Katherine Sierra
- We are much closer to having a Consortium Constitution and Fund Framework that multiple stakeholders support. We have worked to achieve this comfort level through face-to-face meetings, teleconferences, and electronic consultations in recent months with donors, Alliance leadership, and the World Bank in its role as trustee. For example, several outstanding issues on the Fund were resolved during an e-consultation with donors earlier this month.
- The Strategy Team just completed their much anticipated fourth progress report on the Strategy and Results Framework and Mega-Programs. The Strategy Team welcomes your feedback on this paper as input to the final draft report that will be completed in late October. This document and subsequent versions will form the basis for consultations in lead up to the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) and inaugural Funders Summit.
- The Alliance has launched a formal search for Consortium board members and is expected to announce the members by December 2009. The Alliance is also nearing completion of a number of critical analyses (e.g. the net cost impact of the System reform, opportunities for System shared services, and design of the Consortium Office).
- The Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) is off to a good start with the regional reviews nearly completed and regional electronic consultations underway with more than 1,000 participants. For the early takeaways from these consultations, please visit the GCARD blog: http://gcardblog.wordpress.com/
- In the coming weeks, we plan to share a draft of the CGIAR Declaration—a brief overarching document that clarifies how the various pieces of the new System fit together and the role of key players.
- The Members Survey completed last Spring is being updated to provide a current view of donor commitment to the new Fund.
As we move closer to ExCo-17, which will take place on November 3-4 in Rome, I am confident that we can get firm agreement on the design of a revitalized CGIAR System and that we will achieve the goals we set out for ourselves in December last year when we agreed to implement these reforms. I’d like to ask that we all keep these guiding goals in mind in the coming critical months:
1. Clear strategic focus;
2. Increased research output, outcome, and impact;
3. Greater efficiency, effectiveness, and relevance;
4. Simplicity and clarity of governance;
5. Enhanced decentralized decision making; and
6. Active subsidiarity to capitalize on complementarities of the Centers.
As we continue to resolve the remaining tough issues, I encourage you to also remember our shared values that have successfully brought us this far – trust, empathy, and a mindset that strongly believes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Again, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m looking forward to engaging with you in the coming months to successfully complete this stage of the CGIAR reform.
Warm regards,
Kathy Sierra
CGIAR Chair
Filed under: CGIAR Change Management, Messages from CGIAR Chair, TMT Journal Updates
[...] and Results Framework and Mega-Programs Posted on September 22, 2009 by sstaiger In a very recent update on the CGIAR reform, the CGIAR chair Kathy Sierra mentions among others the good start of the GCARD [...]
The guiding goals stated by Sierra, the CG Chair, are worthy of a CG reform of this magnitude. But to be achieved someone will need to examine where the actual reform activities are going. For example, there is hope on clarity of governance, and even greater efficiency, but the other goals need watching.
1. The mega structures and mega bureaucracies being created centralize research decision making, not decentralize as desired.
2. Mega programs, like Challenge Programs, are likely to deliver on inputs and less on outcomes and impact as stated. Unlike universities, for the CG, inputs are a necessary first step, but not the end goal.
3. The strategic focus is good. One can be proud of it, but it sadly mixes some laudable objectives, i.e., food and a better environment, with a simple tool like policy. It is sad to see policy held up as one of the three overall CG objectives. Africa, for example, is drowning in policies of all sorts. But children are still hungry. Given two years I have all African countries adopt any food policy the CG wants, but the children will still be hungry. Policy can be a powerful too, but it is not worthy of being a CG objective.
Hartmann