Effective Institutions Platform

October 22, 2020


About

The Effective Institutions Platform (EIP) is an alliance of over 60 countries and organisations that support country-led and evidence-based policy dialogue, knowledge sharing and peer learning on public sector management and institutional reform. The EIP supports its members in their development of accountable, inclusive and transparent public sector institutions capable of delivering responsive policies, effective resource management, and sustainable public services for poverty reduction and inclusive growth.

The EIP does this through hosting a different kind of conversation; using collective learning processes to capture innovation, stimulating experimentation and bringing this learning to a wider audience through an influential global network. The EIP collaborates with a number of multi-stakeholder groups and actors working on public sector reform. However, it is distinctive from other efforts in a number of ways. In particular, the EIP:

  • Brings together a diverse group of stakeholders engaged in Public Sector Reforms- not only government representatives, but civil society representatives, legislators and think tanks.
  • Works through innovative approaches to peer learning under the “Learning Alliances on Public Sector Reform”.
  • Provides a safe space to debate successes and failures in public sector reform efforts and communicates the results as appropriate.
  • Provides evidence and promotes experimentation in the area of public sector reform.
  • Supports motivation, leadership, strategic foresight and innovation among public officials.
  • Works across institutional objectives- including but not restricted to increased transparency across government.
  • Helps bridge local, regional and global efforts to strengthen public sector institutions.

EIP’s 3 Pillars

The EIP is a demand-driven platform and since 2012 has been built ‘from the ground up’, responding to requests for interventions and expertise in a number of areas. These have since been brought together to form the main focus areas or ‘pillars’ of the EIP.

Approach

1. Peer Learning

There is strong interest to shift the focus for achieving improvements in public organisations and in public service delivery from pre-defined solutions to more applied and context specific approaches. Peer sharing and learning are innovative and alternative approaches that are increasingly being used in the public sector to understand the challenges faced by public sector change agents, allowing them to tap into the experience of other practitioners.

The premise behind peer learning is that no one knows the challenges facing development practitioners better than the practitioners themselves. Each practitioner is privy to a wealth of knowledge and experience, but their experiences are rarely transferred to others. By passing this expertise on to practitioners in other countries and ensuring it is shared within one’s own country, practitioners can build on past experiences.

Emerging evidence suggests that peer learning is effective but there is a need to carefully design peer learning initiatives.

2.Learning Alliances

Learning Alliances are designed as collaborative multi-stakeholder groupings of institutions and organisations drawn from multiple contexts and countries that share knowledge, experiences and innovations on specific public sector reform topics.

Learning Alliances give peers the opportunity to learn from each other in safe spaces to debate successes and failures in public sector reform efforts. Learning Alliances include at least two learning activities in order to create learning loops that facilitate collective analysis of experiences and the adaptation and application of approaches to public sector reform. Stories of change on institutional and organisational reform will be made available for the EIP membership and beyond.