Request for comments: Managing for capacity results - paper for Cairo Workshop on Capacity Development
Brian Lucas
PLEASE SEND COMMENTS TO: Heather Baser, ba...@rogers.com
There is much talk between donors and partner countries about results
and more specifically the importance of Managing for Development Results
(MfDR) for improving aid and development effectiveness. But many country
partners and development agencies believe that the approaches of MfDR do
not adequately recognize capacity results and especially its "soft"
aspects such as the ability to drive change and to build processes,
organizations, and institutions which can deliver public services over
the long term. MfDR tends to rely on a high degree of planning and
control of interventions and a predictable relationship between inputs
and outputs whereas capacity development requires a flexible, iterative
approach.
As part of the lead up to the next High-Level Meeting in Busan, Korea in
November, there will be a workshop on capacity development in Cairo on
March 28-29. LenCD has written the attached paper on managing for
capacity results for the workshop, drawing on the literature and limited
consultations focused on the challenges of defining, monitoring and
measuring capacity results.
We would welcome your comments on this paper, particularly on how we can
sharpen it for the politicians and policy makers who will attend the
Cairo session.
We should point out that the paper is a first cut of issues related to
capacity results and is a work in progress. It does not purport to be
comprehensive but does try to reflect some of the often disparate views
held by different groups such as politicians, donors, beneficiaries and
specialist M&E people, among others. We have tried to find a middle
ground between two main agendas - policy audiences in Cairo and later
Busan, and a more technical audience interested in pursuing the topic
further. Because its main audience is the Cairo workshop, the paper is
short. This means that it does not pick up all the wealth of detail that
came out of the consultations. We have kept this information to help in
fleshing out a plan for a workstream.
We encourage comments. Those received before March 12 will be taken into
account in the next version of the paper.
Heather Baser
ba...@rogers.com