Adaptive policymaking: Bridging planning, policy and practice in KP
The Consortium for Development Policy Research (CDPR) in partnership with International Growth Centre (IGC) and Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) is organising a webinar on how Pakistan’s provinces can strengthen their public service delivery and make planning more responsive.
Latest research on state-building capacity by Harvard University pushes for Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), such as a decision-making process focusing on defining the problem rather than being pressured to find a solution to enable policymakers to cumulatively take steps in the right direction.
Following the 18th amendment (2010), provincial governments now have enhanced autonomy to drive policy and public expenditure decisions more efficiently. PDIA or a similar approach will require that bureaucrats are empowered to take independent decisions along with higher transparency to remain accountable to the public. A civil service administrative overhaul may be needed, but is it possible?
The webinar will be centred around Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and will take a deep dive into Pakistan’s provincial public investment management systems to highlight why excessive rigidity and lack of bureaucratic discretion may distort optimal policy outcomes and how such an approach may be implemented to improve planning. The following eminent panellists will discuss this and the following questions:
- How can the PDIA approach be implemented by provincial governments?
- How can public investment management systems improve service delivery in the provinces?
- How can planning be made more flexible and transparent to achieve optimal policy outcomes?
