Guest blog by Vusal Shikhaliyev, IPP’23
The aspirations for accelerating economic reforms required a new approach in the reform governance process to enable a much faster process desired by the government to improve the business environment and attract investments into non-oil sector.
According to the general approach, when an institution was assigned for an initiative, a new working group was formed by that institution. The same happened in all other major related institutions. The working groups were assigned for the case by case, and new reforms in the same area required new working groups. People who obtained experience in earlier reform did not get a systematic chance to use their experience.
As a participant in the Implementing Public Policy course developed by Harvard Kennedy School, I had a tremendous opportunity to learn and practice new tools and agile approaches proposed within the PDIA toolkit. On the whole, I considered this opportunity as a new step in transforming new insights into existing the reform model. Being inspired by the IPP course, I am always trying to use new techniques and attitudes in my job.
For this reason, we desire to establish permanent reform teams to develop expertise in working groups in order to provide a sustainable system. Two important modifications in the governance in this regard include optimizing the coordination of efforts and maintaining high-level collaboration between institutions and working groups via permanent topic-based working groups.
Accordingly, within the initiative of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, the new Reform Model addresses this need along with a new approach. With the new approach, the Commission on Business Environment and International Rankings aims to address 3 key pillars via 2 fundamental enablers to realize Government’s aspirations to further improve business environment.
- Effective coordination – to ensure that the efforts are coordinated in a more sustainable way, and previous experience can be utilized to guide new reforms process by establishment of a responsible institution in charge of coordination of reform efforts.
- Continuous collaboration – to efficiently bring reform teams from relevant institutions together, set a process enabling their continuous mutual and collaborative work, drive innovation mindset in institutions through working group members and help to develop their expertise.
- Inclusiveness – to increase engagement of citizens, civil society organizations, and businesses in the reform process.
- Agile institutional framework – a key enabler to address above via providing the agility in the design and implementation of government reforms to improve business environment.
- Innovation and technology – another major enabler providing crucial tools for the new Reform Model in achieving its objectives.
Economic Reforms Governance Model is intended to achieve 5 key targets:
1) improving business and investment environment;
2) building digital public services in line with international standards;
3) eliminating barriers to civil society and entrepreneurial activity;
4) expanding competitiveness and export capacities;
5) forming state support and incentives for entrepreneurs.
The Model was comprised of 7 key elements under the 3 pillars (organization, processes and tools). A new central commission on the business environment and 25 working groups from related institutions are elements of organization pillar.
The new Reform Model has engaged more than 500 people, and out of these 63% are representatives from private sector and civil society, including public unions, business associations, and academia (https://azranking.az/en/working-groups).
Improvement in the reform process (communication and collaboration) and coordination among institutions by the utilization of a platform enabling effective coordination are elements of processes pillar.
The third pillar: tools, has key elements of analytical benchmarking which increase the agility in regular analysis of international reports, innovative communication platform for coordination of the reform efforts within and among working groups, and innovative engagement platform that aims to further increase the inclusion of citizens, civil society organizations, and business organizations.
All and all, referring to the tools and approaches of the PDIA toolkit, and knowledge and experiences gained through the IPP course, the new Reform Model can be further continuously improved. There are 2 important ways to better leverage its impact: scale-up activities and scope-up activities. Scaling up refers to increasing the scale of the new Reform Model without changing its mechanics. First, it can expand the number of reform areas covered in the new Reform Model. As the new Reform Model has been proved successfully, more areas can be added here.
Scoping up refers to implementing the new Reform Model in different scopes with potential changes in its mechanics. The most important aspect of scoping up would be focusing on the reapplication of the new Reform Model on local and global levels. On local level, the new Reform Model can be reapplied within all government institutions for a faster reform design and implementation. On global level, the Commission can focus on sharing its experience with other countries with the aim to expand the impact of the new Reform Model internationally. For instance, as a start, the Commission can conduct separate knowledge sharing with respective institutions of neighboring countries, where it can share its learnings and also brainstorm about the ways of implementing the new Reform Model in those countries. Though this scope up activity would not bring much local impact, it can significantly affect the agility in analysis benchmarking of business environment in other countries.
This is a blog series written by the alumni of the Implementing Public Policy Executive Education Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. 47 Participants successfully completed this 7-month hybrid program in December 2023. These are their learning journey stories.