Capacity Development Showcase

1
Capacity Development Showcase

• Port Moresby
• 13 November, 2008
• What is the research telling us about capacity
  and capacity development?
• with
• AusAID Capacity Development Panel Members
• Heather Baser, Tony Land, Peter Morgan

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Capacity Building

• Partner Governments say they want more of it
• Donors say they intend to support more of it
• From this perspective, everyone supports it and
  it makes general sense to them
• At the same time, the concept and practice remain
  confusing, imprecise, slippery
• It comes with no accepted and tested body of
  theory or practice
• Capacity building has not developed as a well
  defined area of development practice. WB 05

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A case in point.!
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Capacity Change and Performance

• 5 year study
• Final report April 2008
• 16 case studies
• PNGs Health Sector Sector A Review of Capacity,
  Change and Performance Issues, 2005
• Ringing the Church Bell The Role of Churches in
  Governance and Public Performance in PNG, 2005
• 7 thematic papers
• An ECDPM Information Brief out soon
• See handout for the papers in which todays
  speakers were involved

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What is the study really about?

• Capacity an unexplored black box
• Do we really have an understanding? Often assumed
  we know
• Capacity development
• A framework for thinking, talking, discussing
  not pre-cooked solutions
• Some examples of successful performance at the
  organisational level
• How capacity develops from within

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3 Key Terms

• In this study we think about capacity in this
  way
• Individual competencies
• Group capabilities
• Broader system capacity

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The Nature of Capacity

• 5 central characteristics of capacity that give
  it some substantive or operational shape
• Empowerment and identity
• Collective action
• Systems phenomenon
• A potential state
• The creation of public value

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5 Core Capabilities

• Recurring patterns were identified from the cases
• Go beyond what is normally identified in capacity
  assessment
• They are not prescriptions some are more
  important than others to some organisations and
  at different times
• Against a perspective of organisations as human
  systems, not productive machinery

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5 Core Capabilities

• To commit and engage
• Empowerment, motivation, attitude, confidence
• To carry out technical, service delivery
  logistical tasks
• Implementation of core functions
• To relate and attract resources and support
• Manage relationships, mobilise resources, network
• To adapt and self-renew
• Learn strategise adapt re-position manage
  change
• To balance coherence and diversity
• Manage complexity stability control
  fragmentation

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How do you use this stuff?!

• An organisation needs some sense of what
  capabilities it needs to do its work
• Without that, it has no shot of developing its
  capacity
• Use capacity assessment as a tool for learning,
  not an extractive thing
• All organisations have strengths identify them
• Dig to find the capabilities that make a
  difference in that organisations own context

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Implications

• Know where technocratic approaches can work
• Skills, structures, procedures, functions
• Know where you can program
• Know where planned approaches can work
• And know where these wont work
• Where alternative approaches are needed
• Where more incremental approaches are needed
• Where the leverage of outsiders is more limited