In 2005, I had been living for over two years, in Kampong Thom, central Cambodia. I was working on community development and local governance participation in local governance in a GTZ (now GIZ) rural development programme. I also worked on my PhD research on education decentralisation and community participation in school management, which I did […]
My discovery of systems through the words of Jane Jacobs Read More »
I listened before the Christmas break to an episode of One and Tooze, which had a segment about AI and the latest release by OpenAI\’s ChatGPT
Five development questions to ChatGPT Read More »
What does it mean for a government to invest and research megatrends? How does it help to prepare the governance system of tomorrow? To what extent are megatrends taken into consideration in international development research and programming? I have met Elina Kiiski– Kataja and Tony Addison at the Oodi Library in Helsinki to discuss these questions.
Bees and the genetic technology that underpins research on bees is an illuminating window on our future and the complexity, politics, and uncertainty of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, has defined the 4IR as “the confluence of technological breakthroughs, covering wide-ranging fields such as
What bees have to do with the Fourth Industrial Revolution? Quite a lot, it turns out. Read More »
I was recently in Florence to meet the team at the UNICEF’s Office of Research-Innocenti and present & discuss some of the experiences of the Knowledge Sector Initiative in Indonesia. I was part of the implementing team during phase 1 from 2013-2017 leading the research and learning work of the programme. The Knowledge Sector Initiative is
I was in Helsinki last week for a presentation and discussion at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. This was part of the yearly Studia Generalia, a series of seminars organised by the Ministry and the Finnish Society for Development Research where researchers have the opportunity to meet staff of the Ministry and discuss various aspects
There is an interesting exchange mid-way through David Letterman’s interview to President Barack Obama on Netflix. Letterman asks President Obama about his reflection on policymaking and the role and power that the president actually has. Obama answer is quite illuminating in terms of the nature of policy change. Yes, he says, a lot of his time
Policy content change is one of the types of policy change, but not the only one Read More »
As I reread Duncan Green’s blog about an interesting conversation we had over a coffee few weeks ago in Brixton (How might a systems approach change the way aid supports the knowledge sector in Indonesia?), it occurred to me that I could add something. ‘Systems’, he writes, ‘evolve through the endless churn of variation, selection
The three components that can help system thinking in development programmes Read More »