Ethiopian Community of Practice on Managing for Development Results (Ethio-CoP-MfDR)

(Concept Note)
By: Tamirat Yacob1

Planning and Research Expert, Development Planning and Research Directorate, Ministry of Finance and Economic Development of Ethiopia; African Community of Practice on Managing for Development Results (AfCoP-MfDR) Co-founder and Internal Management Monitoring and Evaluation Team Leader. The opinions expressed are the authors and do not
necessarily reflect those of the Ethiopian Ministry or the AfCoP-MfDR.

June, 2010
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

1. Origin and Concepts of Managing for Development Results (MfDR) The 2004 Marrakech memorandum states that to steer the development process toward the goals they have defined, countries need stronger capacity for strategic planning, accountability in management, statistics, monitoring, and evaluation. In addition, the 2005 Paris Declaration (PD) rightly indicated that the capacity to plan, manage, implement, and account for results of policies and programmes, is critical for achieving development objectives from analysis and dialogue through implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Accordingly, one of the key messages from PD is the principle of Managing for Development Results. Managing for Development Results (MfDR) means focusing on development performance and on sustainable improvements in countries outcomes.2 The basic and founding principles of MfDR, agreed upon during the Second Roundtable on Managing for Results in 2004, are: focusing the dialogue on results at all phases of the development process; aligning programming, monitoring and evaluation with results; keeping measurement and reporting simple; managing for, not by, results; and, using results information for learning and decision making3.

MfDR is multidimensional, relating back to concepts on how to make international development more effective and results-oriented and to practical performance management tools. MfDR builds on several years of work by public sector institutions and development agencies, and reflects an emerging global consensus on the importance of performance measurement in international development. These agreed founding principles of MfDR and the experience partner countries have had called for knowledge and experience sharing community of practices on MfDR in Africa (AfCoP-MfDR), Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC-CoP-MfDR) and Asia Pacific Region (AsCoP-MfDR), respectively. The African regional platform, AfCoP-MfDR, established in 2007 and made up of over 1,000 members from more than 37 African countries, has a mission to build African capacity to manage for development results through sharing experiences, networking, and building strong learning relationships
2 3

2nd Annual General Meeting Summary report of the AfCoP-MfDR, 2008 Emerging Good Practices on MfDR, First Issue, OECD & the WB, 2006

between practitioners in Africa and around the world. Members of the AfCoP-MfDR strive to make their organizations more effective and accountable to ensure that the lives of their fellow citizens are improved. AfCoP members work for African governments, civil society, academia, the private sector, and as independent results experts in the field. AfCoP members praise the role of this community in their daily work. The AfCoP brings concrete culture changes in members organizations. As a result in the 2010 annual survey, 85.4 % of members indicated that the community was a useful and relevant resource and tool in achieving development results. To date, more than 604 subjects such as the following have been discussed online and during face-to-face meetings: Basics of Managing for Development Results (MfDR); Linking National Policy with the Budget; and, Challenges & Solutions to Creating an MfDR Culture in Africa. 1.1 Why is MfDR so important at this time? Overall, MfDR is important right development community needs: 1. A common collaboration; performance now because the international to facilitate

management

approach

2. A common language and set of concepts and terms to use when discussing development performance and progress toward outcomes; 3. A practical approach to achieving development outcomes that builds on concrete lessons learned; and, 4. Better approaches to creating management efficiencies in the international development process MfDR is not prescriptive and does not conflict with other approaches to results management or public sector performance management already in use around the world. Rather, it provides general principles and strategies that countries and development agencies can use to improve what they are already doing.

AfCoP-MfDR Information Document, 2010

2. Ethiopia in the MfDR Agenda: Experience

Regional and International

Ethiopia is one of the signatories of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005), and showed that the Government of Ethiopia is willing and committed to work on Aid effectiveness in collaboration with the development partners and hence promote Managing for Results. In regional activities, Ethiopia is one of the founding members and active participants in the African Community of Practice on Managing for Development Results (AfCoP-MfDR), and was able to attend all the annual meetings. This country has been a beneficiary of the opportunity to learn and share knowledge and emerging good practices and experience at the country and regional level. As Ethiopia has been able to mainstream the MfDR principles in the development process, it has been recognized as one of the countries with emerging good practice on Monitoring and Evaluation and integrating PRSPs and MDGs in the Planning process where it has won a marketplace of ideas poster competition in Hanoi, Vietnam in 2007. Moreover, in mainstreaming the MfDR principles the institutionalized Aid Management Platform (AMP) to align development partners and mobilize foreign resources has been selected as an emerging good practice and published on the 3rd Issue of Global Source Book Emerging Good Practices on Managing for Development Results5 in 2008; and, has been recognized as one of the most advanced countries in Statistical development work, where, for instance, the National Strategy for the Development of Statistics cited as an emerging good practice and selected for publication for the first ever AfCoP Casebook on MfDR in 2010. 3. Why a Community of Practice in Ethiopia - A National Chapter? Box 1: Definition: What is a CoP? Community of Practice (CoP)6: a group of people who share an interest, a craft, and/or a profession. The group can evolve naturally because of the members' common interest in a particular domain or area, or it can be created specifically with the goal of gaining knowledge related to their field. It is through the process of sharing information and experiences with the group that the members learn from each other, and have an opportunity to develop themselves personally and professionally7. CoPs can exist online, such as within discussion boards and newsgroups, or in real life, such as in a lunchroom at work, in a field setting, on a factory floor, or elsewhere in the environment. Because knowledge management is seen "primarily as a problem of capturing, organizing, and retrieving information, evoking notions of databases, documents, query languages, and data mining", the community of practice, collectively and individually, is considered a
5 6 7

A Publication of the OECD and the World Bank According to cognitive anthropologists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Lave & Wenger 1991

rich potential source of helpful information in the form of actual experiences; in other words, best practices. Even though great work has been done so far and great results achieved in country and at both the regional and international level, a great amount of work remains to be done with respect to promoting emerging good and attested practices we have in Planning, Budgeting, Statistics, Monitoring and Evaluation, Sector developments programs, etc. Intra and inter ministries, agencies, departments and division sharing of knowledge and emerging good practices should be harnessed and utilized efficiently so that the learning and the business process re-engineering we have started at the country level and mainstreaming of the MfDR become more successful and bring results to the ground and benefit the citizens. The inter and intra linkage of development experts and practitioners around a common interest and development agenda also plays a great role in facilitating and sustaining the economic, social and political growth of the country. In addition, it helps the knowledge and information flow in a more advanced and more professional way through expert led dialogues and debates. More specifically, through participation in the community, members establish norms and build collaborative relationships-mutual engagement. Through their interactions, they create a shared understanding of what binds them together. And, as part of its practice, the community produces a set of communal resource: a shared repertoire. As we know, strong community fosters interactions and encourages a willingness to share ideas. Besides, a domain of knowledge creates common ground, inspires members to participate, guides their learning and gives meaning to their actions. And in the community of practice, like ours, our specific focus around which the community develops would be Managing for Development Results, shares and maintains its core of knowledge. Wenger 2004, states that there is a benefit from shared knowledge that may lead to higher productivity and it is a means to capturing the tacit knowledge (knowing how), which is not so clearly articulated. Having a community of practice in Ethiopia helps to improve organizational/institutional performance by: Decreasing the learning curve of new employees; Responding more rapidly to customer needs and inquiries; Reducing rework and preventing "reinvention of the wheel"; and , Spawning new ideas for products and services. These principles and objectives demand the existence of a platform called a Community of Practice (CoP) on managing for development results at the national level (national chapter) where we solve our challenges together, share knowledge and create an easy information flow among ourselves; contribute to the five year Growth and Transformation Plan of the country by providing insightful solutions to challenges during implementation; bring in experts to the platform to share their experiences

and transfer knowledge, in addition to promote the countrys work at the regional and international development and Aid Effectiveness agenda. These and the potential value added of national CoPs as a unique network could help overcome the MfDR challenges at country level through enhancing a results culture, promoting leadership, strengthening country systems and supporting Paris declaration and Accra agenda for action implementation process. It also helps the country play, participate in the dialogue, learn and share experiences in the issues of South-South Cooperation (SSC) and Capacity Development (CD). Accordingly, the purpose of the Ethio-CoP-MfDR, as discussed above, is to provide a way for practitioners to share tips and best practices, ask questions of their colleagues, and provide support for each other. 4. Objectives and Aims of the Ethio-CoP-MfDR: As a community of practice is often organically created, the Ethio-CoP-MfDR has the following objectives and aims: The Ethio-CoP-MfDR would be associated with finding, sharing, transferring, and archiving knowledge (local and international best practice in the field), as well as making explicit "expertise", or tacit knowledge (knowing how) on MfDR and related thematic areas; Facilitate and contribute to ongoing the mainstreaming of the MfDR agenda for better results and successful implementation of the five year Growth and Transformation plan and the upcoming successive development plans; Combining all the key players in the country development process (representatives of Government, Parliament, Civil society, Academia, and Private sector), and for lobbying and advocating governments and donors Bring together and promote expertise networking among development practitioners and actors; Facilitate job flow and hence help experts to save time8 by conferring with members of the CoP. Therefore, Ethio-CoP-MfDR would help the members bridge the gap between knowing what and knowing how9. Help individuals and groups to share valuable organizational insights, to reduce redundant work, to avoid reinventing the wheel per se, to reduce training time for new employees, to retain intellectual capital as employees turnover in an organization, and to adapt to changing environments and markets; Create training and capacity development opportunities for members of the community in collaboration with development partners and other stakeholders;

Studies have shown that workers spend a third of their time looking for information and are five times more likely to turn to a co-worker rather than an explicit source of information (book, manual, or database) ; Davenport & Prusak 2000 9 Duguid 2005

Link with the AfCoP-MfDR and other networks of MfDR practitioners, policymakers and researchers within Africa, and with the larger global CoP-MfDR network already expanding in Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the rest of the world. There are many common lessons and principles in MfDR that when shared can provide insights and direction for its implementation and we can also share our emerging good practices.

5. Membership profile of the Ethio-CoP-MfDR: The proposed Community aims to identify key players in the promotion of development results in Ethiopia more effectively. This includes practitioners from Government line ministries; Parliamentarians; the Private Sector; Development partners; civil society and non-governmental organizations; Academia, research institutions and professional networks/ associations. And it basically draws experts in from strategic positions, policymakers, development planners, monitoring and evaluation specialists, researchers, development consultants, and others relating to improving management of public resources including the development partner community. As CoP membership changes and members may take on new roles within the community as interests and needs arise. It is worthy to bear in mind that membership is dependent on expertise - one should have at least some recent experience performing in the role or subject area of the CoPs activities and it shall target those who will make meaningful contribution in the enhancement of development results in the country. Members are encouraged to be member of the regional platform the AfCoP-MfDR. The Ethio-CoP will exist as long as the members believe they have something to contribute to it, or gain from it. 6. Structure and Composition of the Ethio-CoP-MfDR The following suggested Ethio-CoP-MfDR structure is not meant to impose a fixed structure but to allow the community to develop as it grows and designed to ensure that the community would evolve and accommodate timely changes as deemed necessary.

Sector Ministries and Agencies

Parliamentari ans/members
of Standing Committee/
Ethio-CoPMfDR

The Private Sector

Secretaria t
Academia, research institutions & Professional networks/ associations
Civil Society/Youth, women etc associations

Development Partners

Figure 1: Structure and Composition of the Ethio-CoP-MfDR 7. Governance Structure of the Ethio-CoP-MfDR The proposed governance structure shall for the time being, borrow heavily from the AfCoP structure. Members of the Core Management Team (CMT) who will be drawn from the Public Sector, the Private Sector and representatives from the development partners community active in development work will spearhead the process of establishing the Ethio-CoPMfDR in Ethiopia. The Ethio-CoP shall for all intent and purposes work as an affiliate of the AfCoP-MfDR. It is envisioned that a one day workshop convened for representatives from the different thematic/membership areas will be used to formally launch the Ethio-CoP-MfDR process in Ethiopia. The running of the community shall be vested in a Core Management Team (CMT) whose members shall be drawn from the different thematic/membership areas. There shall be representation on the CMT from each of the locally identified development sectors. The CMT shall maintain constant collaboration with all development partners; and development partners may attend CMT meetings. There shall be annual meetings of Ethio-CoP-MfDR bringing together all signed up and potential members to discuss progress and issues related to MfDR in Ethiopia.

The work of Ethio-CoP-MfDR shall be divided into operational thematic areas, and CMT members shall be assigned to manage the implementation of planned activities for each thematic area. The following is a guide as to the issues of focus for the thematic areas: Policy, Planning and Budgeting (including Public Finance Management) Statistics, Monitoring and Evaluation Capacity Development Accountability and partnership/ parliamentarians and civil society representatives/ Private Sector Development/Banking, Trade Unions, MFIs, including the role of public-private partnership and Collaborations/ Knowledge sharing and networking with AfCoP and other countryCoPs Fundraising for Ethio-CoP-MfDR Monitoring and Evaluation/Internal M&E/ of Ethio-CoP-MfDR activities Annual plans shall be developed around agreed and selected thematic areas; progress on implementation shall be reported on a regular and annual basis. The annual meetings shall include training sessions on new developments on MfDR, panel discussions and presentation of papers. 8. How the Ethio-CoP works The Ethio-CoP-MfDR network will work through e-discussions/via e-mail exchanges, using the existing AfCoP-MfDR platform website www.afcopmfdr.org, and creating blogs and links on available websites of line ministries and agencies/, dissemination of materials online, one-on-one mentorship and face to face dialogue. However, more emphasis will be given to face-to-face events as much as the availability of resources allows. The online network will provide a forum for MfDR practitioners to share knowledge, express concerns, exchange opinions, solicit insights, and develop practical solutions on MfDR in a timely and cost-effective manner, while focusing on practical problem-solving and hands-on use of results management techniques. And the Ethio-CoP-MfDR platform welcomes and allows different levels of participation10: 1) The Core group who participate intensely in the community through discussions and projects. This group typically takes on leadership roles in guiding the group; 2) The Active group who attend and participate regularly, but not to the level of the leaders; and, 3) The Peripheral group who, while they are passive participants in the community, still learn from their level of involvement.

10

Adapted from Wenger, 2002

Depending on the structure, non-Ethio-CoP-MfDR members may have access to reading the discussions and accessing other materials of the community rather than contributing to the discussion. 9. Conclusion and the Way forward Managing for Development Results is not a new concept and has been practiced in Ethiopia for long. The experiences we have in planning, budgeting, statistics, results-based monitoring and evaluation systems and other results-oriented activities are immense. Different initiatives and reforms have been undertaken by the government and the idea of results based management and performance based management, which are MfDR concepts, are taking the center stage and getting the emphasis it deserves in the countrys development work recently and it is high time citizens are clamouring for results and there is a strong political will and championship for the enhancement of transparency and accountability in the delivery of public services in the country. The Business Process re-engineering is one good example of that. Besides, the need for knowledge sharing and learning from emerging good practices and are recognized as a way to facilitate and fasten the development process in the country. In light of that the Ethio-CoP-MfDR envisages to take part in these efforts and play its role in facilitating and deep-rooting the results agenda at all level. In addition, it would emphasize the need for a greater shift of orientation from the traditional implementation-focused monitoring of development to a more results-based monitoring and evaluation thinking in terms of the most desired effects expected from policies, programmes and projects known as outcomes and impacts. As the success of the Ethio-CoP-MfDR depends on its purpose and objectives as well as the interests and resources of the members, the members and the secretariat will take the following actions to cultivate the CoP and insure its sustainability and continuity. 1. The community will be allowed to evolve naturally: as the nature of a CoP is dynamic, in that the interests, goals, and members are subject to change, the forum(s) will be designed to support shifts in focus. 2. Opportunities will be created for open dialog within and with outside perspectives: while the members and their knowledge are the CoPs most valuable resource, it is also beneficial to look outside of the CoP to understand the different possibilities for achieving the learning goals. 3. Both public and private community spaces will be developed: while it typically operates in public spaces where all members share, discuss and explore ideas, it will also offer private exchanges. Different members of the CoP could coordinate relationships among members in an individualized approach based on specific needs.

4. Major focus will be on the value of the community: because it creates opportunities for participants to explicitly discuss the value and productivity of their participation in the group. 5. The Community will combine familiarity and excitement: it would offer the expected learning opportunities as it is part of its structure (See Section 4 above), and opportunities for members to shape their learning experience together by brainstorming and examining the conventional and radical wisdom related to their topic. 6. Finding and nurturing the regular rhythm for the CoP: the Ethio-CoP would coordinate a thriving cycle of activities and events that allow for the members to regularly meet, reflect, and evolve. And hence, the rhythm, or pace, would maintain an anticipated level of engagement to sustain the vibrancy of the community.