What is Needed to Scale Reform?
Recently there’s been a fair amount of debate in two projects that I’ve had the good fortune to work with. The debate is about what exactly is needed to scale up reforms.
Say you have tested a development reform theory in a pilot site, and the results are great. Now you (and your donor) want to implement the reform beyond the pilot site - ideally, nationwide! What will it take to do that?
Some colleagues say the only thing needed to scale up a successful reform is a national policy. Others think policies are necessary to establish the legal basis for the reform nationwide, but is not enough to actually make nationwide implementation happen. That, they say, will require additional inputs from development workers.
While I was cleaning out old files from my magic trunk I came across materials from reform projects I had worked on over the last two decades or so. As I read through them I found that our work always involved any combination of the following: 1) introduction of an enabling policy; 2) provision of resources; and 3) provision of know-how.
I use the term “enabling policy” to include any document or issuance that provides a legal basis for the reform and approach. In TAG 4, reforms in business permit processing were authorized by local council resolution or the LCE’s executive order. In Property Rights for Economic Progress, the first partnership between a local government and DENR was made official by a Mayor’s Executive Order, then a Memorandum of Partnership Agreement between the two parties. Then Department Administrative Order 06-2011 was issued, which provided the legal basis for partnerships elsewhere in the country.
Resources include all the logistics needed to implement the reform - equipment, data, vehicles, working space, funds, warm bodies, etc. In the Decentralized Shelter and Urban Development project, USAID and its contractor PADCO provided resources not immediately available to the LGU partner, while the latter provided personnel, funding and resources. In CR+ID, local governments paid for meals, snacks, and accommodation of personnel they had sent to GIS-GPS training; The Asia Foundation provided the trainer. The trend seems to be, percentage-wise, decreasing inputs from ODA, and increasing provision of resources by local partners.
The third element is knowhow, which includes both technical and political dimensions. Technical knowledge involves subject-specific competencies, like process mapping, service improvement, GIS, GPS, value chain analysis, titling claim adjudication, etc. Political knowledge is a general sense of being able to work politically - assess the political economy, discern a communication plan to elicit desired behavior from key actors, swiftly implement plans, assess results, and adjust accordingly.
Here too I sense a trend. In the earlier projects I worked with the technical knowledge came from “above” - foreign or Manila-based consultants, who mostly left the political work to the local official in-charge of the project. These days more of the technical inputs are provided by more local personnel (not from Manila), and development reformists are learning to work politically.
It seems to me that when we say “nation-wide implementation” we might be talking about two things. One is implementation of a policy reform with National Government Agencies, which covers the entire country. The other is implementation of a national policy involving sub-national government bodies - anything from Regions to Provinces, Cities, Municipalities, and Barangays. This too can be called “nation-wide”. These two modes of “nation-wide implementation” have similarities, but also significant differences.
Both are covered by a national policy, which may take the form of a Presidential declaration, Republic Act, Department Order, etc.
When the reform is to be implemented by NGAs, resources are provided through the General Appropriations Act. On the other hand, local governments are “authorized” to charge expenses for mandated reforms and initiatives against their Internal Revenue Allocation.
Knowledge needed to implement reforms are cascaded from the NGA head office to regional, provincial, and frontline implementors. This is done through internal memoranda/Department Orders/ issuances, and through seminars/workshops. Which probably explains why at any given week there is at least one seminar/workshop going on somewhere in the country.
Interestingly, even with NGA-implemented reforms, one notices uneven implementation. Some Regions are implementing the new policy, others are not. Or it is interpreted differently across the Regions. Some suggest that this is a characteristic of a Weak State.If policy/reform implementation can be challenging with NGAs, how much more with sub-national government bodies - that is, with 81 Provinces, about 144 Cities, about 1,489 Municipalities, and about 42,028 Barangays!
The first challenge in implementing nation-wide reform with sub-national organizations is: How can a national policy be disseminated to all LGUs? The channels of communication are usually the Department of the Interior and Local Government, sub-national offices of other NGAs, and the national Leagues of Provinces, Cities, Municipalities, and Barangays. The modes of communication include issuances and workshops.
Like I said earlier, LGUs are often asked to fund these reforms. Couched in supposedly “enabling” provisions that say LGUs can charge expenses for such-and-such reform to their Internal Revenue Allocation, these policies are basically unfunded mandates. Still, LGUs are somehow providing at least some of the needed resources.
What if the new policy requires a certain kind of knowhow? How do you capacitate so many hundreds of LGUS to do the same thing? The usual approach has been top-down, cascaded instruction-lecture events (that’s why there’s no end to Government workshops). Peer-to-peer learning has been tried - Lakbay Aral, Sharing Workshops, documentation and dissemination of Galing Pook winning innovations. Some have come to be seen as nothing more than junkets, while other modes of knowledge transfer have shown potential, if not results.
Perhaps the grandest Sub-national reform has been devolution and decentralization. The policy document behind these reforms was the Local Government Code of 1991. Various ODA and NGA programs have been implemented to pursue the objectives of this reform, some providing resources, others providing knowhow (such as the GOLD project).
Today the level of implementation of LGC provisions is still uneven. Some LGUs have established mechanisms that are true to the intent of the law; others have found ways to comply but retain old power structures. Two towns’ implementation of the same provision could be unrecognizable from each other. Maybe again that comes from being a Weak State - or maybe that’s the whole point of local autonomy.
So what’s the bottom line about scaling up reform - do we need policies only, or policies plus resources and knowledge?
I submit that reforms that would be implemented by NGAs generally need only policies. That is because NGAs are most likely to have the resources and knowledge needed to implement the reform.
Reforms at the sub-national level will generally require a policy, and some mode of knowledge transfer or dissemination.
The nationwide policy should capture the spirit of the local resolutions, executive orders, or agreements that were issued at the pilot sites, and then make it possible for the same reform to be pursued in other sites.
Because the knowledge gained from pilot sites is expected to be new, scaling up reform will require a mechanism to transfer or disseminate the new experiences and lessons learned. These mechanisms may include basic documentation, abstraction of effective practices, how-to manuals, sharing activities, or even a short course that may be provided by local colleges and universities.
What about resources for sub-national reform? By and large I think LGUs can find the resources needed for any reform. I’m sure there are certain resource requirements that they wouldn’t be able to afford. But in my experience, many LGU intrapreneurs have something more important than resources, which will help them overcome any barriers - they have resourcefulness.
Say you have tested a development reform theory in a pilot site, and the results are great. Now you (and your donor) want to implement the reform beyond the pilot site - ideally, nationwide! What will it take to do that?
Some colleagues say the only thing needed to scale up a successful reform is a national policy. Others think policies are necessary to establish the legal basis for the reform nationwide, but is not enough to actually make nationwide implementation happen. That, they say, will require additional inputs from development workers.
While I was cleaning out old files from my magic trunk I came across materials from reform projects I had worked on over the last two decades or so. As I read through them I found that our work always involved any combination of the following: 1) introduction of an enabling policy; 2) provision of resources; and 3) provision of know-how.
I use the term “enabling policy” to include any document or issuance that provides a legal basis for the reform and approach. In TAG 4, reforms in business permit processing were authorized by local council resolution or the LCE’s executive order. In Property Rights for Economic Progress, the first partnership between a local government and DENR was made official by a Mayor’s Executive Order, then a Memorandum of Partnership Agreement between the two parties. Then Department Administrative Order 06-2011 was issued, which provided the legal basis for partnerships elsewhere in the country.
Resources include all the logistics needed to implement the reform - equipment, data, vehicles, working space, funds, warm bodies, etc. In the Decentralized Shelter and Urban Development project, USAID and its contractor PADCO provided resources not immediately available to the LGU partner, while the latter provided personnel, funding and resources. In CR+ID, local governments paid for meals, snacks, and accommodation of personnel they had sent to GIS-GPS training; The Asia Foundation provided the trainer. The trend seems to be, percentage-wise, decreasing inputs from ODA, and increasing provision of resources by local partners.
The third element is knowhow, which includes both technical and political dimensions. Technical knowledge involves subject-specific competencies, like process mapping, service improvement, GIS, GPS, value chain analysis, titling claim adjudication, etc. Political knowledge is a general sense of being able to work politically - assess the political economy, discern a communication plan to elicit desired behavior from key actors, swiftly implement plans, assess results, and adjust accordingly.
Here too I sense a trend. In the earlier projects I worked with the technical knowledge came from “above” - foreign or Manila-based consultants, who mostly left the political work to the local official in-charge of the project. These days more of the technical inputs are provided by more local personnel (not from Manila), and development reformists are learning to work politically.
It seems to me that when we say “nation-wide implementation” we might be talking about two things. One is implementation of a policy reform with National Government Agencies, which covers the entire country. The other is implementation of a national policy involving sub-national government bodies - anything from Regions to Provinces, Cities, Municipalities, and Barangays. This too can be called “nation-wide”. These two modes of “nation-wide implementation” have similarities, but also significant differences.
Both are covered by a national policy, which may take the form of a Presidential declaration, Republic Act, Department Order, etc.
When the reform is to be implemented by NGAs, resources are provided through the General Appropriations Act. On the other hand, local governments are “authorized” to charge expenses for mandated reforms and initiatives against their Internal Revenue Allocation.
Knowledge needed to implement reforms are cascaded from the NGA head office to regional, provincial, and frontline implementors. This is done through internal memoranda/Department Orders/ issuances, and through seminars/workshops. Which probably explains why at any given week there is at least one seminar/workshop going on somewhere in the country.
Interestingly, even with NGA-implemented reforms, one notices uneven implementation. Some Regions are implementing the new policy, others are not. Or it is interpreted differently across the Regions. Some suggest that this is a characteristic of a Weak State.If policy/reform implementation can be challenging with NGAs, how much more with sub-national government bodies - that is, with 81 Provinces, about 144 Cities, about 1,489 Municipalities, and about 42,028 Barangays!
The first challenge in implementing nation-wide reform with sub-national organizations is: How can a national policy be disseminated to all LGUs? The channels of communication are usually the Department of the Interior and Local Government, sub-national offices of other NGAs, and the national Leagues of Provinces, Cities, Municipalities, and Barangays. The modes of communication include issuances and workshops.
Like I said earlier, LGUs are often asked to fund these reforms. Couched in supposedly “enabling” provisions that say LGUs can charge expenses for such-and-such reform to their Internal Revenue Allocation, these policies are basically unfunded mandates. Still, LGUs are somehow providing at least some of the needed resources.
What if the new policy requires a certain kind of knowhow? How do you capacitate so many hundreds of LGUS to do the same thing? The usual approach has been top-down, cascaded instruction-lecture events (that’s why there’s no end to Government workshops). Peer-to-peer learning has been tried - Lakbay Aral, Sharing Workshops, documentation and dissemination of Galing Pook winning innovations. Some have come to be seen as nothing more than junkets, while other modes of knowledge transfer have shown potential, if not results.
Perhaps the grandest Sub-national reform has been devolution and decentralization. The policy document behind these reforms was the Local Government Code of 1991. Various ODA and NGA programs have been implemented to pursue the objectives of this reform, some providing resources, others providing knowhow (such as the GOLD project).
Today the level of implementation of LGC provisions is still uneven. Some LGUs have established mechanisms that are true to the intent of the law; others have found ways to comply but retain old power structures. Two towns’ implementation of the same provision could be unrecognizable from each other. Maybe again that comes from being a Weak State - or maybe that’s the whole point of local autonomy.
So what’s the bottom line about scaling up reform - do we need policies only, or policies plus resources and knowledge?
I submit that reforms that would be implemented by NGAs generally need only policies. That is because NGAs are most likely to have the resources and knowledge needed to implement the reform.
Reforms at the sub-national level will generally require a policy, and some mode of knowledge transfer or dissemination.
The nationwide policy should capture the spirit of the local resolutions, executive orders, or agreements that were issued at the pilot sites, and then make it possible for the same reform to be pursued in other sites.
Because the knowledge gained from pilot sites is expected to be new, scaling up reform will require a mechanism to transfer or disseminate the new experiences and lessons learned. These mechanisms may include basic documentation, abstraction of effective practices, how-to manuals, sharing activities, or even a short course that may be provided by local colleges and universities.
What about resources for sub-national reform? By and large I think LGUs can find the resources needed for any reform. I’m sure there are certain resource requirements that they wouldn’t be able to afford. But in my experience, many LGU intrapreneurs have something more important than resources, which will help them overcome any barriers - they have resourcefulness.
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