written by Salimah Samji
Building State Capability (BSC) resolves public problems with purpose. We have developed a step-by-step approach called Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), a dynamic process with tight feedback loops that allows organizations to build their own solutions that fit their local context. PDIA empowers action, facilitates the emergence of local solutions, and creates new problem-solving capabilities. Over the past decade, we have trained and engaged with over 4,000 practitioners in 150 countries and created a global community of practice.
The increasingly complex, interdependent, and uncertain world we live in requires more flexible and adaptive approaches to solve complex problems, making the work of BSC more relevant than ever.
2023 was yet another busy and productive year. Here are some highlights:
- Directly engaged with 500+ policy practitioners around the world.
- Launched our redesigned website, an invaluable resource for policy practitioners worldwide, featuring an interactive map, training tools and guides, case studies, publications, event recordings, podcasts, 600+ blogs and improving functionality as well as digital accessibility.
- Recorded a new video describing who we are and what we do.
- Celebrated and reflected on our decade of building state capability around the world.
- Published 5 papers, 193 blog posts, 6 podcasts, 2 newsletters and a weekly blog digest.
- Translated our PDIA Toolkit into Indonesian (also available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Khmer, and German)
- Employed 11 students as research/teaching assistants, providing them with job training skills as well opportunities to learn how our concepts and tools are applied by practitioners around the world.
2024 promises to be another exciting year for us. Here’s a few things we have in store for you: more BSC cases, self-paced guides, blogs from around the world, hybrid events, new podcast series in leadership and communications, and broadening our community of practice to include everyone we have ever trained. Subscribe to our newsletter and/or blog digest to stay in touch.
Here is a detailed account of our activities in 2023.
Building Implementation Capabilities
We believe that problems are entry points to change and working in teams is the vehicle for change. We convene implementation teams who work iteratively and autonomously to solve their own nominated problems. The teams learn new problem-solving tools and achieve results as well as tangible capacity gains. We build capability by delivering results.
In 2023 we trained and engaged with 500+ policy practitioners in degree programs, executive education, and in policy engagements with governments around the world.
We expanded our engagement with the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative to offer 10 virtual sessions and 4 in-person sessions for their flagship, Cross Boundary Collaboration Track (January – May 2023). 79 participants from Beaverton, Boston, Cleveland, Compton, Dearborn, Helsinki, Monterrey, Rochester, San Diego, and South Yorkshire participated in the program and learned PDIA. You can read more about what the city teams learned in this program.
Matt Andrews and Salimah Samji, co-taught the class entitled, PDIA in Action: Development through Facilitated Emergence at the Harvard Kennedy School. We invited 8 alumni from our flagship Implementing Public Policy Executive Education program to nominate real-world problems. The students worked on (i) Homelessness and lack of housing in Philadelphia, (ii) Low utilization of quality health services in Kaduna State, Nigeria, (iii) Mobilizing communities to co-manage public assets in Bristol, UK, (iv) Lack of transitional housing in Scranton, PA, (v) Tax evasion and lack of compliance in Trinidad & Tobago, (vi) Exploring labor market challenges in Bogota, Colombia, (vii) Affordable housing in Tarrant County, Texas, (viii) Increasing enrollment in employment programs for elderly in Massachusetts. 45 graduate students completed the course in March 2023. You can read more about what students learned about dealing with uncertainty, the importance of different perspectives, iteration, and team-work.
We welcomed the fifth cohort of our flagship Implementing Public Policy (IPP) executive program to campus in June 2023. 48 practitioners participated in this program from May-December 2023. You can read more about what practitioners learned.
Matt Andrews co-chaired two 10-week sessions of Leading Economic Growth Online with the Growth Lab’s Ricardo Hausmann. 130 practitioners participated in this program in March-May and October-December 2023. Read more about what participants learned.
Matt Andrews taught his flagship class entitled, Getting Things Done: Management in a Development Context at the Harvard Kennedy School. 118 graduate students completed the course in December 2023.
Salimah Samji led two sessions for the Bloomberg Harvard City Hall Fellows on problems as entry points to change and teams as a vehicle for change in November 2023.
Salimah Samji and Daniel Barjum led a 4-week workshop on building state capability for Latin American students at Harvard and MIT. 21 students participated in this program from October-November 2023.
After successfully offering a 12-week PDIA training program last year, we embarked on a second iteration with The Voice Inc, a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) funded Local Leadership & Collective Action Program in Papua New Guinea to support a network of groups and leaders acting on Papua New Guinea’s most challenging problems. 36 development leaders participated in this program from September-December 2023.
Publications
BSC faculty, fellows, and affiliates regularly publish research in a wide range of academic and policy venues. In 2023 we published 5 papers, 193 blog posts, 2 newsletters and a weekly blog digest.
The papers include:
- Andrews, Matt, and Peter Harrington. 2023. “Facilitating learning and discovery-oriented industrial policy in Albania.”
- Rogers, Patricia J. and Michael Woolcock. 2023. “Process and Implementation Evaluations: A Primer.”
- Achmad, Maliki, Graham Teskey, Anna Winoto, and Michael Woolcock. 2023. “Responding Adaptively to the COVID-19 Crisis in Indonesia: Insights and Implications from an Indonesian Governance Program”.
- Silberstein, Jason, and Marla Spivack. 2023. “Applying Systems Thinking to Education: Using the RISE Systems Framework to Diagnose Education Systems.” 2023/051.
- Moore, Mark, and Marla Spivack. 2023. “A Public Value Approach to Analyzing and Intervening in National Educational Systems.” Research on Improving Systems of Education.
Events
We host events featuring researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and academics who are working to solve complex problems.
In 2023 we continued to host hybrid events inviting virtual participants around the globe to join us. Here are the events we held:
- They Eat Our Sweat: Transport Labor, Corruption, and Survival in Urban Nigeria
The informal transportation network, characteristic of many African cities, is notoriously dangerous. In Lagos, drivers are constantly threatened and forced to pay bribes; they suffer health problems like hypertension and partial blindness, and accidents are common. Fear is a form of governance. The police and the union extract money from transport drivers and share it with each other. The money passes up the ranks, to the union authorities and to political leaders.
In this book talk, author Daniel Agbiboa shared his first-hand experience as a minibus conductor in Lagos as a way to better understand the culture and complexity of corruption, and how such a harrowing and corrupt system can endure.
2. Implementation Doesn’t Happen by Edict
Are you tasked with implementing policy, but frustrated when you and your team can’t get it across the finish line? Are you a policymaker wondering why the policy you’ve developed to address a pressing issue for your community or organization fails to come to fruition? You are not alone. The Implementing Public Policy (IPP) executive program is uniquely designed to help you approach policy implementation in a new way by testing tools and frameworks you learn on your implementation challenge, in your own context, in real time. This session featured the IPP program team and alumni who shared how the program can help you and your organization achieve better policy outcomes.
3. Reflecting on a Decade of Building State Capability around the World
In this session, the BSC team discussed the evolution of PDIA and its pedagogical methods, as well as shared reflections on their journey of building capability and igniting change. It also featured voices of global practitioners who have used BSC’s tools and approaches.
Podcasts
In 2023, BSC launched a new podcast series featuring interviews with practitioners and policymakers who reflect on their engagement with Building State Capability over the past 10 years and their experience using the PDIA approach in their work. We recorded 6 podcasts and plan to release more in 2024.
