White Paper

Notes from Advisory Council meeting held on April 22 2008 in Dublin, Ireland

Advisory Council comments and recommendations on Strategic Choices

General Comments• The Advisory council unanimously congratulated GeSCI on

having survived the start-up phase

• Noted that many starts-up do not succeed and have a high failure rate

• Noted positive views of evaluations and also agreed that GeSCI does make a difference

• Pledged future support for GeSCI

• Noted that White Paper was good in terms of presenting strategic options for discussion

Models of engagement• The advisory council recommends that:

– The current engagement model diagram is confusing and needs to be fine tuned as follows: Change “end-to-end” to “system-wide” and “focused” to “project”

– The concept of “end-to-end” is a key principle of GeSCI (same as holistic) in any and all of its work and therefore is not a model of engagement

– GeSCI should have one mode of engagement with different “depths” with the system-wide being the core work, then projects, then regional knowledge sharing

– The key conceptual model of GeSCI and what makes it unique is the system-wide approach and this should remain the core of GeSCI work. If GeSCI abandons this, then it will be abandoning its key principle.

– Should GeSCI really be doing “projects” or are other organizations better suited to do project?

– Projects can be a “starting point” for GeSCI to engage with a country (which could be considered part of the “pre-engagement phase”) and which could lead to a full system-wide engagement

– However, noted that system-wide engagement requires more and significant resources and time

Suggestions to improve the current diagram of models of engagements

• Change diagram as follows: Change “end-to-end” to “system-wide” and “focused” to “project” and inner circle should not be divided into two sectors

• Somewhere on the diagram, reflect concepts of “end-to-end” and capacity building

Capacity Building and GeSCI capacity• GeSCI should define how it builds capacity and look at ways of ensuring

sustainable capacity building.

• Identify capacity requirements at the beginning of each program and have MoEs second full time to program at the very beginning (needs negotiation)

• Capacity building not really a work stream but cuts across all the work streams and all of GeSCI work

• GeSCI needs to increase its own staff capacity in areas like administration/ finance and also increase capacity in the countries where system-wide approach is followed (one CPF person-model may be too limited)

• Consider developing a “corps of experts/advisors” in partner countries (system-wide) or region that can be called upon to support country work

What is meant by “Global”?• The advisory council recommends that:

– GeSCI can be global in the sense that it convenes global actors and contributes to global knowledge sharing

– Undertakes knowledge work that contributes to global dialogue

– However, core work should be focused on sub Saharan Africa

Should GeSCI focus on LDCs?

• Advisory Council says:– Yes and focus should be on sub-Saharan Africa

– Most donors no longer have “global” funds under which GeSCI has been funded to-date but instead funds are allocated by region with a clear focus on sub Saharan Africa

– All the donors advise that future funding in their organizations will be easier to obtain if focus is on sub-Saharan Africa and this is the donor’s focus

– However, also acknowledged that focus should not be exclusively on sub Saharan Africa as the global reach of GeSCI gives it credibility

– Consider system-wide work to be focused on sub-Saharan Africa and regional/ global knowledge sharing and projects (if necessary) be undertaken in other parts of the world

Choice of countries• GeSCI needs to focus on donor priority countries as much as

possible but not exclusively and align its work with donor priorities in those countries

• Acknowledged that LDCs sometimes don’t have the necessary level of readiness for GeSCI work to be impactful

• Also acknowledged that GeSCI needs to work in some countries where it can show “early success” and therefore the choice of countries should also be strategic or tactical

• Perhaps GeSCI could have three groups of countries to engage with a mixture of countries:

– Easy targets e.g. Namibia, but LDC preferred– LDCs– Countries with existing system-wide ICT interventions or money already committed to

such systems e.g. Ethiopia

• Develop clear transparent set of criteria for both entry, transition and exit

GeSCI mission• Advisory council says:

– Key question is: “Is GeSCI in the business of education reform or is GeSCI in the business of assisting to put in place a system that can improve education?”

– GeSCI mission generally acceptable but may be too ambitious if trying to transform or reform education

– Consider replacing “transform” education to “improve” education in the mission statement

– There is now a clear globally acknowledged link between ICTs, Education, Development and MDGs

– GeSCI should not get too concerned with aligning its work with MDGs especially as these are unlikely to be met but concentrate on focus on education

• After discussions with GeSCI team, management suggests:– “transforming” education could be the GeSCI vision and “improving”

education the mission

Community Development

• Community Development (interventions) is a completely different business that requires a completely different approach and skills mix

• GeSCI should not be doing direct community development

• Instead, the “community” part of GeSCI should be considered to be a global community of practice or global knowledge community

• No need to change name to drop the “c” as the name is already an established brand and it takes a long time to build another brand

Things that are missing from white paper

• The white paper does not touch on the role of ICTs to improve management of the education system right from the school level which is one clear potential of ICTs to address a serious problem- Address this more fully in the white paper

• Also white paper does not focus on the educators/ teachers and yet they are the more likely to have impact at the lowest cost of deploying ICTs

• GeSCI should seek to build on what it has achieved the last 3 years

Governance

• [From donor meeting]– The donors feel that they need more involvement in the governance

structure– Donors will consider to elect among themselves a revolving chair to

organize donor meetings– Donor meeting should still be held back-to-back with AC meeting but agree

on an agenda beforehand– GeSCI could be a platform for promoting policy dialogue among donors and

African ministers

– ACTION ITEM: GeSCI to present to Donor group dates of key regional and international ICT4E events where the GeSCI donors or their colleagues could attend and participate

• AC agreed that Donors are welcome to nominate representatives or participate directly (if their organizations allow) to the Board/ Company Directors

Administration and finance

• Management should develop and use more Information Management Systems to support the distributed nature of the organization

• While the organization needs long term planning, it should also retain flexibility to respond to changing demands and environment

• Knowledge management is a key problem for many countries and organization should endeavour to become a knowledge organization.

• With regular staff turn-over in every organization in the world today, GeSCI should seek to develop an alumni association as part of its knowledge management strategy

• Management proposed and AC accepted to hire independent consultant to undertake a due diligence of finance and administration systems, identify gaps and suggest solutions for improvements working with new Admin and Finance people

• Management also informed AC that new people were being hired for Administration and Finance

Funding• SDC has committed to bridge funding for 2008 and already sent formal letter

indicating this. Also needs to disburse 2007 funds shortly. Future funding will depend on strategic plan but generally positive

• Sida will change funding strategy substantially reducing “global” funds under which GeSCI was previously funded. However, at the moment, Sida has pledged 2 year funding for GeSCI (2008-2009) and after that either funding is phased out or shift to support only for Africa programs. Disbursement for next two years awaits formal request and submission of latest GeSCI audited accounts

• Finish Aid- GeSCI had 1 year (2007) funding for knowledge exchange which is disbursed. A pledge for 2 years has been made and awaits request. However, also like Sida, “global funds” are being abolished and future funding might have to come from regional programs and most likely for Africa only

• Irish Aid has disbursed last tranch of committed (3-year) funding in Dec 2007. Any new funding will depend on Strategic Plan but generally positive that future multi-year funding could be available

Next Steps• All donors would like to be more involved in the development of

the strategic plan, including regular and on-going consultation, particularly about aligning with their priorities (ICT4D, Education, countries or “regional interests”

• Draft strategic plan to be ready by late summer/ early fall

• Final strategic plan to be ready by October AC meeting