Mentoring Programmes: Supporting Effective Technology Use in Transparency and Accountability Organisations - Herringshaw, Vanessa; Faith, Becky (Transparency & Accountability Initiative, 2015)
The global movement to hold governments and companies accountable is growing rapidly, and technology can play a vital role. Some actors harness this potential to brilliant effect. But many others waste precious money and staff time on technology that isn’t a good fit for their aims or capacity. Mentorships can be a really effective way …

Mediating Voices, Communicating Realities: Using Information Crowdsourcing Tools, Open Data Initiatives and Digital Media to Support and Protect the Vulnerable - Berdou, Evangelia (IDS, 2011)
This is the final report from a research project, supported by the UK Department for International Development, examining whether and how open ICT projects designed to support the poor can make a diff...

Measuring Up: Evaluating the Impact of P/CVE Programs - Holmer, Georgia; Bauman, Peter (United States Institute of Peace, 2018)
This report considers the various conceptual and practical challenges in measuring the impact and value of programs designed to prevent and counter violent extremism (P/CVE). It examines potential solutions and emphasizes the significance of efforts to assess changes in attitudes, behaviors, and relationships. The report was developed in tandem with “Taking Stock: Analytic Tools for Understanding and Designing P/CVE Programs” and seeks to help advance more rigor and sustainability in P/CVE programming.

Measuring the Barriers to Big Data for Development: design-reality gap analysis - Fernando Gomez, L.; Heeks, R. (Manchester University Development Informatics Working Paper Series, 2016)

Measuring Results & the DCED Standard - Tanburn, Jim (DCED Webinar, 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).

Measuring Impact. Making Use of the Portfolio: Organizational Learning at USAID - Peabody, Shawn (Measuring Impact, 2015)
This technical analysis explores previous and ongoing social learning efforts, best practices, challenges, and lessons in USAID as a foundation for improving the implementation and design of the Agency’s forestry and biodiversity programs. This analysis is particularly relevant as the Bureau of Economic Growth, Education and the Environment’s Office of Forestry and Biodiversity (E3/FAB) begins to develop a Cross-Mission Learning Program under the Measuring Impact initiative, a five-year activity to promote the adoption of best practices in the USAID program cycle among Missions using biodiversity funds. The findings reported in this document can help inform the overall design and structure of the Learning Program and provide insight into possible challenges and best practices.

Measuring Impact: A Learning Approach to Strengthening USAID Biodiversity Programs - Lauck, Liz (Updates from the field: perspectives on Learning from USAID-funded Activites, 2014)

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

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

Mayne18-Developing Useful ToCs REV3 - Mayne, John (2019)
An update on the previous September 2018 uploaded article

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

Market Systems Development - Operational Guidance Note - DFAT (DFAT, 2017)

Marine Conservation Outcomes are More Likely when Fishers Participate as Citizen Scientists: Case Studies from the Mexican Mesoamerican Reef - Fulton, Stuart; Caamal-Madrigal, Jacobo; Aguilar-Perera, Alfonso; Bourillón, Luis; Heyman, William D. (Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 2018)
Small-scale fishers on Caribbean coral reefs have exploited fish spawning aggregations (FSAs) for generations, but intense fishing has led to the loss of traditional aggregation sites. In many areas, the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of fishers has contributed greatly to the characterization of spawning aggregations and implementation of local conservation initiatives. TEK has identified more than 40 potential FSA sites along the coast of the Mexican Mesoamerican Reef. These sites have been characterised and scientifically validated, in some cases with traditional western science and in others, with a participatory citizen-science approach. The objective of this work is to compare the science and conservation outcomes at these FSA sites. We report that those FSA sites where scientific surveys were conducted without community participation remain unprotected. By contrast, the FSAs where local fishers were engaged in characterization and subsequent monitoring are now protected at the behest of the fishers themselves. Conservation initiatives to protect FSAs can be more effective through a combination of TEK, western science, and participatory citizen science involving local fishers.
Keywords: Citizen science; Fishers; Spawning Aggregation; Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Mapping the Outcomes of Citizen Engagement - Gaventa, John; Barrett, Gregory (World Development, 2012)
Summary Despite the normative beliefs that underpin the concept of participation, its impact on improved democratic, and developmental outcomes has proven difficult to assess. Using a meta-case study analysis of a sample of 100 cases, we inductively create a typology of four democratic and developmental outcomes, including (a) the construction of citizenship, (b) the strengthening of practices of participation, (c) the strengthening of responsive and accountable states, and (d) the development of inclusive and cohesive societies. We find that citizen participation produces positive effects across these outcome types, though in each category there are also important types of negative outcomes as well.
Keywords: Citizen engagement; Citizenship; Development outcomes; Participation; democratic outcomes; meta-analysis

Mapping Context for Social Accountability: A resource paper - O'Meally, Sion C. (The World Bank, 2013)

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

Managing Upward and Downward Accountability in an International Development Project - A Case Study of a World Bank Telecommunications Infrastructure Project in Benin - Kolker, Eva; Kulldorff, Catharina (Master's Thesis, Stockholm School of Economics, 2013)
Keywords: Downward accountability; Upward accountability

Managing to Adapt: Analysing adaptive management for planning, monitoring, evaluation, and learning - Desai, Harsh; Maneo, Gabriele; Pellfolk, Erica; Schlingheider, Annika (Oxfam Research Reports, 2018)
Adaptive management is at the heart of ‘Doing Development Differently’. It emerges from stakeholders’ calls for development programmes to be more flexible and responsive to their contexts. Whether it becomes a mainstreamed practice depends on how much it is

Managing the Journey to Scale Up Innovation in the Humanitarian and Development Sector - McClure, Dan; Gray, Ian (ThoughtWorks, 2015)

Managing staff transistions through CLA: preserving institutional memory as staff come and go - USAID (CLA Toolkit, 2019)
This document is relevant for any position or hiring mechanism. While this document does not explicitly address what happens when someone arrives into a newly-created position, which has its own set of challenges, many of the principles, actions, and resources can be applied in that context. Section 1 offers guidance for how to set up and implement systems at Mission/OU or office to ensure that all staff help preserve institutional memory and enable continuity of relationships. This section is for any staff in a Mission/OU working to build systems that improve handovers and knowledge capture and sharing across the Mission or OU. If a Mission or OU is just beginning to develop a system to manage staff transitions, you may want to start by developing a system within an office or team and then expand it out to other offices or to the Mission/OU writ large. Section 2 includes key principles and actions individuals could consider following when arriving or departing a position, regardless of hiring mechanism and position. This includes staff new to the Mission/OU and staff who are currently in the Mission/OU and are moving into a new position. Section 3 provides a select number of resources to help you take a systematic and comprehensive approach to manage staff transitions as effectively and efficiently as possible at the individual or organizational level.

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

Managing Humanitarian Innovation: The cutting edge of aid - James, Eric; Taylor, Abigail (Practical Action Publishing, 2018)
The challenges facing humanitarian logistics are huge. Refugee camps present enormously challenging environments in which sudden spikes in demand, difficult to access locations, disruptions due to conflict or disasters, as well as normal supply chain problems are commonplace. This means that orders for medical and other supplies can take weeks and sometimes months to fulfil, severely impeding humanitarian operations. There is also a lack of or slow adoption of technology routinely used elsewhere. In addition, humanitarian logistics are also expensive. When customs clearance, transportation, storage, middlemen and administration are added in, the costs of basic items are often exorbitant. Managing Humanitarian Innovation presents a new approach that is beginning to transform the way humanitarian logistics are conducted. Innovation in logistics includes disrupting and improving supply chains through the use of technology, especially 3D printers, and engaging people to manage this approach. The book discusses what innovation is, and strategies for supporting it; it describes practical innovations and how they have been applied; and it outlines how innovation labs can be run. Finally it covers how to fund innovation and it suggests how humanitarian innovation might develop in the future. This book brings together the real experience of practitioners who have made innovation work. It is a collaborative work written by and for the community of people involved in humanitarian innovation, in particular in the making and manufacturing of humanitarian supplies. The book is full of practical and actionable points of value to the humanitarian community. Managing Humanitarian Innovation is essential reading for humanitarian practitioners as well as volunteers and others involved in humanitarian supplies provision. It is equally helpful to thought leaders, policy makers and educators.

Managing Facilities: a stock-take from the first 12 months - Tyrrel, Lavinia; Teskey, Graham; de Lacy, Jacqui (Governance Working Paper 3, 2017)

Managing Complexity: Adaptive Management at Mercy Corps - Mercy Corps (2015)
Managing Complexity: Adaptive management at Mercy Corps

Managing and Adapting a development program: Lessons from PRISMA - Seely, Kevin (PRISMA, 2019)
This case study is part of the AIP-Rural Learning Series. Funders and implementers of international development programs largely agree that adaptive management is industry best practice. Most development experts also broadly agree on what ‘adaptive management’ means. In this case study, we use a common definition of ‘adaptive management’, including the following features: Flexibility. Implementers create, modify and drop interventions when circumstances change or new information emerges, in order to tailor strategies to context and maximise impact. Purposeful experimentation. Implementers test different activities at the same time, monitoring them to learn what will achieve the desired impact. Since 2015, the number of publications calling for and praising adaptive management in development programs has grown fast. These publications give us an idea of the state of adaptive management in development programs. They reveal progress in some areas, such as tailoring interventions to local context and using evidence for decision-making. Yet they also reveal multiple, ongoing, real-world constraints to adaptive management. This case study explores how one development program, PRISMA, has avoided and overcome some of these constraints, whilst continuing to battle others. Four major constraints revealed in the adaptive management literature are discussed in this case study: Programs are designed in ways that make it hard to adapt interventions, target regions or sectors based on new learning or changing circumstances. Programs struggle to create an organisational culture that encourages learning and adapting. When staffing programs, recruiters prioritise sectoral expertise and length of experience over adaptive managerial competence. Program managers face pressures to spend their budgets predictably and before their program ends. Learning and testing take time and cost little, so managers feel pressure to deprioritise them. The first of these constraints is explored in the next section, ‘Design’, which looks at how the selection of target sectors and performance targets affects PRISMA implementers’ ability to manage adaptively. The third section, ‘Organisational Culture’, shares lessons on encouraging staff to test and improve interventions. Section 4, ‘Staffing’, looks at hiring adaptive managers, and freeing up their time to improve interventions. The final section summarises this case study’s key lessons. Throughout this paper, findings are based on 16 in-depth interviews with PRISMA’s junior, mid-level and senior staff, and its funders. To contextualise these findings, the authors reviewed the ‘adaptive management’ literature, and drew on their experience with development programs worldwide.

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.

Making the Most of Mess: Reliability and Policy in Today's Management Challenges - Roe, Emery (Duke University Press Books, 2013)
In Making the Most of Mess, Emery Roe emphasizes that policy messes cannot be avoided or cleaned up; they need to be managed. He shows how policymakers and other professionals can learn these necessary skills from control operators who manage large critical infrastructures such as water supplies, telecommunications systems, and electricity grids. The ways in which they prevent major accidents and failures offer models for policymakers and other professionals to manage the messes they face.Throughout, Roe focuses on the global financial mess of 2008 and its ongoing aftermath, showing how mismanagement has allowed it to morph into other national and international messes. More effective management is still possible for this and many other policy messes but that requires better recognition of patterns and formulation of scenarios, as well as the ability to translate pattern and scenario into reliability. Developing networks of professionals who respond to messes is particularly important. Roe describes how these networks enable the avoidance of bad or worse messes, take advantage of opportunities resulting from messes, and address societal and professional challenges. In addition to finance, he draws from a wide range of case material in other policy arenas. Roe demonstrates that knowing how to manage policy messes is the best approach to preventing crises.

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

Making Sense of Complexity: Using SenseMaker as a Research Tool - Van der Merwe, Susara E.; Biggs, Reinette; Preiser, Rika; Cunningham, Charmaine; Snowden, David J.; O’Brien, Karen; Jenal, Marcus; Vosloo, Marietjie; Blignaut, Sonja; Goh, Zhen (Systems, 2019)
There is growing interest in studying processes of human sensemaking, as this strongly influences human and organizational behavior as well as complex system dynamics due to the diverse lenses people use to interpret and act in the world. The Cognitive Edge SenseMaker® tool is one method for capturing and making sense of people’s attitudes, perceptions, and experiences. It is used for monitoring and evaluation; mapping ideas, mind-sets, and attitudes; and detecting trends and weak signals. However, academic literature describing the tool-set and method is lacking. This introduction aims to guide researchers in choosing when to use SenseMaker and to facilitate understanding of its execution and limitations. SenseMaker can provide nuanced insight into system-level patterns of human sensemaking that can provide insight to nudge systems towards more desirable futures, and enable researchers to measure beyond what they know.
Keywords: Mixed methods; SenseMaker tool; complex systems; sensemaking; social complexity

Making politics work for development: harnessing transparency and citizen engagement - Khemani, Stuti; Ferraz, Claudio; Finan, Frederico S.; Johnson, Stephenson; Louise, Corinne; Abrahams, Scott David; Odugbemi, Adesinaola Michael; Dal Bó, Ernesto; Thapa, Dikshya (Policy Research Report, 2016)
Too often, government leaders fail to adopt and implement policies that they know are necessary for sustained economic development. They are encumbered by adverse political incentives, which prevent them from selecting good policies, and they run the risk of losing office should they try to do the right thing. Even when technically sound policies are selected by leaders, implementation can run into perverse behavioral norms among public officials and citizens, who seek to extract private benefits from the public sector. Such behavior might be supported by widespread beliefs that corruption is the norm. Even countries with low corruption and strong institutions experience problems of political incentives and behavior that prevent the public sector from solving shared problems. Ideological polarization among citizens and capture by special interests can lead to policy gridlock and the failure of the state to provide public goods, even in advanced economies. Even educated citizens can hold ideological beliefs about the role of public policy that lead them to deny technical evidence contrary to these beliefs. Too often, government leaders fail to adopt and implement policies that they know are necessary for sustained economic development. Political constraints can prevent leaders from following sound technical advice, even when leaders have the best of intentions. Making Politics Work for Development: Harnessing Transparency and Citizen Engagement focuses on two forces—citizen engagement and transparency—that hold the key to solving government failures by shaping how political markets function. In today’s participative world, citizens are not only queueing at voting booths, but are also taking to the streets and using modern communication technology to select, sanction, and pressure the leaders who wield power within government. This political engagement can function in highly nuanced ways even within the same formal institutional context and across the political spectrum, from autocracies to democracies. Political engagement becomes unhealthy when leaders are selected and sanctioned on the basis of their provision of private benefits rather than public goods, giving rise to a range of government failures. The solutions to these failures lie in fostering healthy political engagement within any institutional context, and not in circumventing or suppressing it. Transparency—citizen access to publicly available information about the actions of those in government and the consequences of these actions—can play a crucial role by nourishing political engagement. The report distills policy lessons for governments, international development partners, and civil society on how best to target transparency initiatives so that the provision of public goods becomes the focus of political contestation. Even so, unhealthy political engagement may persist. But to build institutions that are capable of tackling public goods problems, politics needs to be addressed and cannot be side-stepped. Targeted transparency is one way to move in the right direction: it complements everything else policy makers do and holds the potential to make politics work for development rather than against it. " This pathbreaking report places politics at the heart of the development dialogue—exactly where it belongs. It provides constructive ideas for harnessing the forces of transparency and citizen engagement in ways that are suited to diverse institutional contexts so that reform leaders can overcome political constraints to their countries’ development goals. " Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Director of Research, Development Research Group, The World Bank "This book not only provides an authoritative statement of what we know about how to align political incentives with the interests of society, but it does so with an eye to making change happen even in the face of political opposition. The World Bank will never be the same again. " James Robinson, University Professor, Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago " A lesson for us at the World Bank also comes out of this research. We can do more…to work with our clients to diminish political constraints to achieving development goals…To do this we have to overcome the fear of talking about politics, and confront it as part of the challenge of development. That is what we are doing through this report. " Kaushik Basu, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, The World Bank

Making humanitarian response more flexible: Challenges and questions - Obrecht, Alice; Bourne, S. (ALNAP/ODI, 2018)

Making humanitarian response more flexible: bibliography - ALNAP (2018)

Making Good Use of Adaptive Management - Doremus, Holly; Andreen, William L.; Camacho, Alejandro E.; Farber, Daniel A.; Glicksman, Robert L.; Goble, Dale D.; Karkkainen, Bradley C.; Rohlf, Dan; Tarlock, A. Dan; Zellmer, Sandra B.; Jones, Shana Campbell; Huang, Yee (White Paper #1104, 2011)

Making good on donors’ desire to Do Development Differently - Honig, Dan; Gulrajani, Nilima (Third World Quarterly, 2018)
AbstractForeign aid donors are increasingly focused on changing the way their development agencies function. This discourse has focused on desired qualities, including greater knowledge of local contextual realities, appropriate adaptation to context and greater flexibility to respond to changing circumstances. We argue that more attention needs to be devoted to the achievement of these qualities and turn to contingency theory to identify some under-exploited ways to ?do development differently?. The qualities sought by donors are emergent properties of complex organisational systems and will only be achieved through a micro-level and interlinked focus on the fundamentals of organisation.

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

Making Details Matter: How to Reform Aid Agencies to Generate Contextual Knowledge - Ang, Yuen Yuen (SSRN, 2014)
My essay considers a central problem of reinventing foreign aid in the twenty-first century: how to reform aid agencies to enable a “best-fit” approach to development assistance. For the past decades, the aid community has tried to transplant best practices from the developed world to the developing world. Increasingly, however, it is recognized that copying best practices does not work and may even backfire; rather, aid programs work best when they are tailored to local contexts. Yet while the idea of a best-fit approach is widely embraced in principle, actualizing it is easier said than done. For meaningful changes to take root in practice, we must first identify the obstacles to localizing development assistance and suggest ways to address these problems. To this end, I propose a three-pronged strategy to promote the generation of contextual knowledge among aid professionals, a necessary condition for crafting solutions that can fit various local contexts, namely: (1) build a bank of knowledge about unorthodox practices that work, (2) diversify expertise within aid agencies; and (3) carve experimental pockets. My proposal does not fit neatly into any one of the six themes specified in the GDN competition; rather, it concerns all of the themes. Whether it is to use aid to improve governance, apply information technology, or design financial instruments, the overarching challenge is to empower and incentivize aid professionals to learn and apply contextual knowledge to creatively solve problems in developing societies.
Keywords: Contextual knowledge; Localization; Public policy; foreign aid; international development

Making design core to the agile process: a look into how we built Salesforce's Lightning Experience - Schoen, Ian (Medium, 2016)
A look into how we built Salesforce’s Lightning Experience

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.

Making All Voices Count: A Slam Dunk? - Global Integrity (Global Integrity, 2012)
Yesterday, I had the chance to attend the public launch of a new government transparency and accountability funding mechanism – Making All Voices Count. Held at USAID headquarters, the discussion featured a veritable who’s who of open government and transparency practitioners in the Washington area; probably 250 people were packed into the room. (Announcing a …

Making adaptive rigour work - Principles and practices for strenghening monitoring, evaluation and learning for adaptive management - Ramalingam, Ben; Wild, Leni; Buffardi, Anne L (ODI/GLAM, 2019)
Adaptive programmes can be accountable, rigorous and high quality in how they use evidence by taking an ’adaptive rigour’ approach. Core development and humanitarian challenges are complex, and require processes of testing, learning and iteration to find solutions – adaptive management offers one approach for this. Yet large bureaucracies and development organisations can have low tolerance for experimentation and learning, and adaptive management can be viewed as an excuse for ‘making things up as you go along’. This briefing from the Global Learning for Adaptive Management (GLAM) initiative argues that adaptive programmes can be accountable, rigorous and high quality in how they use evidence – but this requires rethinking some key assumptions about how they are practised. The paper sets out three key elements of an ‘adaptive rigour’ approach: - Strengthening the quality of monitoring, evaluation and learning data and systems. - Ensuring appropriate investment in monitoring, evaluation and learning across the programme cycle. - Strengthening capacities and incentives to ensure the effective use of evidence and learning as part of decision-making, leading ultimately to improved effectiveness.

M&E Universe - intrac (INTRAC, 2019)
The M&E Universe is a free, online resource developed by INTRAC to support development practitioners involved in monitoring and evaluation (M&E). It consists of a series of short papers (2-6 pages) on different subjects related to M&E. It can be explored through an online platform (intrac.org/universe) that is compatible with most web browsers. The M&E Universe is designed for M&E practitioners with different levels of experience and expertise in M&E, from those new to M&E who want an entry level into the subject to experienced practitioners wanting to broaden their knowledge. Initial contact with the Map will provide people with a starting point for understanding different aspects of M&E and how they link to each other. More experienced practitioners can browse the Map to identify more advanced subjects of interest, such as sampling methods, different forms of evaluation, organisational M&E systems and complex methodologies for data collection and analysis.

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.

Localizing Development : Does Participation Work? - Mansuri, Ghazala; Rao, Vijayendra (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013)
The Policy Research Report Localizing Development: Does Participation Work? brings analytical rigor to a field that has been the subject of intense debate and advocacy, and billions of dollars in development aid. It briefly reviews the history of participatory development and argues that its two modalities, community-based development and local decentralization, should be treated under the broader unifying umbrella of local development. It suggests that a distinction between organic participation (endogenous efforts by civic activists to bring about change) and induced participation (large-scale efforts to engineer participation at the local level via projects) is key, and focuses on the challenges of inducing participation. The report provides a conceptual framework for thinking about participatory development and then uses this framework to conduct a comprehensive review of the literature. The framework develops the concept of “civil society failure” and explains its interaction with government and market failures. It argues that participatory development, which is often viewed as a mechanism for bypassing market and government failures by ”harnessing” civic capacity, ought to be seen instead as a mechanism that, if done right, could help to repair important civil society failures. It distills literature from anthropology, economics, sociology, and political science to outline the challenges for effective policy in this area, looking at issues such as the uncertainty of trajectories of change, the importance of context, the role of elite capture and control, the challenge of collective action, and the role of the state. The review of the evidence looks at a variety of issues: the impact of participatory projects on inclusion, civic capacity, and social cohesion; on key development outcomes, such as income, poverty, and inequality; on public service delivery; and on the quality of local public goods. It draws on the evidence to suggest several recommendations for policy, emphasizing the key role of learning-by-doing. It then reviews participatory projects funded by the World Bank and finds the majority lacking in several arenas – particularly in paying attention to context and in creating effective monitoring and evaluation systems that allow for learning.

Local Works Guidance - Round 4 - USAID (USAID, 2019)

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

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

Local Empowerment Through Rapid Results - Matta, Nadim; Morgan, Peter (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2011)
Why local ownership and commitment are the exception in most development efforts—and what development professionals can do about this problem.

Livelihoods in the Za'atari Camp: Impact evaluation of Oxfam’s Cash for Work activities in the Za’atari camp (Jordan) - Lombardini, Simone; Mager, Franziska (http://hdl.handle.net/10546/620883, 2019)

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

Life and death in the App Store - Newton, Casey (The Verge, 2016)
As last year began, the app developer Pixite held its company retreat at a converted Old West movie set outside of Palm Springs. They spent a few days dreaming about the future while eating...

Lessons Learned from the Forest, Climate and Communities Alliance - Boshoven, Judy (Measuring Impact, 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.

Lessons from a trial of the Success Case Method - McGuinness, Liz (Better Evaluation, 2017)
The Success Case Method approach is useful for documenting stories of impact and for understanding the factors that help or hinder impact. It is particularly useful for uncovering the contextual forces that influence impact. Originally designed for evaluating corporate training programs, the Success Case Method is now being applied to other programs including international development interventions. Last year, I provided technical assistance to a pilot of the Success Case Method as part of the USAID-funded Complexity-Aware M&E Trials.

Lessons for Effective resilience programs: a case study of the RAIN program in Ethiopia - Kleiman, Shanti (Mercy Corps, 2013)
The RAIN program experience affirms the importance of multi-year and flexible funding as key program design features if progress in resilience building is to be supported in areas with high levels of structural and temporal vulnerability. These features enable management to respond effectively to changing circumstances in order to better meet the needs of communities and to create the necessary conditions for relief-to-development strategies to take hold. Finally, this study found that deliberate and effective coordination between donor agencies can ensure that development gains achieved during one program period are directly leveraged by subsequent programs, thereby increasing the effectiveness of resilience programs.

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

Leaving No One Behind in a Digital World - Hernandez, Kevin; Roberts, Tony (K4D Emerging Issues Report, 2018)

Leather sector reform in Bangladesh - Harris, Dan (Working Politically in Practice, 2016)
This paper examines the Asia Foundation’s efforts to support change in Bangladesh’s leather sector. Working closely with local partners, the Asia Foundation team has specifically supported efforts to move tanneries out of a dangerously polluted location to a modern industrial park that will improve compliance with health and environmental protection standards, and potentially lead to growth in the sector. At the time of release, this critical relocation has already begun. This case study lays out the real-time decisions and processes which drove the strategy and implementation of this project, providing useful insights into how politically astute and flexible programs can be successfully implemented. This case has emerged from an action research process, which was led by a researcher from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and conducted over the course of almost two years. By capturing and analyzing the experiences of the program team in Bangladesh, the paper intends to provide practical insights for others in the development community aiming to implement similar kinds of programming. This is the seventh paper in the DFAT-TAF Partnership Working Politically in Practice Paper Series released under the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and The Asia Foundation (TAF) Partnership.

Learning to Target for Economic Diversification: PDIA in Sri Lanka - Andrews, Matt; Ariyasinghe, Duminda; Batuwanthudawa, Thamari; Darmasiri, Shivanthika; Silva, Nilupul; Harrington, Peter; Jayasinghe, Prasanna; Jayasinghe, Upul; Jayathilake, Gamini; Karunaratne, Jayani; Katugampala, Lalit; Liyanapathirane, Jeewani; et al. (CID Faculty Working Paper 332, 2017)

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

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

Learning to make a difference: Christian Aid Ireland’s adaptive programme management in governance, gender, peace building and human rights - Booth, David; Balfe, Karol; Gallagher, Róisín; Kilcullen, Gráinne; O'Boyle, Sarah; Tiernan, Alix (ODI, 2018)
This paper assesses the relevance of adaptive or trial-and-error approaches to the field of governance, peace building and human rights. Tackling the problems of poverty, vulnerability and exclusion that persist in parts of the world that continue to be affected by violence or political insecurity is difficult for several reasons. For one, because of the complexity of the prevailing social, economic and political systems, solutions to chronic problems are far from obvious. One response to this aspect of the challenge is adaptive programme design and management. This paper is the product of a multi-year collaboration between ODI and the core team of Christian Aid Ireland to assess the relevance of adaptive or trial-and-error approaches to the field of governance, peace building and human rights. It explains the basis on which Christian Aid Ireland’s current five-year programme has become committed to an adaptive approach. It then describes and seeks to draw lessons from the programme’s first year of experience, considering the possible implications for implementation over the coming years. The authors find that to get full benefits from the move to adaptive management, the new ways of working and their underlying principles will need to become more embedded in organisational practices and cultures.

Learning to ADAPT: monitoring and evaluation approaches in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction – challenges, gaps and ways forward - Silva Villanueva, Paula (SRC Discussion Paper, 2011)
This working paper is a methodological contribution to the emerging debate on monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in the context of climate change adaptationand disaster risk reduction. Effectively managing disaster risk is critical for adapting to the impacts of climate change, however disasters risk reduction M&E practice may be limited in capturing progress towards adaptation. The unique nature of adaptation to climate change calls for experience-based learning M&E processes for discovering the key insights into adaptive capacity and its links to adaptation processes, and to risk and vulnerability reduction at large. The ADAPT guiding principles and indicators set the foundations towards this end.

Learning to Adapt: Exploring Knowledge, Information and Data for Adaptive Programmes and Policies - Workshop Summary Report - fhi360 (IDS, 2015)
Adaptive management is increasingly seen as critical capability for development programmes and policies that are more effective, efficient, relevant and sustainable. There is increasing recognition that such work requires significant changes to the organizational structures, management processes, accountability and performance cultures and indivi

Learning to Adapt: Building Adaptive Management as a Core Competency in Development Practice - Ramalingam, Ben (Institute of Development Studies, 2016)
Key messages 1. Development policies and programs increasingly operate in situations of high complexity and uncertainty. 2. There are growing efforts across the sector to design, plan and implement more adaptive responses that are more relevant and appropriate in such contexts 3. At the heart of effective adaptive programming is the capability to gather, interpret and use knowledge, information and data in real-time 4. Strengthening this capability requires a positive enabling environment—including tools and methods, structures and processes, leadership and management and culture and mindsets. 5. For adaptive development to succeed, there needs to be greater attention and investment in both knowledge, information and data systems and in appropriate enabling environments
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Learning study on 'the users' in Technology for Transparency and Accountability initiatives: Assumptions and realities - McGee, Rosemary; Carlitz, Ruth (IDS, 2013)

Learning, monitoring and evaluating: achieving and measuring change in adaptive programmes - Callaghan, Sarah; Plank, Georgia (Synthesis Paper, 5, 2017)

Learning Lab - Collaborate, Learn and Adapt for better development outcomes - Learning Lab (USAID, 2013)
CLA is: a component of several missions' CDCSes. a conceptual framework for some principles and operational processes that can enable USAID to become a more effective learning organization and thereby a more effective development organization. an approach to facilitating local participation and capacity and promoting country-led development. For more information on CLA visit:

‘Learning journeys’ for adaptive management – Where does it take us? - Ørnemark, Charlotte (GPSA Note 12, 2016)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Learning how to learn: eight lessons for impact evaluations that make a difference - Ramalingam, Ben (ODI, 2011)
This Background Note outlines key lessons on impact evaluations, utilisation-focused evaluations and evidence-based policy. While methodological pluralism is the key to effective impact evaluation in development, the focus here is on the factors that need to be considered for impact evaluations to be used in policy and practice – regardless of the method employed.

Learning how to go local: Lessons from six learning journeys for the Open Government Partnership - Moses, Michael; Soal, Sue (2017)
This brief reviews the evidence from Learning to Make All Voices Count (L-MAVC), a programme funded by Making All Voices Count, and implemented in collaboration with Global Integrity. L-MAVC intended to support six Making All Voices Count grantees, working in five countries, in co-creating and applying a participatory, learning-centred, and adaptive approach to strengthening citizen engagement in governance processes in their contexts, including with respect to the Open Government Partnership (OGP). The evidence from L-MAVC suggests that supporting citizen engagement with, and use of, OGP, and improving the extent to which OGP commitments are shaped by and matter to citizens in subnational districts, is not straightforward. Findings suggest that efforts to broaden and deepen citizen engagement with OGP, including at subnational levels, may be more effective when combined with support that helps local OGP champions iteratively learn and adapt, and discover and apply localisation models that fit best in their contexts. OGP and its partners may strengthen the impact of the initiative, and indeed, the impact of those working to leverage OGP at and below country level, by making structured learning support more available to local reformers. Targeted advocacy, focused on institutionalising collaborative OGP processes, and on linking subnational action with National Action Plans (NAPs), may also be useful.

Learning from Results-Based Management evaluations and reviews - Vähämäki, Janet; Verger, Chantal (Development Co-operation Working Papers, 2019)
What have we learned from implementing results-based management in development co-operation organisations? What progress and benefits can be seen? What are the main challenges and unintended consequences? Are there good practices to address these challenges? To respond to these questions this paper reviews and analyses the findings from various evaluations and reviews of results-based management systems conducted by members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the OECD/DAC Results Community Secretariat and other bodies in the past four years (2015-2018). It also draws on emerging lessons from new methods for managing development co-operation results. This analytical work aims to: identify recent trends in results-based management, explore challenges faced by providers when developing their results approaches and systems, select good practices in responding to these challenges that can be useful for the OECD/DACResults Community, considering new approaches, new technologies and evolving contexts. This body of evidence will inform the development of a core set of generic guiding principles for results-based management in development co-operation.

Learning from adaptive programmes - 10 lessons and 10 case studies - Valters, Craig (Overseas Development Institute, 2018)
Internal DFID document from the DevAdapt Programme. Based on another previous document (also internal).

Learning for social-ecological change: a qualitative review of outcomes across empirical literature in natural resource management - Suškevičs, Monika; Hahn, Thomas; Rodela, Romina; Macura, Biljana; Pahl-Wostl, Claudia (Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 2018)

Learning for change in accountable governance programming - Brock, Karen; Shutt, Cathy; Ashlin, Alison (MAVC Learning Review, 2016)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Learning Evaluation Theory: Brinkerhoff’s Success Case Method - Downes, Andrew (Watershed, 2016)
Brinkerhoff’s model isn’t restricted to learning. It can be used to analyze any major business change, such as the purchase of new equipment or implementation of a new process. It’s based on the assumption that any initiative, no matter how successful or unsuccessful, will always include some success and some failure. It seeks to uncover the most impactful successes and failures of an initiative and then tell the stories behind them, backed by evidence. Your organization can use these stories to learn how to be more successful in the future.

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

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. .

Learning and adaptation: 6 pitfalls to avoid - Valters, Craig (Devex, 2016)

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.

Learning about Theories of Change for the Monitoring and Evaluation of Research Uptake - Barnett, Chris; Gregorowski, Robbie (IDS Practice Paper In Brief, 2013)
This paper captures lessons from recent experiences on using ‘theories of change’ amongst organisations involved in the research–policy interface. The literature in this area highlights much of the complexity inherent in the policymaking process, as well as the challenges around finding meaningful ways to measure research uptake. As a tool, ‘theories of change’ offers much, but the paper argues that the very complexity and dynamism of the research-to-policy process means that any theory of change will be inadequate in this context. Therefore, rather than overcomplicating a static depiction of change at the start (to be evaluated at the end), incentives need to be in place to regularly collect evidence around the theory, test it periodically, and then reflect and reconsider its relevance and assumptions.

Learning about New Technologies and the Changing Evidence Base for Social Science Research and Decision Making in International Development - Berdou, Evangelia (IDS Practice Paper in Brief, 2011)

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

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

Lean from the Trenches: Managing Large-Scale Projects with Kanban - Kniberg, Henrik (Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2011)
You know the Agile and Lean development buzzwords, you've read the books. But when systems need a serious overhaul, you need to see how it works in real life, with real situations and people. Lean from the Trenches is all about actual practice. Every key point is illustrated with a photo or diagram, and anecdotes bring you inside the project as you discover why and how one organization modernized its workplace in record time.Lean from the Trenches is all about actual practice.Find out how the Swedish police combined XP, Scrum, and Kanban in a 60-person project. From start to finish, you'll see how to deliver a successful product using Lean principles. We start with an organization in desperate need of a new way of doing things and finish with a group of sixty, all working in sync to develop a scalable, complex system. You'll walk through the project step by step, from customer engagement, to the daily "cocktail party," version control, bug tracking, and release. In this honest look at what works--and what doesn't--you'll find out how to:Make quality everyone's business, not just the testers.Keep everyone moving in the same direction without micromanagement.Use simple and powerful metrics to aid in planning and process improvement.Balance between low-level feature focus and high-level system focus.You'll be ready to jump into the trenches and streamline your own development process.

Lean Data Approaches to Measure Social Impact - ACUMEN (NovoEd, 2018)

Leading in a VUCA Environment: V Is for Volatility - Kail, Col Eric G. (Harvard Business Review, 2010)
This post is part of an HBR Spotlight examining leadership lessons from the military This is the first in a series on the four aspects of VUCA, a framework used by the U.S. military to describe the environment in terms of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Do challenges and opportunities that once took days or […]
Keywords: Leadership

Leading in a VUCA Environment: U is for Uncertainty - Kail, Col Eric G. (Harvard Business Review, 2010)
This post is part of an HBR Spotlight examining leadership lessons from the military. It’s the second in a series on the four aspects of VUCA, a framework used by the U.S. military to describe the environment in terms of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. The frenetic pace of our environment, brought on by volatility, […]
Keywords: Leadership

Leading Effectively in a VUCA Environment: C is for Complexity - Kail, Col Eric G. (Harvard Business Review, 2010)
This is the third in a series on the four aspects of VUCA, a framework used by the U.S. military to describe the environment in terms of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Our complex environment demands a perspective that goes beyond viewing threats and opportunities as collective; we must see them as interactive. Leading through […]
Keywords: Leadership; Leadership development

Leading Effectively in a VUCA Environment: A is for Ambiguity - Kail, Col Eric G. (Harvard Business Review, 2011)
This is the last in a series on the four aspects of VUCA, a framework used by the U.S. military to describe the environment in terms of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Diversity and global reach introduce ambiguity to the environment; therefore opportunities and challenges must be appreciated from multiple aspects, not just our own […]
Keywords: Leadership; Leading teams

Leading Change Through Adaptive Design - Berstein, Maya; Linsky, Marty (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2016)
By integrating two practices—design thinking and adaptive leadership—social innovators can manage projects in a way that’s both creatively confident and relentlessly realistic.

Large-Scale Transdisciplinary Collaboration for Adaptation Research: Challenges and Insights - Cundill, Georgina; Harvey, Blane; Tebboth, Mark; Cochrane, Logan; Currie‐Alder, Bruce; Vincent, Katharine; Lawn, Jon; Nicholls, Robert J.; Scodanibbio, Lucia; Prakash, Anjal; New, Mark; Wester, Philippus; et al. (Global Challenges, 2019)
An increasing number of research programs seek to support adaptation to climate change through the engagement of large-scale transdisciplinary networks that span countries and continents. While transdisciplinary research processes have been a topic of reflection, practice, and refinement for some time, these trends now mean that the global change research community needs to reflect and learn how to pursue collaborative research on a large scale. This paper shares insights from a seven-year climate change adaptation research program that supports collaboration between more than 450 researchers and practitioners across four consortia and 17 countries. The experience confirms the importance of attention to careful design for transdisciplinary collaboration, but also highlights that this alone is not enough. The success of well-designed transdisciplinary research processes is also strongly influenced by relational and systemic features of collaborative relationships. Relational features include interpersonal trust, mutual respect, and leadership styles, while systemic features include legal partnership agreements, power asymmetries between partners, and institutional values and cultures. In the new arena of large-scale collaborative science efforts, enablers of transdisciplinary collaboration include dedicated project coordinators, leaders at multiple levels, and the availability of small amounts of flexible funds to enable nimble responses to opportunities and unexpected collaborations.
Keywords: Climate change; collaboration; transdisciplinarity

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

LAC MEL Specialists Use Peer Network to Improve Quality and Use of Evidence - Anderson, Todd M; Prevatt, Amy (CLA Case Competition, 2019)
Based on consultations and stocktakings with LAC Missions, the LAC Bureau identified Mission Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Specialists as influential decision makers regarding data and evidence use. The LAC Bureau aims to improve the quality and use of evidence for decision making, and ultimately to improve development outcomes.

Knowledge Retention and Transfer (KRT) - Model and Matsurity Matrix - USAID (CLA Toolkit, 2019)
The Maturity Matrix is not a standalone tool. It is one of the three major components of the KRT Model. The Maturity Matrix is meant to be used in conjunction with the KRT Toolkit and Implementation Plan.

Knowledge Management strategies and processes in Agile Software Development: a systematic literature review - Ouriques, Raquel Andrade Barros; Wnuk, Krzysztof; Gorschek, Tony; Svensson, Richard Berntsson (CoRR, 2018)
Knowledge-intensive companies that adopt Agile Software Development (ASD) relay on efficient implementation of Knowledge Management (KM) strategies to promotes different Knowledge Processes (KPs) to gain competitive advantage. This study aims to

Knowing When to Adapt - A Decision Tree - USAID (USAID LEARN, 2019)
This job aid will help you determine how best to resolve a challenge/issue in programming. It is intended for use by USAID, partners, and others working in international development.

Kenya’s tech community will not save journalism - Benequista, Nicholas (Briefing Note, 1, 2014)

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

Joint Programming in Conflict-Affected and Fragile States - Koenig, Sibylle; Brusset, Emery (Joint Programming - EU, 2019)
On the Joint Programming Practices from the EU in fragile settings

Iterative Design and Monitoring for Adaptive Management: How Causal Link Monitoring can help - Britt, Heather; Hummelbrunner, Richard; Green, Jackie (Better Evaluation, 2018)
Development actors are embracing the concept and practice of adaptive management, using evidence to inform ongoing revisions throughout implementation. In this guest blog, Heather Britt, Richard Hummelbrunner and Jackie Greene discuss a practical approach that donors and partners can use to agree on what’s most important to monitor as a project continues to evolve.

It's the politics! Can donors rise to the challenge? - Unsworth, Sue (A Governance Practitioner’s Notebook: Alternative Ideas and Approaches, 2015)
The Governance Practitioner’s Notebook takes an unusual approach for the OECD-DAC Network on Governance (GovNet). It brings together a collection of specially written notes aimed at those who work as governance practitioners within development agencies. It does so, however, without attempting to offer definitive guidance – instead aiming to stimulate thinking and debate. To aid this process the book is centred on a fictional Governance Adviser. The Notebook’s format provides space for experts to speak on today’s governance issues: politics, public sector reform and stakeholder engagement. It encourages debate, charts the evolution of donor thinking, and highlights future challenges in the age of the Sustainable Development Goals. Each section introduces both technical issues and major areas of debate, providing ideas for future development support to institutional reform.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

It's All About MeE: Using Structured Experiential Learning (“e”) to Crawl the Design Space - Pritchett, Lant; Samji, Salimah; Hammer, Jeffrey (Working Paper 322, 2013)
This paper argues that within-project variations in design can serve as their own counterfactual, reducing the incremental cost of evaluation and increasing the direct usefulness of evaluation to implementing agencies. It suggests combining monitoring (‘M’), structured experiential learning (‘e’), and evaluation (‘E’) so as to facilitate innovation and organisational capability building while also providing accountability …

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

Is (Web) Science Ready for Empowerment? - Akkermans, Hans; Gyan, Nana Baah; Bon, Anna; Tuyp, Wendelien; Grewal, Aman; Boyera, Stéphane; Allen, Mary (ACM WebSci'11, 2011)

Is there a new Washington Consensus? An analysis of five World Development Reports - Evans, Alice (From Poverty to Power, 2017)
Is there a new Washington Consensus? Alice Evans analyses the last five World Development Reports and finds significant changes in orthodoxy, but also big gaps

Is It Time for a New Paradigm for "Citizen Engagement"? The Role of Context and What the Evidence Tells Us - O'Meally, Simon (People, Spaces, Deliberation, 2013)
The meteoric rise of "citizen engagement" Almost all development agencies promote some form of citizen engagement and accountability, often framed as 'voice', 'demand-side governance', 'demand for good governance' or 'social accountability'. The current World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, recently put it that, "citizen voice can be pivotal in providing the demand-side pressure on government, service providers, and organizations such as the World Bank that is needed to encourage full and swift response to citizen needs". There has, in turn, been a mushrooming of useful operational guidance on different "tools" for social accountability - i.e. steps, inputs and methodologies - that guide discrete interventions, ranging from citizen score cards to participatory expenditure tracking. One might, however, be forgiven for thinking that some of the debates on citizen engagement need an injection of realism; especially as contextual factors can make or break a "tool's" implementation. A review of experience to date would be one good place to start.

Is DFID Getting Real About Politics?A stocktake of how DFID has adopted a politically-informed approach (2010-2015) - Piron, Laure-Hélène; Baker, Aislin; Savage, Laura; Wiseman, Katie (DFID, 2016)
1. Background This internal stocktake assesses whether DFID is “getting real about politics” - how it is taking power and politics into account in all its operations. Country Poverty Reduction Diagnostics undertaken by DFID teams identify politics as the most frequent barrier to poverty reduction and growth. The UK 2015 Aid Strategy has committed DFID to spending 50% of Official Development Assistance (ODA) in fragile states. This requires a “patient, long-term approach” to addressing barriers to peace and stability which are fundamentally political, rather than purely financial or technical. The stocktake is based on three DFID offices case studies (Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan and Malawi) as well as extensive internal and external consultations between June and December 2015. It provides illustrations of how DFID is evolving but does not systematically offer evidence of development impacts or non-country work, as this would have required a different methodology. 2. What does it mean to take politics into account? Politically-informed approaches are based on a large body of evidence that confirms the importance of institutions and politics for sustainable development. External assistance needs to support locally-led change. Success depends on timing, context, political processes and local actors. Desirable outcomes are hard to achieve and difficult to predict. Politically-informed approaches improve development effectiveness through:  The ‘what’: political goals, using development assistance to shift how power is distributed in the economy and society. The two main elements are: aiming for long term transformation of institutions; and supporting locally-led change processes more likely to be sustainable and successful: locallyowned (i.e. with local salience) and locally-negotiated.  The ‘how’: politically-smart methods, with greater realism and feasibility. The three main elements are: understanding power and politics in a specific context in order to identify opportunities and barriers for change; influencing and stakeholder management skills; and proactive risk management. To influence DFID operations, a politically-informed approach needs to be iterative, not one-off. The explicit understanding of context, whether formal setpiece studies or more routine analysis, should inform policy and programme decisions, from high level strategic choices, to day-to-day implementation, for both international policy and country support. This is a dynamic process: as the context evolves and lessons are learned about what works, analyses and decisions are updated. These are the principles behind the ‘flexible and adaptive’ agenda.

Investment Climate Reform: Doing it Differently - Manuel, Clare (Synthesis Paper, 1, 2015)
LASER synthesis papers aim to help donors and other stakeholders better understand why and how to approach investment climate reform programming differently. The papers reflect emerging best practice and lessons learnt on what works and what does not work in doing development differently. The papers have been peer-reviewed by experts in the field including senior advisers at DFID, World Bank, IFC and the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (amongst others). First synthesis paper - Investment climate reform: doing it differently June 2015 Drawing on our experience in taking a problem-focused approach to investment climate reform, we discuss in this peer-reviewed paper emerging lessons and reflections on what works, both in recent literature and in practical experience.

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

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.

Introduction to International Futures - International Futures at the Pardee Center (International Futures Help System, 2016)
INTERNATIONAL FUTURES HELP SYSTEM Introduction to IFs Purposes Visual Representation of IFs Issues and Modules Quick Survey of IFs Issues and Modules IFs Background IFs Geographic Representation of the World IFs Time Horizon Instructional Use Acknowledgements Feedback Support for IFs Use Development Mode Features

Introduction: Opening Governance – Change, Continuity and Conceptual Ambiguity - McGee, Rosie; Edwards, Duncan (IDS Bulletin, 2016)

Introduction: Making change happen–citizen action and national policy reform - Gaventa, John; McGee, Rosemary (Citizen Action and National Policy Reform. London: Zed Books, 2010)

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

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

Interview protocol: Most significant turning points - Prieto Martin, Pedro; Faith, Becky (Institute of Development Studies, 2017)
This interview protocol was used for a research project on adaptiveness in technology for governance initiatives in Kenya. For more information, please read the research report at: Prieto Martin, P.; Hernandez, K.; Faith, B. and Ramalingam, B. (2017) Doing Digital Development Differently: Lessons in adaptive management from technology for governance initiatives in Kenya, MAVC Research Report, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, ids.ac.uk/project/making-all-voices-count
Keywords: IMPORTANT

International Development - Illusions and Realities - Black, Maggie (New Internationalist, 2015)
Part of the popular, reissued NoNonsense series from New Internationalist'Development' is often misunderstood and can embrace everything from building a large dam to planting trees. The idea can often mask confusion, contradiction, deceit and corruption. This book is essential reading for anyone wanting to know what development actually is. It covers all the key themes and critically suggests ways to bring the poor and marginalised into the process.

Integrating Top-Down and Bottom-Up Adaptation Planning to Build Adaptive Capacity: A Structured Learning Approach - Butler, J. R. A.; Wise, R. M.; Skewes, T. D.; Bohensky, E. L.; Peterson, N.; Suadnya, W.; Yanuartati, Y.; Handayani, T.; Habibi, P.; Puspadi, K.; Bou, N.; Vaghelo, D.; et al. (Coastal Management, 2015)
Climate adaptation planning provides an opportunity to enhance the adaptive capacity of stakeholders across multiple levels. However, reviews of standard top-down and bottom-up approaches indicate that the value of multistakeholder involvement is not fully recognized or incorporated into guidelines. Focusing on provinces in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea within the Coral Triangle region, we present a novel integrated top-down and bottom-up planning approach. Based on Participatory Systemic Inquiry the process involves three stages of workshops intentionally designed to promote social learning, knowledge exchange, empowerment and social networks among multilevel stakeholders. Stage 1 workshops engage government, nongovernment and science stakeholders at the provincial level to analyze sub-districts' vulnerability and design appropriate adaptation strategies. Stage 2 engages local government, non-government and community stakeholders within vulnerable sub-districts identified in Stage 1. Stage 3 combines Stage 1 and 2 stakeholders to refine adaptation strategies and design action plans for sub-districts. Evaluation demonstrated that different stakeholder groups' perceptions of community adaptation needs varied significantly, justifying the approach. In terms of adaptive capacity, the primary outcome for all stakeholder groups was innovative ideas, suggesting that social learning and knowledge exchange had occurred. Empowerment was a secondary outcome. We discuss how the approach could be further refined.
Keywords: Climate change; Coral Triangle; Evaluation; Social learning; knowledge cultures

Integrating modelling and smart sensors for environmental and human health - Reis, Stefan; Seto, Edmund; Northcross, Amanda; Quinn, Nigel W. T.; Convertino, Matteo; Jones, Rod L.; Maier, Holger R.; Schlink, Uwe; Steinle, Susanne; Vieno, Massimo; Wimberly, Michael C. (Environmental Modelling & Software, 2015)
Sensors are becoming ubiquitous in everyday life, generating data at an unprecedented rate and scale. However, models that assess impacts of human activities on environmental and human health, have typically been developed in contexts where data scarcity is the norm. Models are essential tools to understand processes, identify relationships, associations and causality, formalize stakeholder mental models, and to quantify the effects of prevention and interventions. They can help to explain data, as well as inform the deployment and location of sensors by identifying hotspots and areas of interest where data collection may achieve the best results. We identify a paradigm shift in how the integration of models and sensors can contribute to harnessing ‘Big Data’ and, more importantly, make the vital step from ‘Big Data’ to ‘Big Information’. In this paper, we illustrate current developments and identify key research needs using human and environmental health challenges as an example.
Keywords: Big data; Environmental health; Environmental sensors; Integrated modelling; Population health

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

Integrating Food Security and Wild Caught Fisheries Management in USAID Programming. Illustrative situation Model and Results Chain - Swaminathan, Vinaya; Best, Barbara; Ajroud, Brittany (Measuring Impact, 2018)
Integrating Food Security and Wild Caught Fisheries Management in USAID Programming is an illustrative case example that demonstrates how two adaptive management programming tools—situation models and results chains—can help USAID staff and its partners to better design and implement activities that integrate food security, nutrition, and sustainable management of wild fisheries.

Integrating farmers’ adaptive knowledge into flood management and adaptation policies in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta: A social learning perspective - Tran, Thong Anh; Rodela, Romina (Global Environmental Change, 2019)
Flood management and adaptation are important elements in sustaining farming production in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD). While over the past decades hydraulic development introduced by the central government has substantially benefited the rural economy, it has simultaneously caused multiple barriers to rural adaptation. We investigate the relational practices (i.e., learning interactions) taking place within and across the flood management and adaptation boundaries from the perspective of social learning. We explore whether and how adaptive knowledge (i.e., experimental and experiential knowledge) derived from farmers’ everyday adaptation practices contributes to local flood management and adaptation policies in the selected areas. We collected data through nine focus groups with farmers and thirty-three interviews with government officials, environmental scientists, and farmers. Qualitative analysis suggests that such processes are largely shaped by the institutional context where the boundary is embedded. This study found that while the highly bureaucratic operation of flood management creates constraints for feedback, the more informal arrangements set in place at the local level provide flexible platforms conducive to open communication, collaborative learning, and exchange of knowledge among the different actors. This study highlights the pivotal role of shadow systems that provide space for establishing and maintaining informal interactions and relationships between social actors (e.g., interactions between farmers and extension officials) in stimulating and influencing, from the bottom-up, the emergence of adaptive knowledge about flood management and adaptation in a local context.
Keywords: Adaptation; Flood management; Knowledge brokers; Mekong Delta; Shadow systems; Social learning; Vietnamese

Integrating Big Data and Thick Data to Transform Public Services Delivery - Ang, Yuen Yuen (IBM Center for The Business of Government, 2019)
This report explains how public organizations can combine big data and thick data to transform public services delivery—a strategy called mixed analytics. Governments can greatly enhance the value of big data by combining it with “thick” data—rich qualitative information about users, such as their values, goals, and consumption behavior, obtained by observing or interacting with them in their daily lives. Big data holds great promise for improving public services delivery and innovation in government, but they are not a panacea . Having lots of data can be overwhelming or have little utility if the data are “thin”—that is, they lack meaning for users or fail to capture issues that matter most . By yielding insights into what citizens really care about and how they consume services, thick data can inform both the collection and analysis of big data. This report introduces the concept of “mixed analytics,” integrating big data and thick data to transform government decision making, public services delivery, and communication. The report presents three case studies of organizations that employ mixed analytics at the international, federal, and city level, respectively. Together, this research offers a set of transferable lessons for agencies at all levels of government: Lesson 1: Big data is a means to an end, rather than an end. Lesson 2: Thick data can identify unexpected problems or previously unexpressed needs. Lesson 3: Thick data can inform the analysis of big data. Lesson 4: Mixed analytics can offer both scale and depth. Lesson 5: Applying technology is a social activity, not an isolated technical task. Lesson 6: The best solutions are not always high-tech. The report concludes with five actionable recommendations for public managers. Make data and technology relevant to the people who use it. Leverage thick data at appropriate stages of the problem-solving process. Build an interdisciplinary team of quantitative and qualitative experts who work closely with stakeholders. Combine big and thick data to improve communication Improve government agencies’ knowledge of mixed research methods. This report builds on multiple past IBM Center reports about how government can leverage data and analytics to improve decisions, including Data-Driven Government: The Role of Chief Data Officers, by Jane Wiseman; Ten Actions to Implement Big Data Initiatives: A Study of 65 Cities, by Alfred Ho and Bo McCall, and Realizing The Promise of Big Data, by Kevin DeSouza. The report also complements several chapters that assess the past and potential use of data across the public sector in our recent book, Government For The Future: Reflection and Vision For Tomorrow’s Leaders. At a time when the US and other governments continue to enhance their use of data as a strategic asset for transformation, we hope that Professor Ang’s report provides useful insights for government managers and stakeholders.

Institutional Change, Political Economy, and State Capabilities : Learning from Edo State, Nigeria - Bain, Katherine; Porter, Doug; Watts, Michael (Justice, security, and development series, 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.

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

Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto - STEPS Centre (STEPS Centre, 2010)
Our Manifesto project publication is available in print, on CD or to view online. Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto recommends new ways of linking science and innovation to development for a more sustainable, equitable and resilient future. The multimedia version, with added audio, video and background documents, is available on CD and online.

Innovation lifecycle and the missing middle - Gray, Ian; McClure, Dan (Managing Humanitarian Innovation - The cutting edge of aid, 2018)

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

Innovation for International Development: Navigating the Paths and Pitfalls - Ramalingam, Ben; Bound, Kirsten (NESTA, 2016)
Experiences, insights and practical advice from over 20 leading practitioners in innovation for international development, brought together in one collection.

Innovation at UNDP: from weekend sport to daily practice - Quaggiotto, Giulio; Begovic, Mellie (Nesta, 2016)
The experience of working to embed innovation approaches in everyday practice at UNDP's country offices
Keywords: IMPORTANT

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

Innovating for pro-poor services: why politics matter - Mason, Nathaniel; Doczi, Julian; Cummings, Clare (2016)
This report addresses how politics matter for innovations. How politically smart approaches can help deliver access to services.

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

Information Technology and Political Engagement: Mixed Evidence from Uganda - Grossman, Guy (2016)

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

Independent Review of Facilities: review and management response - DFAT (DFAT, 2018)

Independent Evaluation of SDC’s Results-Based Management System with a Focus on Poverty Reduction - Schmidt, Martin; Palenberg, Markus; Vähämäki, Janet (SDC, 2017)
The SDC's results-based management system ensures that the processes and instruments used for the design and implementation of programs and projects contribute to achieving the desired results (outputs, outcomes and impact). The independent evaluation examines the extent to which these processes and tools have fostered the results culture within the organization, and improved competencies for results-based management decisions, learning and communication. In addition to the findings, conclusions and recommendations, the evaluation report includes the management response of SDC’s Directorate.

Incubating policy for economic transformation: Lessons from Nepal - Booth, David (ODI, 2018)

Increasing Participation in Evaluation - Baker, A; Bruner, B (Effectiveness Initiatives, 2014)
The Increasing Participation in Evaluation bulletin was developed by Anita Baker with Beth Bruner to help organizations integrate evaluative thinking into their organizational practice. This three page bulletin discusses how Organization Staff, Evaluators, and Funders are typically involved in participatory evaluation. The guide also defines the term "Ripple", and how to accomplish Ripple as well as examining what it looks like when Executive Leaders and Management Staff use Evaluative Thinking. Contents How are Organization Staff, Evaluators, and Funders typically involved in Participatory Evaluation? Organization Managers/Staff Roles Evaluators/Roles Funder Roles Shared Roles What is Ripple Anyway? How do you accomplish Ripple? What does it look like when Executive Leaders and Management Staff Use Evaluative Thinking? How to use these Bulletins

Incorporating Geospatial Analysis into USAID Biodiversity Program Design - Higgins, Mark; Salafsky, Nick; Adeney, Marion; Petrova, Silvia (Measuring Impact, 2017)
Incorporating Geospatial Analysis into USAID Biodiversity Program Design is a biodiversity case example that describes the use of geospatial data and analysis for program design, including examples and lessons learned.

Inclusive Social Accountability - Counterpart International (Counterpart International, 2019)
Counterpart International’s Inclusive Social Accountability (ISA) developmental framework integrates elements of social inclusion and community accountability into one comprehensive approach.

Inclusive rigour for complexity - Chambers, Robert (Journal of Development Effectiveness, 2015)
Rigour can be reductionist or inclusive. To learn about and understand conditions of complexity, emergence, nonlinearity and unpredictability, the inclusive rigour of mixed methods has been a step in the right direction. From analysis of mixed methods and participatory approaches and methods, this article postulates canons for inclusive rigour for research and evaluation for complexity: eclectic methodological pluralism; improvisation and innovation; adaptive iteration; triangulation; plural perspectives; optimal ignorance and appropriate imprecision; and being open, alert and inquisitive. Inclusive rigour is inherent in participatory methods and approaches, visualisations, group-visual synergy, the democracy of the ground and participatory statistics. Transparent reflexivity, personal behaviour and attitudes, and good facilitation are fundamental. Fully inclusive rigour for complexity demands many personal, institutional and professional revolutions.
Keywords: Evaluation; Mixed methods; Participatory methodologies; Research; paradigm; rigour

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.

In the goldfish bowl: science and technology policy dialogues in a digital world - Latta, Susie; Mulcare, Charlotte; Zacharzewski, Anthony (Sciencewise, 2013)

In pursuit of the deep and sustained shifts necessary for adaptive management - Simister, Nigel (INTRAC, 2018)
The final blog in Nigel Simister's series on adaptive management and the M&E of complex projects and programmes.

Improving the Measurement of Civic Space - Malena, Carmen (Transparency & Accountability Initiative, 2015)
‘Civic space’ – i.e. the freedom and means to speak, access information, associate, organise, and participate in public decision-making – is essential to the healthy functioning and development of any society and a precondition for accountable governance and social justice. When civic space is restricted, human and civil rights are denied, government accountability is jeopardised, …

Improving the Evaluability of INGO Empowerment and Accountability Programmes - Shutt, Cathy; McGee, Rosemary (CDI Practice Paper 1, 2013)

Improving our legacy: Incorporation of adaptive management into state wildlife action plans - Fontaine, Joseph J. (Journal of Environmental Management, 2011)
The loss of biodiversity is a mounting concern, but despite numerous attempts there are few large scale conservation efforts that have proven successful in reversing current declines. Given the challenge of biodiversity conservation, there is a need to develop strategic conservation plans that address species declines even with the inherent uncertainty in managing multiple species in complex environments. In 2002, the State Wildlife Grant program was initiated to fulﬁll this need, and while not explicitly outlined by Congress follows the fundamental premise of adaptive management, ‘Learning by doing’. When action is necessary, but basic biological information and an understanding of appropriate management strategies are lacking, adaptive management enables managers to be proactive in spite of uncertainty. However, regardless of the strengths of adaptive management, the development of an effective adaptive management framework is challenging. In a review of 53 State Wildlife Action Plans, I found a keen awareness by planners that adaptive management was an effective method for addressing biodiversity conservation, but the development and incorporation of explicit adaptive management approaches within each plan remained elusive. Only w25% of the plans included a framework for how adaptive management would be implemented at the project level within their state. There was, however, considerable support across plans for further development and implementation of adaptive management. By furthering the incorporation of adaptive management principles in conservation plans and explicitly outlining the decision making process, states will be poised to meet the pending challenges to biodiversity conservation.

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

Importing Democracy: The Role of NGO's in South Africa, Tajikistan, & Argentina - Fisher, Julie (Kettering Foundation Press, 2013)
While street protesters demanding democratic reforms make headlines in the international news, Importing Democracy: The Role of NGOs in South Africa, Tajikistan, and Argentina, written by Julie Fisher and published by the Kettering Foundation Press, focuses on a quieter movement led by democratization NGOs. In South Africa, the Good Governance Learning Network shares participatory tools to make local governments more responsive. In Tajikistan, Jahan teaches local police about human rights. In Argentina, seven democratization NGOs sponsor public deliberations in local communities and have organized a nationwide citizens network to combat municipal government corruption. The book is organized around three chapters for each country, South Africa, Tajikistan, and Argentina. The first chapter of each country s section begins with the historical, political, and economic context and continues with a discussion of the general contours of civil society. The second chapter in each section deals with the role of democratization NGOs in promoting both loyal opposition and law-based civil liberties. The third chapter focuses on their role in promoting political culture and political participation. Loyal opposition and law-based civil liberties help define democratization at the national level, whereas changes in political culture and increased political participation often occur throughout society. Following the nine country chapters, the book concludes with a comparative overview and implications for international policy. Fisher, a former Kettering Foundation program officer, writes that the idea that democracy can be exported has lost credibility in recent years. In many countries, however, democratization NGOs are importing democratic ideas and recovering local democratic traditions.

Implementing the new development agenda - Wrap up - Teskey, Graham (DDD 4 Conference, 2017)

Implementing Innovation: A User's Manual for Open Government Programs - Reboot Design (2015)
This guide draws from our experience around the world helping government reformers achieve real change. It is a practical resource for anyone working to implement an open government initiative.

Implementing Adaptive Approaches in Real World Scenarios: A Nigeria Case Study, with Lessons for Theory and Practice - Bridges, Kate; Woolcock, Michael (The World Bank, 2019)
How does adaptive implementation work in practice? Drawing on extensive interviews and observations, this paper contrasts the ways in which an adaptive component of a major health care project was implemented in three program and three matched comparison states in Nigeria. The paper examines the bases on which claims and counterclaims about the effectiveness of these approaches were made by different actors, concluding that resolution requires any such claims to be grounded in a fit-for-purpose theory of change and evaluation strategy. The principles of adaptive development may be gaining broad acceptance, but a complex array of skills, expectations, political support, empirical measures, and administrative structures needs to be deftly integrated if demonstrably positive operational results are to be obtained, especially when undertaken within institutional systems, administrative logics, and political imperatives that are predisposed to serve rather different purposes.

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

Impact Evaluation: Taking stock and looking ahead - Conference report - Visser, Irene; Guijt, Irene; Kusters, Cecile (Centre for Development Innovation, 2013)
This report summarises the presentations and discussions of the Conference ‘Impact evaluation. Taking stock and looking ahead’, which took place in Wageningen on March 25 and 26, 2013. The Conference was organised and funded by the Centre for

Impact Evaluation of Development Interventions: A Practical Guide - White, Howard; Raitzer, David (Asian Development Bank, 2017)
This book offers guidance on the principles, methods, and practice of impact evaluation. It contains material for a range of audiences, from those who may use or manage impact evaluations to applied researchers.

Impact evaluation for portfolio programmes on policy influence: Reflections on the Indonesian Poverty Reduction Support Facility - Mackenzie, Jessica; Hearn, Simon (Methods Lab, 2016)
• Donors are increasingly using portfolio-based programmes that embrace ‘good failure’ and adaptive, political programming. • However, measuring the impact of these programmes is challenging, especially for those working on policy influence and building country systems; not only do you need to measure the positive and negative impact of the overall portfolio, but also the different pathways tested. • Programmes, therefore, need a light-touch monitoring and evaluation system that allows it to remain flexible. • Good practice examples of portfolio-based programmes present six strategies to evaluate impact: 1. Develop appropriate logic models 2. Collect observational data throughout implementation 3. Develop stories of change or case studies 4. Understand causal relationships without a counterfactual 5. Purposefully select which activities to study 6. Be explicit about how impact will be valued across the portfolio. • These strategies are only useful if monitoring and evaluation is placed at the centre of programme decision-making.

Impact assessment and the quest for the Holy Grail - Bymolt, Roger (KIT Working papers, 2015)

Illogical Framework: The Importance of Monitoring and Evaluation in International Development Studies - Pomerantz, Jessica R. (Cornell Policy Review, 2011)
In my brief experience with monitoring and evaluation, I have become convinced that it is critically important both as an international development project component and as a field of academic study. Throughout my academic career at Cornell University, I have, at times, argued that monitoring and evaluation has actually impeded development efforts, but here I wish to amend my opinion. Bad monitoring and evaluation can sabotage development projects and our meaningful interpretation of development impacts; failures can appear to be successes and vice-versa. As a student and practitioner of monitoring and evaluation, I have drawn the conclusions listed below and I submit them for your consideration. • Monitoring and evaluation is a key element of the international development industry applicable to many areas of public administration, domestic and international. • International development failures could be discovered and averted or corrected given proper monitoring and evaluation activities. • Anecdotal evidence from development activities in Afghanistan provides one example of the international community’s lack of attention to monitoring and evaluation concerning an ongoing development catastrophe. • Higher education ought to be filling the monitoring and evaluation knowledge gap but to date is failing to do so.

Illegal Wildlife Trade - Frameworks - Oxford Martin Programme on the Illegal Wildlife Trade (Oxford Martin Programme on the Illegal Wildlife Trade, 2018)
Our frameworks will enable a better understanding of wildlife product consumer preferences and motivations to effectively influence the system.

If politics is the problem, how can external actors be part of the solution? - Devarajan, Shantayanan; Khemani, Stuti (The World Bank, 2016)
Despite a large body of research and evidence on the policies and institutions needed to generate growth and reduce poverty, many governments fail to adopt these policies or establish the institutions. Research advances since the 1990s have explained this syndrome, which this paper generically calls
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Identifying general trends and patterns in complex systems research: An overview of theoretical and practical implications - Preiser, Rika (Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 2019)
Research on complex systems is becoming more prolific, and there is a need to provide some point of orientation to researchers and practitioners that are drawing on the body of literature that informs the field of complexity research. In this paper, I aim to give an overview of the development of the field and offer some overarching trends and patterns that are recognizable in research on complex systems. The paper then draws on the work to provide six organizing principles of complex systems to inform practical implications and methods for studying and understanding complex systems.
Keywords: complex systems; heuristics; trends and patterns

ICT4D Blog » A citizen participation ecosystem - Peña-López, Ismael (ICTlogy, 2019)
Research on the Information Society, the Digital Divide and Information and Communication Technologies for development

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

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

Humanitarian Innovation Guide - ELHRA (2018)
The Humanitarian Innovation Guide is a growing online resource to help individuals and organisations define humanitarian problems and successfully develop innovative solutions. ABOUT THE GUIDE The humanitarian sector is investing in exciting innovations, but it is not yet producing a steady pipeline of well-designed solutions that effectively address problems, evidence their impact, and have the potential to be scaled. As stated in a recent independent evaluation of the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (Triple Line, 2017), a review of the innovation ecosystem in 2015 found significant gaps in resources for innovation, including a shortage of guidance on the skills needed to manage successful innovation projects. These findings were echoed in the research carried out to inform this resource. As part of a grant agreement with the European Commission to provide financial and technical support to emerging humanitarian innovations, and in line with our strategic aim to develop the sector’s skills and capabilities in humanitarian innovation, this resource aims to translate our own learning, along with learning from across the sector, into a practical, grounded guide for innovators working in humanitarian contexts. Building on our unique position in the sector, the Humanitarian Innovation Guide is designed to provide targeted support to individuals and organisations attempting to develop innovative solutions to the challenges facing humanitarian assistance, resulting in a more effective humanitarian response. The Guide is written with two audiences in mind: humanitarian practitioners who are seeking to develop a new approach to their work and want to apply an innovation lens to solving problems; and social entrepreneurs from outside the sector who have identified an opportunity to engage with the sector and need a humanitarian framework to contextualise their innovation plans. We also hope that it will be a useful resource for innovation managers who are tasked with supporting innovation in their agencies, labs or networks. As the first step-by-step guide to managing innovation in the humanitarian sector, we hope that its continued development will better enable individuals, organisations and the wider sector to: Plan the activities involved in an innovation process and systematise the management of innovation. Manage a successful innovation project and generate evidence for innovation. Ensure that innovations are developed in an ethical way, with full consideration of risks and responsibilities.

Human-Centered, Systems-Minded Design - Both, Thomas (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2018)
Both human-centered and systems-thinking methods fit within an effective design approach, and can work in conjunction to address social challenges.

How We Model Matters: A Manifesto for the Next Generation of Program Theorizing - Whynot, Jane; Lemire, Sebastian; Montague, Steve (Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 2019)
In this concluding article, grounded on the exemplary contributions contained in the preceding pages, the guest editors scale the proverbial soapbox and present a manifesto to guide the pursuit and advancement of the next generation of program theorizing. Formulating ten declarations for program theory development and examination, the modest hope of the authors is to motivate and inspire reflective evaluation practitioners to broaden their views, approaches, and techniques for future program theorizing.

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

How to set up and manage an adaptive programme - Lessons from the Action on Climate Today (ACT) Programme - Cooke, Katherine (OPM, 2017)

How-To Note: Developing a Project Logic Model (and its Associated Theory of Change) - USAID (Program Cycle, 2017)
This How-To Note describes considerations for developing a project logic model, as well as steps for thinking through a more complete theory of change (TOC). A logic model is a graphic or visual depiction that summarizes key elements of a TOC, and it is often used as a facilitation tool during the design process. There are many types of logic models, including but not limited to logical frameworks (logframes), results chains, results frameworks, and local actor-oriented models, among others. The project logic model and its associated TOC are included in the Project Appraisal Document (PAD) that approves a project design (see ADS 201.3.3.13). While this How-To Note focuses on logic models at the project level, logic models are also used at the strategy level (specifically, results frameworks – see Box 1), and often at the activity level. The concepts and steps presented here are generally applicable to the process of developing logic models and TOCs throughout the Program Cycle.

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

How to manage complexity: four lessons for DFID’s new Secretary of State - LearnAdapt (Medium, 2019)
Lessons for DFID in addressing complex problems without creating complicated, workload heavy programmes.

How to Make ‘Cash Plus’ Work: Linking Cash Transfers to Services and Sectors - Roelen, Keetie; Devereux, Stephen; Abdulai, Abdul-Gafaru; Martorano, Bruno; Palermo, Tia; Ragno, Luigi Peter (UNICEF Office of Research, 2017)
The broad-ranging benefits of cash transfers are now widely recognized. However, the evidence base highlights that they often fall short in achieving longer-term and second-order impacts related to nutrition, learning outcomes and morbidity. In recognition of these limitations, several ‘cash plus’ initiatives have been introduced, whereby cash transfers are combined with one or more types of complementary support. This paper aims to identify key factors for successful implementation of these increasingly popular ‘cash plus’ programmes, based on (i) a review of the emerging evidence base of ‘cash plus’ interventions and (ii) an examination of three case studies, namely, Chile Solidario in Chile, IN-SCT in Ethiopia and LEAP in Ghana. The analysis was guided by a conceptual framework proposing a menu of ‘cash plus’ components. The assessment of three case studies indicated that effective implementation of ‘cash plus’ components has indeed contributed to greater impacts of the respective programmes. Such initiatives have thereby addressed some of the non-financial and structural barriers that poor people face and have reinforced the positive effects of cash transfer programmes. In design of such programmes, further attention should be paid to the constraints faced by the most vulnerable and how such constraints can be overcome. We conclude with recommendations regarding the provision of complementary support and cross-sectoral linkages based on lessons learned from the case studies. More research is still needed on the impact of the many variations of ‘cash plus’ programming, including evidence on the comparative roles of individual ‘plus’ components, as well as the knowledge, attitudes and behaviour pathways which influence these impacts.

How to design a monitoring and evaluation framework for a policy research project - Pasanen, Tiina; Shaxson, Louise (Methods Lab, 2016)
Policy research projects face a number of challenges: policy processes are complex, involve multiple actors and often feature a significant time-lag between research and what may or may not happen as a result of it. To complicate matters further, the scope and scale of policy research projects are increasingly moving away from single research studies towards multi-component, multi-site and multi-sector endeavours. These factors mean that developing an overarching monitoring and evaluation framework can be challenging. But it is not impossible. The guidance note aims to support the first steps in designing and structuring the M&E framework (that is, what aspects or areas of policy research projects to monitor and evaluate, why, when and how). It builds on an M&E framework for policy research projects developed and tested by the Research and Policy in Development (RAPID) programme of the Overseas Development Institute, and draws on case studies of how it has been used by RAPID and other research teams.

How to create an agile organization - survey - Salo, Olli; Ahlbäck, Karin; Fahrbach, Clemens; Murarka, Monica (McKinsey & Co., 2017)
Eighteen practices for organizational agility The survey asked respondents about a series of specific actions that underlie each of the 18 practices (9 of them stable, and 9 dynamic) of organizational agility; all of the practices are summarized in the table below. To rate respondents’ organizations, we asked how frequently their performance units engaged in each action that supports a given practice.

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

How should donors manage adaptively? Market Systems Development as a case study. - Itad (Itad, 2018)
Itad has recently completed a strategic evaluation for Sida to help them work through how they can best manage programmes that are adaptive and apply systems approaches - the conclusions from the evaluation about what funders need to do to manage adaptively are of broader relevance.

How INGOs are Doing Development Differently - Algoso, Dave (Care, IRC, Mercy Corps, Oxfam & World Vision, 2017)

How ICT4D Research Fails the Poor - Harris, Roger W. (Information Technology for Development, 2016)
Research can improve development policies and practices and funders increasingly require evidence of such socioeconomic impact from their investments. This article questions whether information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) research conforms to the requirements for achieving socioeconomic impact. We report on a literature review of the impact of research in international development and a survey of ICT4D researchers who assessed the extent to which they follow practices for achieving socioeconomic impact. The findings suggest that while ICT4D researchers are interested in influencing both practice and policy, they are less inclined toward the activities that would make this happen, especially engaging with users of their research and communicating their findings to a wider audience. Their institutions do not provide incentives for researchers to adopt these practices. ICT4D researchers and their institutions should engage more closely with the users of their research through more and better communications with the public, especially through the use of information and communication technologies.
Keywords: ICT4D; Policy making; Practice; Research; impact

How Does the World Bank Build Citizen Engagement Commitments into Project Design? Results from Pilot Assessments in Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, and Pakistan - Nadelman, Rachel; Le, Ha; Sah, Anjali (Working Paper 525, 2019)
How and to what degree is the World Bank putting its new institutional citizen engagement (CE) commitments into practice? This question guides an independent assessment that the Accountability Research Center (ARC) at American University has undertaken as part of the Institute of Development Studies-led Action for Empowerment and Accountability (A4EA) research programme’s investigation into how external actors can best support local processes of and conditions for empowerment and accountability. This report investigates the World Bank’s incorporation of CE into project design, the critical early stage of donor engagement. To accomplish this, ARC reviewed the World Bank’s fiscal year 2015–17 investment project portfolios for four A4EA priority countries, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, and Pakistan, which covers 57 projects that range from US$19 million to U$600 million. The analysis determines whether projects commit to seeking a strategic approach to CE, which involves combining multiple tactics so that the whole could be greater than the sum of the parts. This assessment of CE commitments is intended to help to inform possible national, civil society organisation strategies to monitor whether and how these commitments are actually implemented in practice.

How Does Developing Enforcement Capacity Reduce Wildlife Crime? Increasing program effectiveness by understanding common assumptions - Price, Claire; Buff, Jesse; Peabody, Shawn; Present, Tess; Lauck, Liz (USAID, 2018)
"How Does Developing Enforcement Capacity Reduce Wildlife Crime?" summarizes findings from the literature around four key assumptions about capacity building for enforcement and prosecution. Using the experiences and evidence summarized in this brief, program designers and implementing partners should be able to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their capacity building efforts.

How do we know what works? Interview with Prof. Michael Woolcock, Lead Social Scientist at the World Bank - Evans, Alice (2018)
Dr Alice Evans and leading experts discuss growth, governance, & gender inequalities. Alice is a Lecturer at King's College London, and Faculty Associate at the Harvard Kennedy School.

How did China create “Directed Improvisation”? - Pritchett, Lant (Building State Capability, 2017)
written by Lant Pritchett Yuen-Yuen Ang, a Professor of Political Science at University of Michigan came to speak at Harvard the other day and I was lucky enough to hear her presentation.  Her most…
Keywords: IMPORTANT

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.

How DFID can better manage complexity in development programming - Sharp, Samuel; Valters, Craig; Whitty, Brendan (ODI, 2019)
The United Kingdom’s (UK) Department for International Development (DFID) is an ambitious government department that is committed to reducing poverty and conflict overseas. Many of the issues on which DFID works are complex; whether focused on climate change, gender equality, health or other priorities, simple solutions rarely exist. And to tackle these complex challenges, DFID staff must interact with unpredictable systems of political, organisational and individual behaviours and incentives. There is a risk that complex problems spur more complicated programmes; that the complexity of development challenges is addressed through designing programmes with too many projects and implementers. While there may be valid reasons for this, too many of these complicated programmes will overburden staff. This briefing note is the outcome of an ongoing process within DFID to confront these issues and answer the question: how can DFID design and manage programmes to address complex development challenges without creating too much staff workload? Key messages DFID deals with complex problems, which require flexible systems to support testing, learning and adaptation. • Complex problems do not necessarily require workload-heavy delivery structures, but simpler approaches depend on delivery partners’ experience and competence. • However, programmes that tackle complex problems do require more hands-on engagement and face more workload from inflexible compliance requirements. We suggest that DFID and similar agencies: • Pay closer attention to delivery options in programme design, making use of existing options where possible and, where not, fostering local organisations through long-term investments. • Encourage programme designers to articulate how ambition matches resources and consider ‘good enough’ design. • Reduce the burden of compliance by cultivating partner autonomy, reassessing results and valuefor-money requirements and promoting more flexible contracting and procurement. • Plan and prioritise management resources across a portfolio of programmes to make sure they can be focused in the right areas, where the complexity of the problem requires greater engagement.

How Decent is Decent Work? Using SenseMaker to understand workers’ experiences - Mager, Franziska; Smith, Becca; Gujit, Irene (Oxfam, 2018)

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

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

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

How Adaptive Management is challenging the monitoring and evaluation of complex programmes - Simister, Nigel (INTRAC, 2018)
By Nigel Simister Adaptive management is a broad approach designed to support development or humanitarian programmes in complex or uncertain …

Hospicing The Old - Robinson, Cassie (Stewarding Loss, 2019)
In 2010 I was introduced to the Berkana Institutes’s Two Loop model, and I come back to it again and again. As I’ve moved across different…

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

Help! I’m hiring new staff and I want them to work adaptively. A guide to hiring adaptive employees. - Salib, Monalisa (USAID LEARN, 2019)
If you are involved in hiring, this tool can help you increase your chances of selecting staff members skilled in adaptive management. It will help answer the questions: Which competencies should I recruit for in order to hire more adaptive employees? Which desired qualifications should I incorporate into position descriptions to attract adaptive employees? Which interview questions should I ask to screen for adaptive employee competencies? You should use this tool when you decide to hire a new individual - whether that be a direct hire, contractor, or consultant - or when you are changing an individual’s current position description or scope of work. Specifically, this tool will help you determine which qualifications are most important for the position and offers interview questions you can use with candidates. --- You’re in luck! We just released a new guide for hiring adaptive employees. This visual and user-friendly tool will help increase your chances of selecting staff skilled in adaptive management. Here are the details: What do you mean by “work adaptively” or an “adaptive employee”? An adaptive employee is an individual who, in collaboration with relevant stakeholders, systematically acquires and uses knowledge to make decisions and adjustments in their work in order to achieve greater impact. Why focus on adaptive employees? Why does it matter? With industries, technologies, and organizations in a near constant state of flux, leaders are recognizing the importance of adaptability as a critical capacity. Because of this, it’s not surprising that a recent LinkedIn report found that adaptability was the most important soft skill hiring managers were screening for. In addition, evidence shows that teams that apply more data-driven and adaptive leadership practices perform better than those that focus less on these practices. It makes sense, then, that managers want to recruit more team members who are skilled in adaptive management - it helps achieve results. Who should use this tool? Anyone involved in hiring, responsible for developing or approving position descriptions, participating in interviews, and/or approving new hires. When should I use this tool? Use it as soon as you decide to hire a new staff person or when you’re adjusting existing position descriptions. What does the tool help me do? It will help you think through: Which competencies should I recruit for in order to hire more adaptive employees? Which desired qualifications should I incorporate into position descriptions to attract adaptive employees? (You can even copy and paste qualification language from the tool into scopes of work!) Which interview questions should I ask to screen for adaptive employee competencies? (You can copy and paste interview questions into your screening, interview, and reference check protocols!) Has the tool been tested? Yes, staff within USAID’s Global Development Lab and on the USAID LEARN contract tested the tool, providing feedback on the minimum viable product and subsequent versions. Testers confirmed finding the tool useful, and gave it a 9/10 score when asked if they would recommend it to colleagues. Some specific feedback from testers included: "The tool prompts deeper thought on what you might need and want in a job candidate" and "All [of the interview questions I used from the tool] worked well." What about the existing staff? How can they gain greater skills in adaptive management? Existing USAID staff and implementing partners can access online training in collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) and find resources in the CLA Toolkit. USAID staff also have access to an internal CLA community of practice and five-day, in-person CLA training.

Has Kenya’s ICT revolution triggered more citizen participation? - Salome, Nyambura (MAVC Research Briefing, 2016)
Lessons from policy in Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Handbook of Democratic Innovation and Governance - Elstub, Stephen; Escobar, Oliver (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019)
Democratic innovations are proliferating in politics, governance, policy, and public administration. These new processes of public participation are reimagining the relationship between citizens and institutions. This Handbook advances understanding of democratic innovations, in theory and practice, by critically reviewing their importance throughout the world. The overarching themes are a focus on citizens and their relationship to these innovations, and the resulting effects on political equality. The Handbook therefore offers a definitive overview of existing research on democratic innovations, while also setting the agenda for future research and practice.
Keywords: Democracy; Public Affairs & Administration

Guiding questions to help narrow the scope of an evaluation - Methods Lab (2015)
Time and budget constraints can mean that programmes are not able to assess all possible evaluation questions; this is especially true for multi-component or multi-site programmes operating in challenging environments. This tool identifies areas of enquiry to help programmes prioritise the number of questions and measurement indicators used. This tool was developed by Anne Buffardi for use in in Methods Lab projects.

Guidelines for writing a case study on implementation (Book Project: Smart Implementation in Governance) - Kirsch, Renate (GIZ GmbH, 2015)

Guidelines for the Monitoring System for Development-Related Changes (MERV) - SDC (SDC, 2013)