Nearly two years ago, I was part of a team that drafted the background
paper on governance, justice and human rights for the current Seventh Five
Year Plan of the Government of Bangladesh.
Bangladesh still drafts a Soviet/ Indian style Five Year Plan, as led by
the Planning Commission of the government.
This experience presented valuable lessons on planning, and
especially how to think about the value of a planning exercise. Ex ante, one would think this planning
document is the master plan, directing practically all government initiatives
related to development. This is incorrect,
as is the case with most planning documents. This is not to say that the
document is useless; instead, it requires a different conception of the function
of a planning document. To explain this,
let me present some important contextual realities.
First, I quickly realized that there is a major issue in
terms of implementation. I thought that, to provide some context and
accountability, I should dedicate a section of the paper to a stocktaking of
what had been completed under the Sixth Five Year Plan. The results were not encouraging. Of the 72 activities related to governance,
justice and human rights that appeared, just 13 had been completely
implemented, 38 had been partly completed, and 21 had not even begun to be
implemented. Granted, these topics – governance, justice
and human rights – tend to be a difficult and contentious area. But this is a rather mediocre track record.
Second, I realized that the process for generating the plan
does not generate sufficient ownership. After
starting the paper, I learned that the main Five Year Plan is written by an
outside think tank for the government, then goes through an extensive review by
the government. This process clearly
raises concerns regarding ownership by the ministries involved. One such concern is first mover advantage: as
long as the planned action – planned being the operative word – was not somehow
controversial, it was quite possible it would remain in the document. But if the idea didn’t stem from the
responsible ministry, it’s quite possible the action would be tolerated in the
plan, but with no intention of following through. Ideally, a given ministry composes the
relevant section of the overall plan, to ensure ownership. Simply having the ability to edit an outside
product is not sufficient to build on genuine intentions.
That said, we also realized that the plan is not the main
driving force behind government action, but it can help to serve as a
rationalization for action. If a
well-placed individual in government wants to implement an activity, then its
appearance in the Five Year Plan can further justify implementation. This became the priority in developing our
recommendations: identify genuine champions within the ministries, and if their
ideas had a reasonable possibility of generating positive results, strongly
recommend these actions.
The experience brings up serious questions about the value
of a plan in development organizations in general. In the technocratic development
practitioner’s view, a plan is made to set things in stone, then a budget and
implementation indicators are developed, the project is financed, and then
executed. However, this becomes ridiculous once one acknowledges two
realities. First, the implementing
organization – or the branch that implements - often feels little ownership
over the plan. Such plans are generally
developed by an outside consultant at the request of the funding organization,
with the funding organization hiring that person and financing the work. The consultant usually has little contextual
knowledge, and few days in which to develop the plan. Moreover, because the funding cycle takes so
long, this exercise may have been completed years before implementation begins;
further learning may have emerged, senior staff been replaced, and country
conditions transformed.
Second, unless the program is a routine development
intervention, everything changes once implementation begins. The plan may be
comprehensive with a substantial consultative process, but when things begin,
challenges emerge, and the intervention may prove to be ineffective.
To make matters worse, the financing bureaucracies face
difficulties in allowing for flexible implementation plans, at times demanding
that the implementing organization stick with it. In such cases, the implementing organization
often pretends to go through the motions, so as not to interrupt the flow of
resources; they may do so, even if they realize that the plan will not achieve
the targets. Moreover, the lack of
flexibility discourages innovation and the testing of a variety of approaches
to see what works.
All of this is to say that a more realistic planning
approach is needed. We shouldn’t simply
scrap plans, though they are sometimes useless.
Instead, a greater focus on process is needed, one that is long-term,
inclusive, and on-going, that provides the opportunity for revisions along the
way and for learning by doing. Ideas
such as flexible planning and the development of a learning organization (i.e.
the Fifth Discipline) should be taken up by both financing and implementing
bureaucracies. I haven’t found a good
example in development of flexibility that appears in this article
from Harvard Business School, but I’m curious to find one.
