Guest blog by Hanna Demissie, IPP ’22
It was initially the idea of my boss, who is the Chairperson of the Election Commission and a Harvard Kennedy School alumna, to apply to the IPP program. Fortunately, despite my anxiety and hesitation, I found IPP extremely impactful, and it changed my understanding of policy challenges and taught me whole new approaches and techniques for solving policy challenges.
As an electoral expert, in a nascent election management body transitioning into democracy, our focus since the re-establishment of the commission in 2018 has been to deliver a democratic election. Yet, the efficiency and inclusivity of the process were somehow compromised and minority groups especially IDPs were not represented in elections. Ethiopia suffers from massive chronic internal displacement situation with exponential number of IDPs probably more than the populations of some countries in Europe. Even more, Ethiopia does not have specific laws, policies, and institutions to facilitate IDPs electoral participation. The participation of IDPs in an election depends on too many factors ranging from political will to resources, decision making powers, and the availability of legal frameworks.
PDIA was an entirely new concept for me. I was certain about my policy challenge and the solutions until I was first introduced to the Ishikawa/ fishbone, which is a great visualization tool for deconstructing and categorizing the root causes of the challenge. I recall how difficult it was for me to deconstruct my challenge and a thorough conversation and ‘why does it matter’ questions with my classmate from Arizona assisted me in getting the core of the challenge and breaking down the causes of why IDPs are not voting based on their level of importance. Though I find it difficult to deconstruct the challenge at first, I then found fishbone as the best tool introduced to me.
Considering this, the first thing I learned in PDIA is that; defining, unpacking, and sequencing policy challenge is difficult. However, it is the first and most important step in addressing complex problems. My problem statement is ‘IDPs don’t have a systematic way to meaningfully engage in the electoral process, leading to their basic rights not being adequately met’. With that, there are different sub-challenges, major and minor causes, and different blockages.
Another lesson I learned was the importance of problem-driven sequencing and knowing where to start when solving a problem. Knowing the change space in each of the causes and sub-causes is therefore critical. After discussing my challenge with the commission’s management Board, I created a separate fishbone diagram, driven from the main fishbone on the cause I received complete authority and acceptance from the management board to work on. I later used it to gain legitimacy to go to other institutions and stakeholders on the commission’s behalf. I didn’t have a challenge obtaining authorization from my internal authorizers. However, getting real authority and acceptance is harder in the sense of making things happen on the ground. Even getting filled forms from the IDPs in the field is not easy as it requires some kind of authority and ability.
Another intriguing concept I learned in PDIA is Professor Rob Wilkinson’s 4P model of leadership. Through practising it I learned that 4Ps are critical for creating and fostering space for iterative work. Starting with the first two important Ps (at least for me), process and people; the process of creating a working group of six and then grew to eight, sharing responsibilities and decision-making roles in our group, to conducting IDP surveys and engaging IDP camp representatives, government IDP focal persons and make them feel they are part of the work is all part of that.
I also applied the concept of managing perception when engaging people in and out of the commission, and in telling stakeholders how vital the participation of IDP is. Different stakeholders have different perceptions, some perceive internal displacement as a temporary phenomenon, and others saw their participation in election as secondary. So, narrating stories in the way I want others to perceive is important. In the words of renowned author Angela Anais Nin, “we see things as they are,” and it is critical to recognize this. Other than the above, iterations, discussions with other team members, building collective knowledge, and confidence building, gradually incorporating PDIA and applying the concepts in every project (at least the mindset) are all critical.
Lately, I found latent practice as an area of opportunity in my problem-solving. At the request of the people, the Federal Upper house /the House of Federation/ recently requested the Election commission to organise a referendum election in 11 zones and districts in the first week of February 2023, to form Ethiopia’s 12th regional state. Because it will be a smaller project (the number of expected voters will be between 3.5 to 5 million) compared to the general and local elections, we wanted to try a rapid result-type intervention with a great opportunity to engage IDPs. This is a new development and idea, despite the practical and administrative obstacles, unavailability of proper resources, No IDP unit in the commission and so on. For that, we finalised directive on IDP participation, as well as preparing the necessary training and operational manuals (in a way recognizing the lack of access to documentation and giving options to choose constituency meaning casting their vote either for their constituency of origin or the constituency they are residing while displaced) to get them ready before voter registration. With the support of the commission’s ICT department, we included special polling stations in the polling station database specifically for IDP voting. Hence, we also reflect it in the voter registration and election day forms. We are also collecting surveys from IDP camps. The survey helped my team to rapidly assess the engagement by regional authorities, access to services especially those allowing civic and voter education, issues IDPs and camp representatives consider challenges to exercise their voting rights etc.
However, we still need a new policy and more authority in the coming few months; thus, we are using this referendum to implement IDP voting using all PDIA techniques with the hope that it will serve as a precedent for future elections. To make it happen we increased the frequency of our meetings with the working committee and engaged other IDP experts from other organizations including the national human rights commission and update the working spreadsheet regularly. In the meantime, I try to celebrate small actions and wins as I believe it’s a key to staying motivated. Thanks to PDIA, I understand that real progress is a result of slow and steady steps.
Through the process of trying to solve the challenges in IDP voting, I have learned that providing solutions for complex challenges needs lots of small and repeated steps and actions, a lot of time, proper intervention, different connections and engagement, a proper budget, and other relatable things. So, stopping our actions regularly to measure and encourage our work, and to reflect and to get lessons is important for both building confidence, improving group working relationships and gaining further authorization for the next phase of work.
As PDIA is full of surprises, I initially discovered that various government institutions, like the national ID project, that I thought could contribute to the solution in some way and whose work relates to IDPs knowingly or unknowingly ignored the issues of IDPs. As a result, this process served as a good reminder and a waking call for them. We also discovered that most government stakeholders (like the national disaster and risk management commission) face similar challenges in terms of gathering and storing IDP information, data collection, documentation, and other issues.
Throughout the process, we were able to draft a new directive for IDP participation in elections, review gaps in the national IDP data, and establish good working relationships with other organizations, among others. At the personal level, I ascertained the importance of paying attention to oneself and receiving support from my team during difficult times.
Of course, my final advice to myself and others who may read this is that building a strong, cohesive team is essential for accomplishing anything significant. However, it is a process, not a one-time thing. I can say that building a good team is a half of being effective in the process. Last but not the least, talking to different people/sources helps me to refine my problem and I hope it will help others too.
This is a blog series written by the alumni of the Implementing Public Policy Executive Education Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. Participants successfully completed this 6-month online learning course in December 2022. These are their learning journey stories.