thinking: relating- celebrating :-)

At last, we seem to have a Cabinet Minister that fully listens to advisers and the public. Full kudos to David Cunliffe who is one of the key government ministers to really understand the most significant issues in his portfolios.

Even better, he “gets” the shape of realistic outcomes for a knowledge based future as well as driving the Telecom broadband shake-out for example.  The broadband smackdown quite possibly has the single largest impact for future business on our “small rock in the Pacific (Thanks Rod).

Cunliffe is a future NZ Prime Minister in my opinion; and you read it here first. His portfolios are listed below.

• Communications - Minister,
• Economic Development - Associate Minister,
• Immigration - Minister,
• Information Technology - Minister

The reason for the excitment is the appointment of David Sheppard to this realpolitik position; (although hard to tell from this yawn PR piece quoted just below.) 

“The Industry Capability Network has appointed industry veteran David Sheppard its first full-time ICT advisor. ICN, a business unit of Trade and Enterprise, was established to help companies realise their potential through access to local opportunities that grow their scale and capability, providing a foundation to move into global markets.”

I was fortunate to be at an informal group meeting with David Sheppard last week when he revealed himself to be a straight shooter with clear and pragmatic objectives for the new role.

Having personally worked on most of the egovernment bids and many other tender processes in this sector, it was refreshing to get some useful feedback.  Many of my clients have written off the government tender process as a waste of effort and that looks set to change for the better.

Sheppard offered some tips and pointers on how to improve our chances of shortlisting and gaining mindshare from the various stakeholders. These are my brief meeting notes and not direct quotes, however I trust they give an indication of the flavour and direction for this new ICN role.

Among the list were items like:

1.  Many government bodies loathe the Tender process as much as we do
2.  It is OK to trust the MNC (Multi National companies.) A real partnership with such vendors improves both our and their chances of winning; and they need local content and innovation as well.
3.  If your response doesn’t comply – don’t expect to be considered. Put that extra content in the appendix – but don’t disqualify yourself. Bidding for government work is a slow and expensive process - make sure you don’t penalise your own team. 
4.  Innovation and creativity is respected and prescriptive formats are more for reasons of safety than policy. Be innovative – but partner with a big buddy to cover the potential risks.
5.  Talk to solution architects where you can about policies and preferences  as the CIO’s are more business oriented and rely on analysis from senior solution advisors.
6.  If there is a problem – can you/we afford to fix it – which is why MNC’s are part of the answer.
7.  Remember that THE key question is ‘will this project embarass the (relevant) Minister?’ – risk management is always part of the background capability assessment.
8.  Check the criteria weighting on each tender. For example a positive sustainability angle may win you the deal. Sustainability as an issue is getting more important than ever.
9.  Help with facilitating partnerships with Tier 1 company’s for larger deals and improved partnering practise generally.
10.   Govt CIO’s meet in Forums twice a year to talk about their plans for the coming year – so that annual plan type objective are known in advance. (Thanks Ray)

There were also some other important policy improvements mentioned, which still require Cabinet approval and the direction of those changes is extremely significant.  The informal response from our meeting was - that we can expect much better results going forward if these new policies get the traction they deserve.

N.B – If Sheppard phones you for some of your valuable insight – take the call. This is a positive step forward for government procurement policy and Sheppard is empowered to get results.

The Industry Capability Network website is the place for updates on this policy change.

Also keep some free time for this upcoming event.

“The Digital Future Summit 2.0 on 28-29 November will explore how this country can maximise “being digital” to address the challenges of becoming a high-tech, high-value, creative economy and society.

Chief executives, and senior business and community leaders are urged to engage with this ‘call to action,’ which will result in a refreshed Digital Strategy for 2008 and beyond. ”  

Hope and justice means ‘getting your feet wet’ and sometimes, that can be extremely uncomfortable. (*from 12 Good Hours of Daylight)

After my last development post, some readers commented on the less desirable consequences of aid. Pointing out how we like to do these things, but the reality on the ground can be vastly different. We don’t really want well meaning charities simply handing resources into the hands of less altruistic local elites who can cynically manipulate the system.

The question is – how to sidestep the murky politics and get help directly to the people who need it the most?

In fact, there is growing disquiet with the way that aid programmes are impacting around the world and a growing debate about the impacts - positive and negative. The extreme message from some is that we should even stop some of these aid programmes.

“The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good” and argues they should just stop as discussed at Marc Andreessen’s new blog from an much earlier interview in 2005.

P.J O’Rourke once described government as, other people spending other peoples money with no real thought to the consequences because it was, after all OPM.

“A politician who portrays himself as “caring” and “sensitive” because he wants to expand the government’s charitable programs is merely saying that he’s willing to try to do good with other people’s money. Well, who isn’t?”

At TED Global (June 2007 in Arusha, Tanzania) there was heated disagreement between Bono and Ugandan Andrew Mwenda on the politics of aid.

Where does the government money go? He argues that it goes disproportionately – roughly 25% of the Ugandan national budget – to “public administration”, in other words, “mostly patronage”. He points to 70 government ministers and 114 presidential aides, “who never see the president except on television… and then the President advises him, not the other way around.” There’s 333 members of parliament – “you need Wembley Stadium to hold our parliament.” Mwenda believes that cutting international aid would force governments to cut their own spending and address these core questions like corruption.

In a brighter moment, Madame Okonjo-Iweala told her own story about a doctor saving her sister’s life -”When someone is saving a life, you don’t care that it’s aid – you want the person to be alive” and urges us to do business with Africa instead.

To quote from a previous TED speaker Asraf Ghani (talking about Afghanistan)

“The aid system is broken,” says Ashraf Ghani in his powerful, reform-oriented talk. He discusses how to mobilize capital for state-building; why technical assistance fails; and why classic economic theory proved useless in Afghanistan, which is “dominated by the drug economy and a mafia.”

He emphasizes the necessity of investment (“A dollar in private investment is equal to 20 dollars of aid”) and design ingenuity to rebuild broken states. And he offers a blueprint: the 10 key functions that a state should perform, from providing infrastructure to enforcing the rule of law…Afghanistan should not be approached as a charity, but as an investment “

Better infrastructure has been mentioned quite a few times, Iqbal Quadir (also on TED) makes the point that 1 mobile phone can make a huge difference in countries without much infrastructure. In his video presentation Iqbal Quadir explains why “aid does damages: because it empowers authorities instead of people,” and advocates a new approach to development from below, “by the people for the people.”

Microfinance and microenterprises programmes have been highly successful in transforming the geopolitical landscape in many of these countries. Even a simple thing like finding better ways to cook meals with cleaner burning fules can have a huge impact as Amy Smith’s story shows. (Fumes from indoor cooking fires kill more than 2 million children a year in the developing world.)

To put things into local perspective – this year in NZ we are talking about NZ$400m+ over the next budget period. Here are some comments on changes to NZ’s aid budgets from Paul Reynolds which is worth reading in full.

“Tucked away in the recent New Zealand budget was the welcome news that New Zealand had increased its aid and development contribution by $70 million.

The 20.2 per cent increase over the 2007/08 financial year was reported as being the biggest increase to Official Development Assistance (ODA) in decades, Over half the new funding will be spent in the Pacific, particularly in Melanesia, and Asia would also benefit.

The increase takes the New Zealand ODA to $429 million in 2007/08 or 0.30 per cent of gross national income (GNI). Further funding over the three following years would achieve 0.35 per cent by 2010/2011 and aid would have reached $601m.

This is in contrast with previous OECD figures which had NZ’s as one of the least generous of international donors, at US $257 million (NZ $361m) in 2006 – 0.27 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI). This in turn was reported as being far below the 0.46 per cent average effort by OECD countries and the no better than New Zealand achieved in 2005.”

I’d like to think that $400m and the private sector aid programmes are doing the very best they can – and that the unintended consequences are minimised as far as possible.

One great example of NZ aid that works, are these two water supply projects in Mongolia and Cambodia by sustainable engineering consultancy Synergine and a prominent NGO.

Intriguingly, a man described as “New Zealand billionaire Stephen Jennings is turning his focus from Russia’s oligarchs to new assets in Africa where his investment bank Renaissance Capital plans to double its investments to $1.3 billion this year.” Jennings also noted that “Africa’s longest expansion in more than three decades was fuelling demand for capital from overseas.”

It could be worth tracking these RenCap projects. Not all trade is positive, just as not all aid is negative. Person to person (p2p) microfinance for example works.

Microenterprise programmes seem to be the most successful. More debate is welcome on the role of trade which comes from Kofi at Annansi Chronicles.

See also my post at Idealog on Hans Rosling and gapminder software which shows new ways to present numbers to effect policy change. (The s/w makes it easy to view trends at country level for example.) See Granta on African voices and Jennifer Brea

As Derek Lind puts it in his song ‘Hope & Justice’ – be careful what you pray for – you gonna get your feet wet. Hope and justice take commitment and results take real effort.

“That puddle on the mosaic floor
Might just be what you’re praying for
It might be justice dripping at your feet
It might be justice be careful what you speak
You pray justice come rollin’ like a river
It’s a sure-fire bet – gonna get your feet wet“

I’d guess that most people want to see aid programmes continue – but how to make sure that the aid gets to those who need it most; and does so in a way that encourages local enterprizes and self help is the dilemma.

What do you think about the role of development aid? Can we do better?
development aid TED.com microenterprise TEDGlobal

In the past few weeks I have heard from two friends who are relocating to Rwanda and Kazakhstan respectively. After the initial surprise, I wondered why and what the reasons were for making these big changes for both of these friends and their families. I also wondered:

a) Was it something I/we said?
b) I have interesting friends?
c) What can I/we do to help out if they need help in their new countries?

I have long had personal interest in development aid along the lines of self help projects and “teach a man how to fish” lines. I have very mixed feelings about the impact of globalisation and for more than 10 years now have been reading up on the topic.

Some of my key reading has been books like

• “The Future of Capitalism” by Lester Thurow, 1996;
• Peter Druckers “Post Capitalist Society” 1993, & “Management Challenges for the 21st Century” from 1999
• “The Case Against the Global Economy” essays edited by Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith, 1996;
• “Building a Win-Win World – Life Beyond Global Economic Warfare” by Hazel Henderson, 1996;
• “Banker to the Poor” by Muhammad Yunus, 1998;
• “One World Ready or Not” – The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism by William Greider, 1997;
• and various others by Peter Drucker, Kevin Kelly and others including
• Paul Omerod’s “Butterfly Economics” from 1998.

These have all contributed to a general sense of unease with the way that we as privileged consumers in the Western developed world act and the wider implications of this all. (Check the form to see where you rate on a global rich scale.)

In August ’05 I had the joy of hearing John Ralston Saul speak about his analysis of the global situation at the launch of his book “The Collapse of Globalism” and the Reinvention of the World. John Ralston Saul is articulate, persuasive and optimistic.

His speech was one of the most eloquent and useful summaries of what works, what doesn’t and more importantly why and what we can start to do about it. Naturally I had to have the book and quickly found out that it is not an easy read at all.

By that, I mean that each idea or argument requires careful thought and ultimately a commitment to personal change that we resist for all types of well intended reasons. (Full list of non fiction by Saul.)

Towards the end of the book, Saul quotes Barack Obama whom he caught early in his career at a speech in 2003..

“instead of having a set of policies that are equipping people for the globalisation of the economy, we have policies that are accelerating the most destructive trends of the global economy”

Saul points out the similarities to ideas from Adam Smith and continues his thesis

“that the globalist crisis has been caused by a mixture of of idealogy, which should only be taken half seriously and bad management, which ought not to be have been taken seriously at all.”

Anyway, my perception is that the debate on balanced development, and what that means globally and locally is a debate worth having and so starting this week we have a new category on development.

I will continue to write about other topic areas but sometimes you just have to go where your heart is.

So to Peter in Rwanda and Tim in Kazakhstan – thanks for your example and we wish you all the best in your new adventures. Here’s to the reinvention of the world on a personally meaningful and global basis.