The best-laid IT modernization plans o' mice an' men...

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley

Someone will have to get back to me on what an agley is, but I'm pretty sure the basic idea holds true for development.

I've returned to Monrovia to pick up the threads of a technology modernization plan for the Legislature of Liberia. I spent two months there last year doing an assessment and creating a workplan for how the organization could leapfrog into the 21st century. At the time we went through the standard best practices in quality developmental program design to arrive at a plan that was a joint vision of NDI and the legislative leadership, and launched initial implementation. The basic framwork was a new joint legislative technology center staffed with crack geeks; cabling the building for network access; a wide-ranging training program; a legislative website; and introduction of open-source software. Plan in place, I headed back to the US and turned to other programs.

Then something happened to the program. Er, more accurately, nothing happened with the program.

A lot transpired in Liberia since June of 2011; shortly after I left, the legislature went on recess for a hard-fought campaign season that resulted in a bit of turnover. I've heard of "throw the bums out," but the voters of Liberia took the premise to new levels: less than a quarter of those up for election returned to office. That left an interregnum until the end of January when the 53rd Legislature was sworn into the office, and of course there's a lot of ramp-up time with a such a large new group. There were recesses, new appointments, staffing requirements, a new national budget… So here we are. With all the best intentions in the world from a lot of legislators and despite a lot of hard work from NDI Liberia, the technology elements of the plan were basically at a halt. There were some wins; the Legislature has a basic but useful website (http://legislature.gov.lr), Ubuntu is being used in some offices, and press staff were trained on Audacity audio editing software. In balance, though, the Legislature and NDI remained far from their initial goals with time running out.

So I'm back.

I'm working on a re-assessment mission to figure out what stopped the progress, where the concepts currently stand, and what we can accomplish in the time remaining. I've spent the last week doing a series of interviews with legislative leadership, senior administrative officials, geeky staffers, and outside consultants, and we've got a sense of what went wrong and how to make it right.

The centerpiece of the old work plan was a tech center - a home base for with internet, connected computers, trained staff, high-speed copiers, and so on. This foundered on two big rocks which are, I think, pretty representative of the challenges in development; one infrastructure, one social.

First, the Legislature is crammed into a too-small building; space was already at a premium, and another 9 legislators were shoehorned in. Each of the 103 members have a staff of at least 15, and there's a bloated, um, big-boned administrative structure. Freeing space requires kicking someone else out, and that's gonna be political; doing so for a technology center that they were surviving without takes a lot.

Second, elected officials are busy people with a healthy sense of self-esteem, and it should have occurred to us that they would not necessarily appreciate rubbing elbows with the masses or queueing to wait for a computer.

Things have also changed in the last year. New legislators have new priorities; the tech infrastructure has changed. A year ago the Capitol ran off of diesel generators; today they are on the national grid. Every Representative was given an iPad. Still, most things are the same, and the high-level goals for the program remain constant. Since the tech center was holding up progress, we've been planning to jettison it and find ways to accomplish the same goals in a fashion that works better for the legislature.

After all these meetings, we've pulled together a re-assessment for what NDI and the legislature can do together in the time remaining - and then something very unexpected happened. I'll tell you about it in the next post.