Governance and Capacity Building

This is the first and most crucial sector helping to enhance governance in all the sectors and organisations we work. IPE believes that governance is much more than the mere absence of corruption – it is a philosophy of accountability. Our model of governance is based on the UNDP model as below:

Hence, good governance is a combination of 8 attributes ranging from Equity and Accountability to Transparency and Efficiency. Hence, we work at all the three levels of Institutional, Organisational and Individual development (capacity building) in order to bring about the change in systems, processes, skills, attitudes and services.

DFID’s White Paper “Making Governance Work for the Poor” (2006) describes accountability as ‘the ability of citizens, civil society and the private sector to scrutinise public institutions and governments and hold them to account”. A more recent Accountability Briefing by DFID (2008) proposes the Capability, Accountability and Responsiveness (CAR) framework that draws on the White Paper. It proposes that an effective state should follow the CAR framework as below:

The CAR framework focuses on three overlapping elements to form a virtuous cycle of governance:

Capability i.e. the extent to which leaders and governments are able to get things done and perform government functions
Accountability i.e. the ability of citizens, civil society and the private sector to scrutinise governments and hold them to account; and
Responsiveness i.e. the extent to which public policies and institutions respond to the needs of citizens and uphold their rights

We integrate all these concepts while working on projects related to governance and capacity building. To see a list of our projects in this practice area, please click here.

Some of the areas in which we have authoritative expertise and experience are:

Institutional Development

An institutional positioning for government units / agencies is important to ensure its independence, synergy and contribution. Hence, we help organisations address issues of institutional development, placement and convergence. It also involves setting up of systems, procedures and interaction mechanisms to ensure that the various players for a generic service work in a concerted manner for overall benefit to the people.

Decentralisation

A buzzword in recent times, we differentiate between 3 types of decentralization based on the level of involvement:

Deconcentration : transfer of authority, and responsibility to take independent decisions on operational issues.
Delegation : creation of autonomous units with a great deal of discretion in decision making.
Devolution : providing independent authority with responsibilities, resources and substantial autonomy

IPE works to help organisations and departments identiy the right model of decentralized authority and responsibility and builds systems, processes and reporting structures to ensure an optimal match of responsibility and oversight.

Organisational Development

This is blanket term for working within an organization to enhance its efficiency, effectiveness and ‘fit’ with the environment. In this, the first effort is to identify and diagnose the issues, make recommendations for improvement and finally implement the agreed recommendations. This includes the following services:

Review and restructuring of Organisation structure (as in the figure alongside, adapted from a 2003 OD study of Kolkata Municipal Corporation by IPE)

Business Process Re-engineering where we map out current processes and identify areas of efficiency enhancement, time saving and improved services. These mappings then lead us to redesign the system.

Systems designing: These are the enabling mechanisms to address some of the issues which may not have explicit norms or guidelines. Hence, we work to develop systems such as for human resource posting, transfers, reporting, monitoring and various business processes.

Capacity Building

We have a very different take on capacity building – for us its about capacity ‘enhancement’ as we believe all organisations have some capacity already existing. Our approach to capacity enhancement is hence incremental, keeping in mind the unique features of the organisations, systems and people. Some of the ways we address these are:

Training Needs Assessment: The start of any capacity building exercise needs a robust training needs assessment which provides an understanding of the needed skills, available skills and the skill gap which training (among other interventions) can address.

Training Strategy: Based on the TNA, we develop and suggest a training strategy which the department / agency can follow. This includes the training calendar, training agencies, institutional arrangements and module structure. We believe very strongly that knowledge is only one aspect of capacity building and hence we strive to cover all three constituents – knowledge, skills and attitude – in our training strategy.

Conducting Training: We have a strong availability of professional trainers and academicians who can develop modules, training courses and implement them in an interactive and engaging way.

Best Practice Visits: We believe that learning is about not seeing different things, but seeing the same things with different eyes. In order to facilitate this, we encourage best practice study trips and tours for various levels of officers and conduct these to make them an enjoyable learning experience.

Change Management

The biggest challenge which public sector organisations face is the issue of change. The knowledge and skills can still be imparted, it is in this ‘attitudinal’ change that the success of most initiatives rest. We understand the culture, psychology and belief systems of the public sector officials and professionals and work to make change as easy as possible for them. We follow J P Kotter’s eight steps to create change (see box alongside) ensuring that the change is brought about successfully and sustainably.

Eight steps to create change

Establish a sense of urgency
Create a guiding coalition
Develop a vision and strategy
Communicate the vision
Empower action
Generate short-term wins
Consolidate gains and produce more change
Institutionalize (sustain) new approaches

Adapted from Kotter JP. Leading Change 1996.

In sum…

It is a fact that almost all our projects are in some way or the other related to governance improvements and capacity building. Our purpose is to build capacity and reduce the need for continuing consulting support for that area. Our specialized knowledge on organisational, institutional and individual capacity building is a comprehensive solution to make change possible, plausible and successful in the public sector