes: A Case Study of Uganda - Grönlund, Åke; Wakabi, Wairagala (The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 2015)
By subsidizing the costs of civic participation, the use of the Internet use is believed to stimulate participation but there are fears that intensive Internet use causes withdrawal from public life. This paper investigates the connection between the way individuals participate online and offline in authoritarian, low-income regimes, and the nature of eParticipation among citizens in authoritarian regimes such as Uganda. Based on personal interviews with 116 Internet users, the study found that common drivers of eParticipation, such as low cost, security and anonymity are hard to transplant into the offline world for citizens of authoritarian states such as Uganda. Perceived risks of retribution and intimidation for expressing a particular opinion or supporting a political cause mean that citizen-to-citizen participation is the predominant form but still at low levels, while citizen-to-government participation is negligible.

Between logframes and theory of change: reviewing debates and a practical experience - Prinsen, Gerard; Nijhof, Saskia (Development in Practice, 2015)
Theory of Change (ToC) is an emerging methodology in the practice of development programmes, often contrasted with the dominant logical framework. This article reviews current debates around ToC before identifying five aspects that are appreciated in practice. It appears that these aspects mostly cover areas where the logical framework is not – or is no longer – meeting the needs of practitioners. Subsequently, the article analyses experiences in ToC training for NGO staff and concludes that ToC can address shortcomings of the logical framework – if only by going back to some of the roots of the logical framework.
Publisher: Routledge _eprint: https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2015.1003532

The effect of government responsiveness on future political participation - Mellon, Andrew Jonathan; Sjoberg, Fredrik Matias; Peixoto, Tiago Carneiro (The World Bank, 2015)
What effect does government responsiveness have on political participation? Since the 1940s political scientists have used attitudinal measures of perceived efficacy to explain participation. More recent work has focused on underlying genetic factors that condition citizen engagement. The authors develop a ‘calculus of participation’ that incorporates objective efficacy, the extent to which an individual’s participation actually has an impact, and test the model against behavioral data from FixMyStreet.com (n=399,364). The authors find that a successful first experience using FixMyStreet.com (e.g., reporting a pothole and having it fixed) is associated with a 54 percent increase in the probability of an individual submitting a second report. The authors also show that the experience of government responsiveness to the first report submitted has predictive power over all future report submissions. The findings highlight the importance of government responsiveness for fostering an active citizenry, while demonstrating the value of incidentally collected data to examine participatory behavior at the individual level.

Thinking and Working Politically: Professional Development Reading Pack - Booth, David (GSDRC Applied Knowledge services, 2015)

Effective Governance. Strategy for Australia’s aid investments - DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australian Government, 2015)

Doing legal empowerment differently: Learning from pro-poor litigation in Bangladesh - O'Neil, Tam; Valters, Craig; Farid, Cynthia (ODI, 2015)
Marginalised groups and their allies can, and do, use the law and justice systems, including public interest litigation, to improve their access to rights, goods and services.  Yet there is no automatic link between legal action and improved outcomes for poor people.  Where some minimum conditions are met – a progressive legal framework, a sympathetic judiciary and legal advocacy organisation – pro-poor litigation is a potential tool in disputes over rights and resources.  But concrete benefits for poor people also requires state action to enforce progressive rulings.  Much depends on whether claimants, legal activists and state reformers cooperate around shared interests, and whether activists can negotiate power and interest structures to motivate government action to implement rulings.  Effective strategies are those that link litigation with grassroots legal action and other forms of political and social activism and advocacy.  Donors need to fund legal advocacy organisations in ways that enable them to select social issues that are locally relevant and political feasible – and allows activists and reformers to work in politically smart and adaptive ways.

Beyond enforcement: communities, governance, incentives and sustainable use in combating wildlife crime. Symposium Report. - Roe, Dilys (IIED, 2015)

Development innovation: Fad, silo or catalyst? - Ramalingam, Ben (Nesta, 2015)
In the first of a two-part blog piece, Ben Ramalingam, affiliate of the Overseas Development Institute / Institute of Development Studies, discusses the challenges of implementing innovation in to the development sector - from keeping expectations realistic to managing the innovation process and assessing impact and value.

Scaling: Innovations Missing Middle - McClure, Dan; Gray, Ian (ThoughtWorks, 2015)

Journalism from the ‘Silicon Savannah’: The Vexed Relationship Between Nairobi’s Newsmakers and its ICT4D Community - Benequista, Nicholas (Stability: International Journal of Security and Development, 2015)
During the course of a year-long knowledge exchange initiative called the Networked News Lab, a small group of Kenyan journalists and a PhD researcher from the London School of Economics and Political Science sought to identify opportunities for collaboration between newsmakers and practitioners from the field of information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D). In almost every instance, the project failed to promote cooperation between the two groups, though it succeeded in highlighting the fundamental issues that separate them. Drawing from interviews, project documents and participant observation, this chapter describes the incompatibilities between the two communities and what they suggest about current efforts to strengthen journalism in Africa through the application of ICTs.
Keywords: ICT4D; ICTs; IMPORTANT; Journalism; Kenya; state-building

Nairobi Is Organizing- Grassroots Organizing &Public Participation for Social Change - TISA (2015)
The Institute for Social Accountability

The Qualitative Impact Assessment Protocol (QUIP) - Copestake, James; Remnant, Fiona (2015)
This brief presents an overview of the QUIP in three steps: the background to the QUIP and its main aims; the data collection and analysis methodology; and QUIP in the context of other approaches to evaluation. Each section can be read independently, depending on time available.

Mobilizing Accountability: Citizens, Movements and the State - Halloran, Brendan; Flores, Walter (Transparency & Accountability Initiative, 2015)

Straws-in-the-wind, Hoops and Smoking Guns: What can Process Tracing Offer to Impact Evaluation? - Punton, Melanie; Welle, Katharina (Centre for Development Impact, 2015)
This CDI Practice Paper by Melanie Punton and Katharina Welle explains the methodological and theoretical foundations of process tracing, and discusses its potential application in international development impact evaluations. It draws on two early applications of process tracing for assessing impact in international development interventions: Oxfam Great Britain (GB)’s contribution to advancing universal health care in Ghana, and the impact of the Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI) on policy change in Tanzania. In a companion to this paper, Practice Paper 10 Annex describes the main steps in applying process tracing and provides some examples of how these steps might be applied in practice.
Pages: 8