Building State Capability

Welcome to the Harvard Center for International Development’s Beyond COVID podcast. This podcast is a series of conversations with CID faculty experts on various key dimensions of COVID response and recovery. Our goal with these conversations, and with CID’s Beyond COVID research initiative, is to make use of lessons learned and capitalize on emergent innovations sparked by the pandemic in order to address losses and reimagine global development in the post-COVID era.

On March 3, 2022, we were joined by Walter Willett, Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. CID Student Ambassador Kerianne DiBattista sat down with Walter to discuss nutrition, climate change, and COVID-19.

Nutrition, Climate Change, and COVID-19

Join Harvard University's Center for International Development for the inaugural episode of 2024’s Road to GEM podcast series, setting the stage for CID's annual conference, which this year focuses on gender and development. In this episode, CID Executive Director Fatema Z. Sumar and Research Fellow Mara Bolis engage in a thought-provoking conversation about gender and international development—reflecting on the sector's progress, current status, and the path ahead. Drawing from their extensive field experiences, Fatema and Mara offer compelling perspectives on the necessary actions to shape a future where every individual, regardless of gender, can thrive. 
Hosted by Evy Peña, MPA student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Centering Gender in International Development

HKS Professor Thomas Patterson, author of an ongoing series of reports out of the Shorenstein Center on the media's coverage of the 2016 election cycle, discusses what he sees as troubling consequences of how the press approaches reporting on the campaign.

How the Press Covers the Election | PolicyCast

Salimah Samji, CID's Building State Capability Program Director, interviews Matt Andrews, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and Lant Pritchett, Professor of the Practice of International Development at Harvard Kennedy School on their recently launched book "Building State Capability - Evidence, Analysis, Action". Michael Woolcock, Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School is also a co-author.
Recorded on the book launch event on February 13th, 2017.

The book uses data to identify failures in efforts to build state capability in development, employs theory to explain why these failures are common and likely to persist-keeping countries in capability traps--and builds on applied experience to offer a new approach to build state capability more effectively. 

‘Building State Capability provides anyone interested in promoting development with practical advice on how to proceed—not by copying imported theoretical models, but through an iterative learning process that takes into account the messy reality of the society in question. The authors draw on their collective years of realworld experience as well as abundant data and get to what is truly the essence of the development problem.’  Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University;

Building State Capability - Evidence, Analysis, Action

CID Student Ambassador Emily Ausubel interviews Salimah Samji, Director of the Building State Capability Program at Harvard University and Matt Andrews, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and Faculty Associate at the same  program. Matt and Salimah talk about how the Building State Capability program came about, explain us what is the Program’s core methodology and how it’s being applied by hundreds of practitioners worldwide.
Interview recorded on February 23rd, 2018
// cid.harvard.edu //
// bsc.cid.harvard.edu //

About Salimah Samji: Salimah Samji is the Director of the Building State Capability (BSC) Program. She has over fifteen years of experience working in international development, on issues of public service delivery, transparency and accountability, strategic planning, and monitoring and evaluation. She joined CID in 2012 to help create the BSC program and is responsible for strategic planning and oversight. Salimah also leads the PDIA online courses. 

Prior to joining CID, she was an independent consultant working for the World Bank on issues of governance, and the Hewlett Foundation on strategic planning for one of their grantees. She has worked as a senior program manager at Google.org, leading a transparency and accountability initiative focused on empowering citizens and decision makers, by making information on service delivery outcomes, publicly available. Salimah has also worked at the World Bank as a social/rural development and monitoring and evaluation specialist in South Asia. 

She has a Bachelor of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo (Canada) and a Masters in Public Administration in International Development (MPAID) from the Harvard Kennedy School. She is a qualified Casualty Actuary who decided to change careers after her 18-month experience working in Afghan refugee camps with a Canadian NGO (FOCUS Humanitarian Assistance) based in Pakistan. Salimah has worked and lived in Kenya, India, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Canada and the USA. 
 
About Matt Andrews: Matt Andrews is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy. His research focuses on public sector reform, particularly budgeting and financial management reform, and participatory governance in developing and transitional governments. Recent articles focus on forging a theoretical understanding of the nontechnical factors influencing success in reform processes. Specific emphasis lies on the informal institutional context of reform, as well as leadership structures within government-wide networks. This research developed out of his work in the provincial government of Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa and more recently from his tenure as a Public Sector Specialist working in the Europe and Central Asia Region of the World Bank. He brings this experience to courses on public management and development. He holds a BCom (Hons) degree from the University of Natal, Durban (South Africa), an MSc from the University of London, and a PhD in Public Administration from the Maxwell School, Syracuse University.

Doing Development Differently: The Building State Capability Program and the PDIA Methodology

Building State capability program Director, Salimah Samji, interviews Matt Andrews, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School on the first report of the PDIA in Practice Series. The Series will cover a few of the research engagements done by the Building State Capability program in the past 8 years, and detail what results emerged, what we learned, and what were the next steps for each of these engagements. The first report covers the team’s experience working with officials in Mozambique’s public financial management sector, between September and December 2009.
Interview recorded on June 6th, 2018.

// More about the PDIA in Practice Series: // https://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/pdia-inform-budget-reform-mozambique

About Matt Andrews: Matt Andrews is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy. His research focuses on public sector reform, particularly budgeting and financial management reform, and participatory governance in developing and transitional governments. Recent articles focus on forging a theoretical understanding of the nontechnical factors influencing success in reform processes. Specific emphasis lies on the informal institutional context of reform, as well as leadership structures within government-wide networks. This research developed out of his work in the provincial government of Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa and more recently from his tenure as a Public Sector Specialist working in the Europe and Central Asia Region of the World Bank. He brings this experience to courses on public management and development. He holds a BCom (Hons) degree from the University of Natal, Durban (South Africa), an MSc from the University of London, and a PhD in Public Administration from the Maxwell School, Syracuse University.

Informing Budget Reform in Mozambique: The Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation Approach

On this week’s podcast, Salimah Samji, Director of the Building State Capability program at CID and Tim McNaught, Building State Capability Fellow, have a conversation about the recently launched PDIAtoolkit. 

// download the PDIAToolkit at www.bsc.cid.harvard.edu //
Interview recorded on October 24, 2018.

About the PDIAtoolkit: The PDIAtoolkit is designed to guide you through the process of solving complex problems which requires working in teams. We call it a Do-it-Yourself (DIY) kit, where the ‘you’ is a committed team of 4-6 people mobilized to work together to solve a complex problem that cannot be solved by one person.

Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), is a step-by-step approach which helps you break down your problems into its root causes, identify entry points, search for possible solutions, take action, reflect upon what you have learned, adapt and then act again. It is a dynamic process with tight feedback loops that allows you to build your own solution to your problem that fits your local context.

The PDIAtoolkit draws from two key resources. The first is the Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action book which is available as a free download and the second is a set of short videos explaining the key concepts of PDIA.

While the PDIA process is not linear, we recommend that you first read this toolkit in sequence to understand the steps. The toolkit has eight sections. Each section introduces a new concept and has one or more worksheets which are the tools to help you try PDIA for yourself. All the tools are dynamic and should be reviewed and adapted on a regular basis.

We hope that you find this toolkit useful and wish you the best on your PDIA Journey.

This is an open access publication, available online and distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution –Non Commercial –No Derivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

PDIAtoolkit: A DIY Approach to Solving Complex Problems

Salimah Samji, Building State Capability Program Director talks to Anjikwi Mshelbwala, who took the PDIA online course offered by the Building State Capability Program in the Fall of 2017. 
Anjikwi, an ICT Officer at ActionAid talks about his experience applying the insights from the program in his native Nigeria and describes how the learnings he got from the course have helped him solve complex development problems ever since.
***
- Learn more about CID's Building State Capability Program at: https://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/
- Download the free PDIA toolkit at: https://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/PDIAtoolkit
- Download the Building State Capability book at: https://bsc.cid.harvard.edu/building-state-capability-evidence-analysis-action

View the transcript for this episode here: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/files/Transcripts/Transcript-JPDIA%20Alumni%20Solving%20complex.pdf

PDIA Alumni Series: Solving complex development problems in Nigeria

The Building State Capability (BSC) program at CID uses the Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) approach to help organizations develop the capability to solve complex problems and to implement public policies. PDIA is a process of facilitated emergence, which focuses on problems (not solutions) and follows a step by step process (not a rigid plan) that allows for flexible learning and adaptation.

Today on CID’s Speaker Series podcast, Anna Mysliewic, student at the Harvard Kennedy School, interviews Salimah, who discusses the challenges and experiences BSC has faced when implementing PDIA in the field. Salimah draws on examples from BSC’s work in Albania and Sri Lanka, as well as the recent launch of the PDIAToolkit, a Do-it-Yourself kit for teams to use when solving complex problems.

To learn more about PDIA: bsc.cid.harvard.edu
Download the PDIAToolkit (in English and Spanish): bsc.cid.harvard.edu/PDIAtoolkit 

Interview recorded on March 1, 2019.

About Salimah Samji: Salimah Samji is the Director of Building State Capability (BSC). She has more than 15 years of experience working in international development on the delivery of public services, transparency and accountability, strategic planning, monitoring, evaluation and learning. She joined CID in 2012 to help create the BSC program. Today, she is responsible for providing vision, strategic leadership, oversight and managing projects and research initiatives. Salimah also leads BSC’s work on digital learning.

Before joining CID, she was an independent consultant working for the World Bank on issues of governance, and the Hewlett Foundation on strategic planning for one of their grantees. She has worked as a senior program manager at Google.org, leading a transparency and accountability initiative focused on empowering citizens and decision-makers, by making information on service delivery outcomes publicly available. Salimah has also worked at the World Bank as a social/rural development and monitoring and evaluation specialist in South Asia.

She has a Bachelor of Mathematics from the University of Waterloo (Canada) and a Masters in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) from the Harvard Kennedy School. She is a qualified Casualty Actuary who changed careers after working for 18 months in Afghan refugee camps with a Canadian NGO (FOCUS Humanitarian Assistance) based in Pakistan. Salimah has worked and lived in Kenya, India, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Canada and the USA.

View the transcript for this episode here: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/files/Transcripts/Transcript-PDIA%20in%20action.pdf

PDIA in Action: Challenges & Experiences

Originally recorded on December 4, 2020.

Carolina Sanchez-Paramo, Global Director of Poverty & Equity Global Practice at the World Bank, continues her discussion after a virtual CID Speaker Series event on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic crisis on households, which are significant, pervasive, and worsening in some cases. The design and implementation of an effective policy response requires that decision makers have access to timely information about who is affected and how. With COVID-19 having brought traditional data collection efforts to a halt, last spring the World Bank launched an unprecedented data collection effort aimed at filling this critical information gap. As part of this effort, phone surveys are currently under implementation or preparation in over 100 countries to obtain real-time information on the socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic on households and individuals. 

Carolina Sanchez is the Global Director of Poverty & Equity Global Practice at the World Bank. In her talk, she drew from from this data and other analysis to present the latest evidence on the poverty and distributional impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic crisis.

Emerging Evidence On The Socio-Economic Impacts Of COVID-19 On Households

Incredible progress has been made throughout the world in recent years. However, globalization has failed to deliver on its promises. As problems like unequal access to education and healthcare, environmental degradation, and stretched finances persist, we must continue building on decades of transformative development work.

The Center for International Development (CID) is a university-wide center based at the Harvard Kennedy School that seeks to solve these pressing development problems—and many more.

At CID, we believe leveraging global talent is the key to enabling development for all. We teach to build capacity, conduct research that guides development policy, and convene talent to advance ideas for a thriving world. Addressing today’s challenges to international development also requires bridging academic expertise with practitioner experience. Through collaborative, in-country partnerships, CID’s research programs, faculty, and students deploy an analytical framework and context-dependent approaches to tackle development problems from all angles, in every region of the globe.

Building State Capability - Evidence, Analysis, Action

Harvard Center for International Development

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