Guest blog written by Harry Fletcher-Wood What do these have in common? All three ran late and overbudget: Crossrail is 3 years late and £2 billion overbudget; the Edinburgh Tram was half-finished 3 years late and £231 million overbudget; the NHS IT programme was abandoned after 10 years and £6 billion. Most big projects exceed…Continue Reading Better school improvement through Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation
Guest blog written by Sandra Naranjo Bautista Last October, I was a guest lecturer at Harvard’s Executive Education Program, Budgeting Through Crisis. I talked about my experience as a minister during Ecuador’s 2016 earthquake with Salimah Samji, Director of the Building State Capability Program. Our conversation brought up memories that motivated me to write this blog. You can also…Continue Reading Public policy during a crisis: 3 Lessons learned from Ecuador’s earthquake
Guest blog by Sharon Lewis…Continue Reading Leading Economic Growth in a World at Risk
Guest blog written by Karrie McLaughlin When Indonesia decentralized just over 20 years ago, it did so partly on the promise that bringing services closer to citizens would help to improve them. However, at the same moment that responsibility for the provision of basic public services was shifting to local governments, the nature of those…Continue Reading Working with local governments to improve service delivery in Indonesia
written by Salimah Samji In March 2020, Harvard University decided to move all classes to online-only, in an effort to de-densify our campus and to slow the spread of COVID-19. It soon became clear that remote learning was going to be our new normal. At the time, Leading Economic Growth, a longstanding 5-day residential executive education…Continue Reading Leading Economic Growth 2020: Moving Executive Education Online during a Pandemic
Guest blog written by Akbar Ahmadzai, Emma Davies, Renzo Lavin, Fernando Marquez Six weeks ago, the class counted off numbers: One, two, three, four, five. Repeat. One, two, three, four, five. Repeat. Some of us were fortunate enough to have been assigned to group 2. Others convinced classmates to switch with them. Regardless of how we…Continue Reading A Reflection on PDIA in Action: Homelessness in Tarrant County
Guest blog written by Carmen Belafi COVID-19 will exacerbate the learning crisis. Causing schools to close around the world, the pandemic disrupted education as we know it. But the COVID-19 shock to education systems will likely cause severe and long-term learning losses that are far bigger than the ‘mere’ time schools were closed. Learning losses can…Continue Reading RISE Launches Interactive Data Visualisations Estimating Long-Term Learning Losses from COVID-19 School Closures
Guest blog written by Ruth Huette Public budget uncertainty is a defining characteristic of the COVID-19 pandemic Last week, governments of France and Germany announced that their countries would enter yet another phase of lockdown as new cases of COVID-19 were on a steep rise again. As Europe is grappling with a second COVID wave,…Continue Reading Leveraging Technology to Improve Forecasting and Monitoring of Local Government Budgets
Guest blog written by Bandi Mbubi At the beginning of 2019, Harvard Kennedy School invited me to apply for its executive program in Implementing Public Policy. The letter was timely as it arrived when I was reflecting on my life and considering my next moves. The more I read about the course, the more I was…Continue Reading Congo Calling Rebooted
Guest blog written by Peter Harrington and Ben French Act One of Covid is over. In places it has been frightening, in others orderly, and everywhere completely unprecedented. As we move into Act Two of this astonishing global drama, and a global recession on a scale not seen before, governments and leaders need to prepare themselves…Continue Reading COVID Act Two: Look beyond your borders to navigate what comes next
