Scaling up government-to-government knowledge co-operation

Challenge

Many developing countries cite the need for stronger organisational capability in the public sector to deliver on the 2030 Agenda. This reflects the near universal knowledge that competent, transparent and accountable institutions perform better when it comes to sustainable development. As demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, open, responsive and competent public institutions contribute to resilience in governments’ ability to respond to crisis.

Ministries and public agencies in Development Assistance Committee (DAC) countries have tremendous technical expertise and experience with government processes that often go beyond that of development co-operation experts, who combine sectoral and co-operation expertise. However, leveraging technical expertise and experience for developing countries is often challenging. Contexts are vastly different, including in their complexity, and co-operation between different institutions can often suffer from organisational silos. Thematic programmes run from headquarters also risk not being grounded in the realities and priorities of partner countries.

Approach

Prior to the establishment of the Knowledge Bank, Norway had sector-specific technical co-operation programmes that brought together expertise from different ministries, agencies and universities. For example, Oil for Development draws on Norway’s experience and knowledge on petroleum management anchored in different ministries and directorates. Other programmes leverage Norway’s particular experience such as on gender equality, tax, fish, and oceans. To enhance the effectiveness of these programmes, in 2018 Norway launched the Knowledge Bank. Its key features are:

• a common platform for key technical co-operation programmes, with Norway’s development co-operation agency Norad serving as the secretariat

• joint backstopping and support, pooling expertise for quality assurance, support and training for all programmes on what works in technical co-operation

• standardisation and simplification of administrative tools and processes to reduce the burden on individual programmes

• enhanced co-ordination between programmes through shared approaches, as well as information sharing at country level, with the next step being to identify synergies

• exchanging experiences and learning across programmes, with a focus on co-creation by partners

• support for the association of partners such as civil society organisations, international organisations or other developing countries

• maintaining focus on ensuring partner country ownership – assistance from any of the programmes is demand-based and designed and implemented jointly with partners; Norwegian embassies are focal points

• a strategy for the Knowledge Bank (2020-2025) that defines shared long-term goals, setting out how Norway will work to achieve them and outlining strategic areas of work (e.g. results in partner countries, areas for learning and cooperation, and standardisation and simplification).

Results

Norway has extensively documented concrete results in partner countries from its capacity development efforts. Since the introduction of the Knowledge Bank, it has observed the following:

• Changes in the approach to capacity development among Norwegian stakeholders, with an increased focus on context and the partner institution leading the process, empowerment and learning as projects proceed.

• Increased awareness that sharing experiences and knowledge depend on long-term relationships, familiarity with the context and mutual trust.

• The development of common guidance, tools and resources.

• Greater awareness of the valuable capital that public sector officials possess in terms of sector specific competencies, and the experience of working in a government administration.

• More common, joint direction for the Norwegian actors involved in capacity development through institutional co-operation, and less work in silos.

• Insights from Knowledge Bank technical co-operation programmes are informing Norwegian efforts, notably international normative work.

• Including multilateral organisations in the knowledge programmes has led to more flexibility of programming and an ability to respond to countries where access to Norwegian officials is limited due to security or resource challenges.

• At the partner country level, in Uganda where the Oil for Development programme co-operates with the authorities on resource management, environmental protection, security and the economy, an important milestone in 2019 was the approval of the National Environmental Act and special regulations on the management of waste from petroleum production. In Ethiopia, the Gender for Development programme supported work on gender-disaggregated statistics and knowledge in key areas such as work-life, to inform government communications. Together with the Swedish statistical agency SCB, Statistics Norway has developed a free, user-friendly programme for setting up national accounts, currently in use by statistics agencies of eight African countries. For more information on the results achieved by individual programmes, see the resources below.