Guest blog by Marcio Paes Barreto, IPP ’23 As my course Implementing Public Policy (IPP) ended I recognized a familiar feeling that relates to my experience leading NOLS wilderness expeditions. At the end of those expeditions, participants often reflected on what they couldn’t bring back from the wilderness, and some felt uneasy about returning to…Continue Reading Reflections on IPP and Returning to Work
Guest blog by Sonia Umu Karim, IPP ’23 One of my favourite quotations, which I came across during my secondary school years and which has kept me going through many frustrating ups and downs working on public sector reforms in Sierra Leone is by Henry David Thoreau; it goes “All endeavour calls for the ability to tramp…Continue Reading Developing a Harmonized Legal and Regulatory Framework for Reforming Public Sector Pay in Sierra Leone
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…Continue Reading BSC 2023: The Year in Review
We are offering Strategies for Inclusive Growth at the Harvard Kennedy School from April 28 – May 3rd 2024. Application deadline is March 25th, 2024. Paths to economic prosperity are rapidly evolving. Policymakers struggle to meet economic goals as growth remains unsustainable, non-inclusive, or just plain stuck. Organizations often rely on one-size-fits-all approaches that fail to meet…Continue Reading Apply for our Strategies for Inclusive Growth Executive Program!
We have released a new episode in our podcast series A Decade of Building State Capability. In this episode, BSC Director Salimah Samji interviews Ricardo Hausmann, Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy at the Harvard Kennedy School and founder and Director of Harvard’s Growth Lab. In this episode, Ricardo describes his…Continue Reading New Podcast: Ricardo Hausmann Reflects on his Engagement with BSC
We have released a new episode in our podcast series A Decade of Building State Capability. In this episode, BSC Director Salimah Samji interviews Rebecca Trupin and Prateek Mittal, MPAID graduates who applied the PDIA concepts they learned in MLD103 to their work in Meghalaya, India. In this episode, Rebecca and Prateek discuss how they…Continue Reading New Podcast: Applying PDIA in Meghalaya, India
Problems in the public sector are numerous. It is an arena where critique is constant, mistakes are magnified, success is taken for granted, and the risk of failure has public consequences. In this complex landscape, how do you pivot from finger-pointing positions of ‘winner-loser’ and ‘we-they’ to creating a learning environment of “us?” Is failure…Continue Reading Event: Learning, Failure, and Blame in the Public Sector
We have released a new episode in our podcast series A Decade of Building State Capability. In this episode, BSC Director Salimah Samji interviews Cara Myers, who we met in 2018 when she took our MLD103 class as an MPAID student at the Harvard Kennedy School. In this episode, Cara discusses her work with Mozambique…Continue Reading New Podcast: Applying PDIA in Mozambique
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…Continue Reading Event: They Eat Our Sweat: Transport Labor, Corruption, and Survival in Urban Nigeria
Guest blog by Yaveneshaa Madurai, LEG’23 The Harvard Kennedy School Leading Economic Growth (LEG) programme challenged me in quite a different way, than I’m ‘used to’. As a Strategist, I’m used to delivering things that are ‘neatly processed’ – you choose your ‘weapon of choice’ (a previously developed strategy model by one of the ‘gurus’,…Continue Reading The developing world needs to get ‘shoveling’
