Governance dashboards and entry points to governance reform

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04/28/2014

Governance dashboards and entry points to governance reform

My recent blog posts propose using dashboards to give a view of governance realities in specific countries. The idea is fleshed out in a working paper that is still rough but will hopefully generate some comments.

One comment I already had was along the lines of, "How does the governance dashboard promote public sector reform?"

Let me give my sense of an answer that also serves to connect the dashboard to PDIA (problem driven iterative adaptation).

1. The 'governance ends' dashboard gives one a snapshot of the relative strengths and weaknesses of a government's performance, in 35 areas. This snapshot is useful in provoking a narrative about the country, which I usually begin with a team from that country (the team is usually nominated by the government I am working with): "why is it weak in some areas?" "why is it stronger in other areas?"

2. I use this narrative in discussions with the government, trying to identify and construct (name and measure) 'problems' that local people agree are problems. The dashboard thus helps to identify specific problems as entry point to governance reform. Hold-all indicators seldom facilitate this kind of identification (in my experience, such indicators will point to a problem in the area of 'rule of law' but one is left wondering what the problem really is).

3. Once the problems have been constructed, with reference to the dashboard, it is possible to start asking about why the problems persist. This is what I call deconstructing problems and involves using the '5 whys' and Ishikawa diagrams (problem trees or fishbone diagrams). This means one is not jumping to a set of solutions (as is often the case)... One is asking about why the problem persists in the context...

4. Once the problem has been deconstructed, it is possible to start asking about first and next steps in reform: What do we need to do next to address the problem? I always emphasize starting where you are and doing a step (or series of steps) that are within the extant capacity.

5. Once the first set of steps have been done (by the team), the team comes together to ask how they have dented the problem and what they have learned. If they decide that the problem is now solved (which they can assess by looking at numbers, in most cases, given that the dashboard has embedded numbers in it) then they stop the process. If, however, they say that the problem is still festering they iterate again--revisiting the problem, nominating new actions and going through the process again.

(Here is the process I adopt, which you can read about in the following paper)

This is how I think the governance dashboard feeds into iterative reform discussions and activities. It is a tool in the process, and can be extremely localized and reflective of the local narrative.

Posted at 05:18 AM in Post 2015 indicators (my thoughts) | Permalink

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