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​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Governance course part 3

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In this final session 3, we want to build on Session 2 and go a step further. If you have established a project on governance or integrated governance, what is helpful to "manage" them? In particular we want to discuss, how to dialogue with both donors and partner government, how to adapt programs to changing contexts and how to monitor and report on governance. 


​Policy Dialogue ​

If we agree that development challenges are governance challenges - that are always political - there is always a need to engage in policy dialogue. With policy dialogue we mean the active engagement in processes of changing regulatory and institutional frameworks, programmes, and plans and budget allocations that shape existing policy and activities. Policy dialogue can address change in different sectors like health, education, water, climate change, or in the overall governance system, either at a very local, national or international level. Here we have summarised the different ways >>!<<how policy dialogue can either be led or supported>>!<<.

Together with some network members, we have collected examples of how policy dialogue can be planned and structured. On page 7 of this example from the Cooperation Office in Moldova you can fill out a simple template in order to plan your policy dialogue. If you have done a good Political Economy or similar analysis, the planning of the policy dialogue should not be such a hustle for you.

What is more difficult than planning and implementing policy dialogues is showing that one had an impact on a certain policy development. This guide shows you how to measure it, and this is one of the few studies that really measured impact.

In this short video, the cooperation office in Ukraine exemplifies, how they have engaged in donor coordination for their year-long decentralisation project: 




And in this short video, with the cool title “forget about the flags”, Lukas Lüscher explains how they set up a donor coordination mechanism in Armenia:  





Adaptive Management 

Also, if we agree that governance programs are designed and implemented in contexts that are complex, dynamic and unpredictable, we need specific management approaches that allow for this. We assume that a governance intervention cannot be charted out through a pre-set model. Instead, reaching the desired outcomes requires a combination of best guesses, learning by doing, and subsequent adjustments based on revisions to a theory of change. We have prepared a short summary on what >>!<<adaptive management>>!<< is and how to integrate it into your program.  

The practices of Adaptive Management are relatively new to SDC. Therefore, together with SDC Quality Assurance, we have created an overview of the state of play in the organisation, and we have mapped out some examples. It is fair to say that the knowledge and reserach within the field of adaptive managment is still evolving. This can be seen for example reading this interesting blog entry​​. Also we will stay tuned and are happy if you discuss with us about your experiences. 



Institutional monitoring and reporting

While there is a need to monitor the context and adapt to changes within it, demands to monitor our program come from other sources as well: As a Swiss government actor we report and are accountable to the Swiss parliament (i.e. our citizens), and to other donors or the partner governments. Read about the >>!<<different levels of monitoring at SDC>>!<<.

As SDC, we report on the Swiss International Cooperation Strategy which has defined three sub-objectives related to governance:  


  • Sub-objective 8: Prevent conflict, promote peace and respect for international law (link with SDGs 5 and 16)  
  • Sub-objective 9: Strengthen and promote human rights and gender equality (link with SDGs 4, 5, 10 and 16)  
  • Sub-objective 10: Promote good governance and the rule of law; and strengthen civil society (link with SDG 16).  


Institutionally, we differ between two kinds of monitoring: ​

First, the Policy Marker, which specifies how much we commit and spend on governance with a small G and a big g (see Checklist). If you work on governance as a sector, please tick the box “governance principal". In order to report on working on governance as a transversal theme, you are kindly asked to either tick the box “governance principal" (if you think it is really about water governance) or “governance significant". Never ever even dare to work on a project that does not include governance aspects 😊 - this is why we are not introducing the third possible category “not targeted".  

Secondly, the Aggregated Reference Indicators (ARI) as well as the Thematic Reference Indicators (TRI), which help us to report on results​. On this site of the Quality Assurance Shareweb you can filter all ARI/TRIs according to the Theme Governance and find all our indicators in one click. If possible, we are happy if you choose to report both in your Country Program and/or in your projects on at least some of these indicators, as it helps us to grasp the "bigger picture" of results when working on governance priorities and transversal governance. 

Issam Zayed tells us about what it meant for him to integrate governance as a transversal theme in the humanitarian projects in Jordan and Lebanon: [Video coming soon]




take away

Be flexible 😊 and don’t forget to monitor what you do. Monitor to learn more about your ever-changing context! Monitor to adapt your program in this context! And finally, monitor to help us as an institution to be accountable to our people.






This was the last and final self-paced online Sessions, we are looking forward to exchange with you soon!



Where to go next -->​
Session TWO​
Course overv​iew
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