Attachment_J.6_-_CDCS_2.0_GP_Annex_Overview.docx

CDCS II Guiding Principles

Role of the 15 Guiding Principles USAID/Uganda’s fifteen Guiding Principles are designed to assist the Mission in implementing, monitoring and adjusting the strategic approach and anticipated results outlined in the CDCS results framework and subsequent design, management and monitoring tools. Coupled with these other strategic elements, the guiding principles represent approaches – the ‘how’ of our work – that the Mission will apply across the portfolio, throughout the life of the strategy. These guiding principles are interrelated and mutually reinforcing to each other and to results outlined in the framework. As such, the Mission intends to actively apply all guiding principles to different areas of the strategy implementation, management, monitoring and adaptation throughout its lifecycle.

1. Apply a holistic approach to COLLABORATION, LEARNING & ADAPTING, as well as specific areas of focus for C, L and A. In CDCS 2.0, the Mission has crafted a strategy that represents the manifestation and the mandate for a next iteration of CLA and the ‘living strategy’ experience of USAID/Uganda in its first CDCS. While the intended results are clear, the pathways for achieving them recognizes the need for a program that is adaptive, flexible and responsive to shifts in the development context. It incorporates an intentional and explicit emphasis on ongoing analytical approaches that will serve to validate and/or inform adjustments at various levels, and is focused on addressing root causes to development challenges with a long-term horizon for change.

Within the strategy, the Mission proposes to continue pursuit of Collaborating, Learning and Adapting approaches in a manner that realizes the value of the inter-connectedness of CLA as expressed in its entirety and through the various activities, processes and behavior that support it, with direct application to programming throughout the Program Cycle, within the Mission and with USAID’s partner community. In addition, the Mission recognizes the need to focus on each element of Collaborating, Learning and Adapting, to more fully realize the potential of CLA:

Collaborating – internally to enable cross-sector integration, convergence and enhanced development results, as well as resilient, effective teams; externally to maximize limited USG resources, build trust and continuously engage in an inclusive manner with stakeholders.

Learning - intentional, systematic and resourced approaches to learning from data of all kinds, as well as drawing out tacit knowledge to inform better programming; at all levels of programming, as well as applied to management approaches, processes and staff engagement.

Adapting – enabling change at the activity, project and strategy level, while recognizing incentives and behavior change necessary for that adaptation to take place, and working to overcome counter-incentives that may work against change for better development outcomes.

The Mission also intends to further evolve and apply the various organizational development investments and activities in place to support the enabling environment that promotes ongoing organizational resilience, adaptive capacity, and – ultimately – effectiveness.

2. Pursue broad STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT throughout the program cycle. A close kin to both collaboration and partnership, a principle to highlight inclusive stakeholder engagement speaks to the Mission’s emphasis on building-in the time, resources, skills and tools that will allow for effective stakeholder consultation with a broad set of stakeholders (or ‘partners’) to inform project design, monitoring and management. This will include placing a premium on techniques that authentically shift the conversation such that USAID and its partners are increasingly listening to community needs, solutions and results (to inform USG investments), while simultaneously shifting leadership for community-led development.

3. Harness YOUTH-appropriate approaches so that they are included in all we do. Given the current demographic structure of Uganda’s population, incorporating positive youth development into USAID’s program strategies is critical not only to what some might see as the youth-centered intermediate results the Mission proposes to achieve in the course of the five-year strategy. Youth-engaging design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation are a key to the success of the entire program, and must be incorporated into all aspects of the Mission’s operationalization of the Program Cycle, across all program elements.

4. Infuse INCLUSIVE DEVELOPMENT – including but not limited to gender empowerment – throughout the portfolio. This strategy seeks to move well beyond gender-aware programming, and will prioritize analytical and design approaches, management and monitoring tools, staff and partner capacity building that seeks to incorporate an inclusive development approach for all programming. This approach will explore an array of interventions that best build upon available current and emerging evidence, the unique needs, dynamics and opportunities of a particular sector or system, as well important points of connectivity with issues related to youth, household and community-based strategies.

5. Seek to ‘DO BUSINESS DIFFERENTLY’ when current mechanisms, concepts, operations, tools do not work. This principle is closely related to an emphasis on innovation (described below), but particularly focused on USAID’s traditional methods and mindsets, the Mission will aim to re-conceptualize implementation approaches that might better achieve intended results, cultivating an acceptance of informed risk-taking beyond ‘typical’ implementation methods (e.g. piloting the use of new and more flexible procurement mechanisms, in-building a recognition and resourcing for USAID staff engagement, influence that goes ‘beyond the grant’), organizational structures (e.g. new teaming and cross-training methods for staff, collaborative monitoring methods with partners), and stakeholder engagement (e.g. community-led development tactics), for example. While not an end in itself, the Mission will invest – in time, resources, incentives for behavior change – in applications of the ‘Doing Business Differently’ idea, to test new ways of achieving development outcomes in more effective, efficient, inclusive and sustainable ways.

6. Prioritize PARTNERSHIPS that enable Ugandan-led development, while leveraging USAID’s limited resources. Prioritize transformational partnerships that enable Ugandan-led development, while to leveraging USAID’s limited resources - In order to achieve the critical progress that this strategy outlines for Uganda’s next five years, collaborations with partnership strategies that work closely with various types of institutions – non-profit, private sector, universities, foundations and others across private, public, civil society and others – will be a fundamental to advancing need of USAID’s work in Uganda. Prioritizing partnerships enables mobilization of their resources, expertise, and market-based solutions to improve social and economic conditions.

The Mission seeks to co-create with non-traditional partners to enable an inclusive environment that fully comprehends the landscape with which they work. In particular, only program strategies that fully take into account the current partner landscape, across these various actors, can capture what this strategy proposes in terms of systems-level assessment and engagement, facilitative approaches, and a long-term view.

7. Pursue INTEGRATED APPROACHES at various levels and across particular interventions when and how it makes sense in achieving better results. Uganda, USAID as an Agency, and various agencies and institutions in the international development field have recognized that given the complex (and complicated) contexts in which we work, and the depth and variation of drivers of poverty, for example, drive the need for integrated solutions to integrated issues. USAID/Uganda has seen important results in integrated programming within its OVC portfolio, vulnerable population programming, and health service delivery, for example, where services and interventions across traditional sectors, activities and implementing mechanisms. Indeed, research suggests there is a broad experience with integrated approaches, while there is limited evidence of the value-added effect of combining otherwise separate efforts to achieve shared results. Evidence and experience also point to the transaction and management costs associated with integrating otherwise stove-piped work streams, especially given the Agency’s funding, reporting requirements and management structures. Therefore, USAID/Uganda proposes to build upon the results in achieving greater results through integration when and how it makes sense, while employing explicit approaches to test and learn from these approaches over the course of the strategy.

8. Reinforce strategic choices with SELECTIVITY AND FOCUS in multiple dimensions. In line with the Agency’s ongoing commitment to the principle of ‘selectivity and focus’, USAID’s work in Uganda will have at its core a prioritization on ensuring that our work selects the most critical development issues that USAID has the capacity to address, at the most cause-based level possible, and applying our limited (and largely directed) resource envelope to programming. For this CDCS, selectivity and focus will also mean that USAID’s work fits even more clearly into the broader ecosystem of donors, GOU and private sector actors, and that the Mission keeps an active, explicit dialogue around that ever-shifting landscape. That ‘fit’, will be tested throughout the design process, but also built into ongoing efforts to strengthen efforts through existing mechanisms such as the donor working groups, but also through analytical tools such as systems mapping, described elsewhere.

With respect to geographic focus, and also as outlined above, the strategy has in-built approaches addressing the spatial definition of USAID’s work. This strategy incorporates a multi-tiered geographic focus, whereby the Mission: recognizes requirements of the initiatives and earmarks that prioritize certain geographic focus – most often in terms of needs-based drivers – in conjunction with funding streams; identifies new, opportunity-based approaches such as geographic selection based upon enhancing collaboration when co-location is apparent by designing in collaborative approaches that may enhance shared results; prioritizes urban centers as hubs for geographic focus in our cross-sectoral approaches, given critical urbanization trends; and in select ‘areas of intensity’, seeks household and community convergence for population segments and the areas in which they reside, recognizing the specific contextual factors that drive vulnerability and – in turn – may provide opportunities to build resilience.

9. Maintain a PROBLEM DRIVEN FOCUS, while ensuring all program approaches analyze and adjust to the local context, at whatever level required USAID/Uganda will prioritize the consistent interrogation of the problem analysis, as part of its living strategy approach. Furthermore, new design efforts, as well as management, monitoring and evaluation, will seek to promote methods by which USAID can better understand the root causes of development challenges, and ensure our approaches are addressing them whenever possible. As part of this, the Mission will prioritize a deeper contextual knowledge of the various cultural, social and historical dimensions, for example, that generate, characterize and/or provide incentives (or counter-incentives) to progress in key areas of Uganda’s development. In particular, the Mission and its partners will invest in processes, expertise and analysis that seeks to capture the dynamics of the landscape, regional and tribal differences that might contribute to or work against USAID’s intervention.

10. Build in – not ‘bolting on’ -- SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION. Under its STIP guiding principle, the Mission will seek to do the following across its portfolio throughout the life of the CDCS: identify high-impact development innovations and increase their adoption, with the long-term goal of scaling proven solutions; increase the use of rigorous evidence to design better development solutions through research, scientific tools, and analyses; advance the use of enabling technologies and data-driven approaches to empower underserved communities; and seek to do business differently in order to achieve greater development impact by applying the best modern tools, approaches and innovations to tackle Uganda’s toughest challenges.

11. Apply a FACILITATION APPROACH to development, minimizing direct service provision over time. In line with USAID Uganda’s goals and intended results, an ongoing emphasis will be put on applying a ‘light touch’ to strengthen local systems – including various institutions, relationships, actors – to the benefit of all Ugandans; at the same time recognizing the need for direct services and systems ‘reboots’ when the current systems are simply failing, beyond repair.

12. Emphasize OPERATIONAL considerations throughout the strategy life-cycle. In the development of the strategy itself, USAID Uganda placed a high premium on the process, along with the final product; in addition, management challenges, opportunities and considerations have been prioritized as a fundamental aspect of the strategy itself, in order to assure there is not a disconnect between the Mission’s vision for a five-year strategy, and the resources, management structures and operational elements necessary to implement it. This principle speaks to the ongoing process and prioritization to ensure this alignment throughout the strategy period, enabled through CLA activities and approaches.

13. Incorporate ANTI-CORRUPTION mechanisms across the portfolio. USAID will incorporate elements of anti-corruption and greater efficiency through systems strengthening. USAID and projects will promote a culture of improved transparency, accountability, and integrity (among implementer as well as beneficiaries) and will encourage stakeholders to take actions to help prevent corruption. USAID will uphold the effective use of resources internally and externally and will ensure the appropriate use of funds by implementing partners and their local partners.

14. Model STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS for transparency and accountability, stimulating others to do the same. Through ongoing communications efforts and activities, the Mission seeks to model information transparency through enhanced sharing of program approaches, results, costs, etc with local actors, officials and communities, with an aim to achieving increased accountability for our investment, and that of our stakeholders. At the same time, the Mission believes these approaches will serve as a contributing factor to the overall aim of enhancing citizen participation in development, driving a greater demand for accountability to local leadership for the same.

15. Foster LEADERSHIP as a lever for change – within the Agency, with partners and stakeholders. The Mission will seek opportunities and activities that further strengthen the leadership skills and behaviors of Mission staff, as well as that of our partners and other stakeholders key to achieving the goals of the strategy.

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