Harvard Center for International Development

On this week’s podcast, Salimah Samji, Director of the Building State Capability program at CID and Tim McNaught, Building State Capability Fellow, have a conversation about the recently launched PDIAtoolkit. // download the PDIAToolkit at www.bsc.cid.harvard.edu // Interview recorded on October 24, 2018. About the PDIAtoolkit: The PDIAtoolkit is designed to guide you through the process of solving complex problems which requires working in teams. We call it a Do-it-Yourself (DIY) kit, where the ‘you’ is a committed team of 4-6 people mobilized to work together to solve a complex problem that cannot be solved by one person. Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), is a step-by-step approach which helps you break down your problems into its root causes, identify entry points, search for possible solutions, take action, reflect upon what you have learned, adapt and then act again. It is a dynamic process with tight feedback loops that allows you to build your own solution to your problem that fits your local context. The PDIAtoolkit draws from two key resources. The first is the Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action book which is available as a free download and the second is a set of short videos explaining the key concepts of PDIA. While the PDIA process is not linear, we recommend that you first read this toolkit in sequence to understand the steps. The toolkit has eight sections. Each section introduces a new concept and has one or more worksheets which are the tools to help you try PDIA for yourself. All the tools are dynamic and should be reviewed and adapted on a regular basis. We hope that you find this toolkit useful and wish you the best on your PDIA Journey. This is an open access publication, available online and distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution –Non Commercial –No Derivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

The New Climate Economy’s (NCE) recently released their 2018 Report on Unlocking the Inclusive Growth Story of the 21st Century: Accelerating Climate Action in Urgent Times. The key findings of the report focus on five key economic sectors: Energy, Cities, Food and Land Use, Water, and Industry, as well as the cross-cutting issues of Finance and Just Transition. The report also highlights some examples of the low carbon transition taking root, as well as the economic and social benefits being reaped as a result. How can we work toward a sustainable development model that promotes economic growth and environmental change? Leonardo Garrido, Lead Economist at the New Climate Economy explains how countries can work towards better growth and better climate. Today on CID’s Speaker Series podcast, Nawal Qutub, graduate student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, interviews Leonardo Garrido, who provides further insight on the work of the New Climate Economy. He also discusses their work on a Low Carbon Development Initiative in Indonesia, a collaboration with the Indonesian Planning Ministry (BAPPENAS) to create a low carbon 5-year development plan. // www.growthlab.cid.harvard.edu // Interview recorded on October 19, 2018. About Leonardo Garrido: Leonardo Garrido is a Development Economist with more than 20 years of experience on applied economic research and empirical methods. Leonardo's main research interests include the linkages between climate, the environment and the socio-economy; the dynamics of poverty, inequality and growth; the application of heterodox approaches for understanding complex socio-economic phenomena; and the analysis of constraints to inclusive development in the developing world. Prior to joining the New Climate Economy, Leonardo worked for 15+ years conducting empirical work, macro and micro modeling and country engagement for several multilateral and bilateral development organizations, including the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the UK Department for International Development and USAID. During that period, he led projects in over 25 countries in support of policy making, mainly in Sub Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Leonardo previously served as Chief Economist for a Venezuelan financial institution, as Head of Economic Research in Venezuela's Tax Revenue Authority, and as Empirical Economist for a leading Venezuelean economic private consulting institution. Leonardo obtained his Economics degree at Universidad Catolica Andres Bellow in Caracas, Venezuela. He also holds a Certificate in International Taxation from Harvard Law School, and a Master in Public Administration from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he specialized in both macroeconomic and microeconomic analysis. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife and two sons.

Billions of dollars in cash payments are made daily in emerging and developing economies, including payment of salaries, social welfare and business transactions. The problem with these cash payments is their lack of transparency, accountability and security. Thanks to technology and connectivity, more people than ever now have access to mobile phones, the internet and cloud-based solutions. How can this digital revolution help us reach the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) more quickly? Tidhar Wald, Head of Government Relations and Public Policy, Better Than Cash Alliance, United Nations, explains how countries can begin to move away from cash. For the nearly two billion people excluded from the formal financial sector, the digitization of payments can open the door to a range of affordable financial services to help them save safely, seize economic opportunities and reduce their vulnerability. Today on CID’s Speaker Series podcast, Jason Keene, Masters in Public Administration and International Development student at the Harvard Kennedy School, interviews Tidhar Wald, who provides further insight on how this vision of digitization can only be realized if it is carried out responsibly and responsively to people’s needs. // www.growthlab.cid.harvard.edu // Interview recorded on October 12, 2018. About Tidhar Wald: Tidhar Wald leads the Government Relations and Public Policy teams at the Better Than Cash Alliance, a UN-based partnership of over 60 governments, companies and international organizations that accelerates the global transition from cash to digital payments in order to drive inclusive growth and reduce poverty. At Better Than Cash Alliance, Tidhar oversees the outreach to governments, companies, international organizations and donor governments towards their commitment to digitize payments and work together to build digital economies that are inclusive. Prior to his tenure at the Better Than Cash Alliance, Tidhar held positions in political affairs and government relations for over a decade, including at the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Oxfam International. Tidhar holds a Master of Public Policy and International Affairs from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and a Bachelors in Political Science and History from Sorbonne University in Paris.

Since the end of the Second World War, the international rules-based system has been determined by developed countries with economic power who came together to form multilateral organizations like the United Nations. In today’s world, other nations with conflicting interests are challenging the foundations of the UN and this international rules-based system, making it difficult to reach consensus on pressing global issues like climate change, migration, terror, protectionism, and pandemics. How do we begin to repair this broken international rules-based system? Andrew Mitchell, British Member of Parliament and Former Secretary of State for International Development, discusses ways in which the UN can be adapted to today’s globalized society. Today on CID’s Speaker Series podcast, Anna Mysliwiec, Masters in Public Policy student at the Harvard Kennedy School, interviews Andrew Mitchell who provides further insight on the deterioration of the international rules-based system and how the world can begin to repair it. // www.growthlab.cid.harvard.edu // Interview recorded on October 5, 2018. About Andrew Mitchell: Andrew was born in 1956 and is married with two daughters. He was educated at Rugby School and Cambridge University, where he studied history and was elected as President of the Cambridge Union in 1978. Andrew served in the Army (Royal Tank Regiment) before joining Lazard where he worked with British companies seeking large-scale overseas contracts. He was the Member of Parliament for Gedling from 1987 to 1997. During this period, he held office as a Government Whip and as Minister for Social Security. He also served as a Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party from 1992 to 1993. In 2001 he was re-elected to Parliament as MP for Sutton Coldfield. In November 2003, he was appointed Shadow Minister for Economic Affairs. From September 2004 until the end of the Parliamentary term, he was Shadow Minister for Home Affairs. Following the General Election in May 2005 Andrew joined the Shadow Cabinet and was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for International Development. Andrew Mitchell was Secretary of State for International Development from May 2010 until September 2012 and Government Chief Whip from September – October 2012. An experienced and highly effective MP, Andrew is committed to serving the people of Sutton Coldfield. Andrew is currently campaigning on a number of important local issues in Sutton Coldfield including issues affecting our local environment and the general well-being of the Sutton Coldfield community. He is very active in addressing issues of local development where he feels they adversely affect the Town. He actively supports a number of local charities including Breastfriends, Norman Laud Association, Sutton Coldfield Branch of the RNLI, Parkinson’s Disease Society, Sutton Coldfield Sea Cadets, Greenacres, and Sutton Coldfield Guiding. Since becoming Sutton Coldfield’s MP he is particularly pleased to have achieved the reinstatement of the Sutton Coldfield Civic Service and established the Sutton Coldfield Inter-Schools Debating Competition. As Sutton Coldfield’s MP, Andrew deals with hundreds of letters and emails from constituents every week. He has a dedicated staff of 5 people to assist him with this work. The issues raised are wide ranging and can fall within the responsibility of Government Departments or Birmingham City Council as well as a number of the agencies that now administer specific matters such as immigration, benefits and the environment. In addition he holds regular Advice Sessions where constituents can see him to discuss political issues or matters of personal concern. Andrew has a home in Sutton Coldfield and spends as much time as possible regularly visiting local schools, businesses and voluntary organisations.

The current exodus of Venezuelans has generated the largest migration crisis of its kind in recent Latin American history, as Human Rights Watch has pointed out in its most recent report. More than 2.3 million Venezuelans have left their country since 2014, according to the United Nations, and many others have left whose cases have not been registered by authorities. Venezuelans are fleeing their country for multiple reasons, which includes severe shortages of medicine, medical supplies, and food; extremely high rates of violent crime; hyperinflation; and thousands of arbitrary arrests, torture and other abuses against detainees. Today on CID’s Speaker Series podcast, Nizar El Fakih, MPA/MC Mason Fellow candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, interviews José Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch and a general expert on Latin America, who provides insight on this mass exodus and the current humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, and the role of the international community in this crisis. // www.growthlab.cid.harvard.edu // Interview recorded on September 26, 2018. About José Miguel Vivanco: José Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch's Americas division, is a general expert on Latin America. Before joining Human Rights Watch, Vivanco worked as an attorney for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights at the Organization of American States (OAS). In 1990, he founded the Center for Justice and International Law, an NGO that files complaints before international human rights bodies. Vivanco has also been an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center and the School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University. He has published articles in leading American and Latin American newspapers and is interviewed regularly for television news. A Chilean, Vivanco studied law at the University of Chile and Salamanca Law School in Spain and holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School.

On this week’s podcast, Salimah Samji, Director of the Building State Capability program at CID, interviews Mark Moore, Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School who will be teaching the new Building State Capability online course titled “Creating Public Value”. // www.bsc.cid.harvard.edu // Interview recorded on September 13, 2018. About Mark Moore: Mark H. Moore is the Hauser Professor of Nonprofit Organizations. His current primary focus is studying the processes that enable social innovation and change to occur in response to changing political, economic, and social conditions.

For over ten years, Venezuela has been plagued with a deep economic and political crisis that has also recently transpired into a humanitarian issue. In the past five years, GDP has gone down over 50% and hyperinflation is forecasted by the IMF to reach over 1,000,000% for this year, 2018. The economic downfall has also led to shortages in food, medical supplies, and other commodities nationwide. In their latest research paper: “Fool’s Gold: On the Impact of Venezuelan Devaluations in Multinational Stock Prices” Miguel Angel Santos, Dany Bahar, and Carlos Alberto Molina analyze how multinational companies with subsidiaries in Venezuela have been impacted by currency devaluations as the economic crisis worsened. Today on CID’s Research Spotlight podcast, Camila Lobo, CID Events & Outreach Manager, interviews one of the co-authors of this research paper, Miguel Angel Santos, who provides insight on the current economic crisis in Venezuela and what motivated them to delve into this research. Miguel Angel Santos is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University. Read the paper: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/cid/publications/fellow-graduate-student-working-papers/currency-devaluations-venezuela Interview recorded on August 2, 2018. About Miguel Angel Santos: Miguel Angel Santos is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard University. At CID, he has been involved in various research projects aimed at helping governments to rethink their development strategies, both at the national and sub-national levels. Since he joined CID in August 2014, he has been involved in projects at the national level in Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela, and at the sub-national level in Mexico in the states of Chiapas, Baja California, Tabasco and Campeche; and the city of Hermosillo at Sonora state. He has also performed as project manager in the projects leading to the build-up of the Mexican Atlas of Economic Complexity, and the Peruvian Atlas of Economic Complexity. Before joining the field of international development, Miguel worked for ten years in corporate finance and business development in Latin America, performing as Director of Finance for the Cisneros Group of Companies (1997-2003), Head of Corporate Finance for Mercantil Servicios Financieros (2005-2007), and Business Vice-President for Sony Pictures and Entertainment Latin America (2008-2009). At that point, he decided to switch tracks and get involved in development economics. He holds two Master of Science degrees in International Finance and Trade (2011) and Economics (2012) from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, a Master in Public Administration from Harvard University (2014), and a Ph.D. in Economics at Universidad de Barcelona (2016). He was the head of the Macroeconomic Policy Team for presidential candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski in the Venezuelan elections of 2012.

Many government policies and reforms fail in developing countries. Research at the Center for International Development’s Building State Capability program (or BSC) ties such failure to the tendency of governments to adopt external ‘solutions’ that do not fit their contexts and overwhelm their capabilities. The program believes that governments should build their capabilities by employing processes that empower their own people to find their way to solving their country’s real problems. They propose a process for doing this, called Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (or PDIA) and have been working since 2009 to explore ‘how to do’ PDIA practically, in the real world. This is the second of a series of interviews with the Building State Capability team – the PDIA in Practice Series, or PIPs, where they describe where the PDIA tools and ideas have emerged from, and how these ideas have taken shape. The previous interview covered their experience working with officials in Mozambique’s public financial management sector in 2009, the ‘adaptation window’ idea and practice it inspired. Today’s interview will tell the story that followed that first year of work, how long it took to take the project off the ground and what were the main learnings of implementing an innovative problem-driven approach across many sectors at a national level. // Read the PDIA in Practice note: // https://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/contributing-problem-driven-project-mozambique Interview recorded on June 25th, 2018. bsc.cid.harvard.edu About Matt Andrews: Matt Andrews' research focuses on public sector reform, particularly budgeting and financial management reform, and participatory governance in developing and transitional governments. Recent articles focus on forging a theoretical understanding of the nontechnical factors influencing success in reform processes. Specific emphasis lies on the informal institutional context of reform, as well as leadership structures within government-wide networks. This research developed out of his work in the provincial government of Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa and more recently from his tenure as a Public Sector Specialist working in the Europe and Central Asia Region of the World Bank. He brings this experience to courses on public management and development. He holds a BCom (Hons) degree from the University of Natal, Durban (South Africa), an MSc from the University of London, and a PhD in Public Administration from the Maxwell School, Syracuse University.

Public organizations often have trouble implementing the policies and programs that will benefit the state and its constituents and the public sector in India is no exception. The perception of the state’s capacity to implement policy is often called into question so how can civil servants in India overcome the barriers they face to policy implementation? Today on CID’s Speaker Series podcast, Salimah Samji, Director of the Building State Capability Program at CID interviews Yamini Aiyar of the Centre for Policy Research, who provides first-hand details on culture within the public sector in India. Salimah and Yamini further examine India’s state capabilities and discuss remedies that could improve decision-making processes within the government. Yamini Aiyar is the President and Chief Executive of CPR - the Centre for Policy Research - one of India’s leading public policy think tanks. Her research interests are in the field of social policy and development. In 2008, Yamini founded the Accountability Initiative at CPR. Under her leadership, the Accountability Initiative has produced significant research in the areas of governance, state capacity and social policy. // www.bsc.cid.harvard.edu // Interview recorded on June 6th, 2018. About Yamini Aiyar: Yamini Aiyar is the President and Chief Executive of CPR. Her research interests are in the field of social policy and development. In 2008, Yamini founded the Accountability Initiative at CPR. Under her leadership, the Accountability Initiative has produced significant research in the areas of governance, state capacity and social policy. It pioneered a new approach to tracking public expenditures for social policy programs and is widely recognised for running the country’s largest expenditure-tracking survey in elementary education. Yamini’s own research on social accountability, elementary education, decentralisation and administrative reforms has received both academic and popular recognition. Yamini Aiyar is a TED fellow and a founding member of the International Experts Panel of the Open Government Partnership. She has also been a member of the World Economic Forum’s global council on good governance. Previously, she has worked with the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program and Rural Development unit in Delhi, where she focused on action research aimed at strengthening mechanisms for citizen engagement in local government. Additionally, she was a member of the decentralisation team at the World Bank that provided policy support to strengthen Panchayati Raj (local governance) in India. Aiyar is an Alumnus of the London School of Economics, St. Edmund's college Cambridge University, and St Stephen’s College, Delhi University.

CID Student Ambassador Abeela Latif interviews Susan Scribner, Director of the Preparedness and Response Project at DAI. She discusses the risks that contribute to a pandemic, interventions to mitigate these risks, and how different government and non-government actors can contribute to pandemic preparedness and response. // www.cid.harvard.edu // Interview recorded on April 20th, 2018. About Susan Scribner: Susan Scribner leads the Preparedness and Response project (P&R). P&R works in 16 countries in East Africa, West Africa, and Southeast Asia to support multisectoral collaboration through National One Health Platforms. These platforms strengthen countries’ abilities to prevent, detect and respond to pandemic threats. P&R facilitates countries in developing and maintaining National Preparedness and Response Plans to respond to public health events at the regional, national, and subnational levels. Prior to joining DAI, Susan worked for 17 years for Abt Associates. From 2007 to 2009, she was Chief of Party for a project in Vietnam and Laos that built capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to Avian Influenza. She also led a health systems strengthening project in Uganda from 2004 to 2005. Susan has supported a wide range of projects from the home office and provided technical support and leadership in health policy, financing and governance, infectious diseases, and private sector health. Susan is also helping to grow DAI Global Health’s work in health system solutions. She has extensive experience in strategy and business development and led the integration of Abt Associates’ Australian subsidiary, Abt JTA.