Where There's Organizational Will There's a Way: Liberian Legislative Tech Modernization II
Like any large organizations, the Liberian Legislature is a complex minefield of relationships. I'm lucky that I have my coworkers here; I may be a dilettante that pops in and out of countries, but my colleagues have spent years working with Liberia's political institutions and building relationships with the elected members and staff. This combination is one of NDI's great strengths, and it's incredibly useful when thinking how to shepherd development projects through an organization. Particularly when you're talking tech, a fly-in-fly-out engagement is almost doomed to failure, as institutional change is really the name of the game, not air-dropping shiny new tools.
With the 53rd Legislature's priorities coming into focus from our various meetings of the last week and elements of a workplan falling into place, we on the tech modernization team began crafting a new strategy on how to move forward. The biggest gap, we saw, was finding the right internal champions. In the 52nd Legislature we had a number of excellent partners to work with who had a vision for how the legislature could be stronger in the future; however, as I explained last time, there's been a lot of turnover and those left have been playing musical chairs.
Even with supportive partners in the last legislature, we had hit an impasse on some core elements of the plan. It was probably partly tactics; all the elements of our assessment from last year were combined into one large plan, too large and cumbersome to navigate through the different bureaucracies at the legislature as a whole. The hunt for space alone was perhaps enough to sink the whole ball of wax. Every organization is political, but unsurprisingly a political one is particularly so.
Well, Friday we seem to have found our champion: the head of one of the most important committees in the Legislature. We sat down with him on Friday, and he eloquently articulated the core problems facing the Legislature: no internal network, no central internet access, no email system, not nearly enough training, no tech support, no radio station. From our assessment, those were the core things we wanted to pursue as well. Well, maybe not the radio station.
After our meeting was finished, we were preparing to leave. "So we should have a professional office space for the IT team." he says. Absolutely, we concur. "Come with me," he says.
We wander downstairs and out to another wing of the building, where we are met by the head of maintenance. The Chairman, with us in his entourage, heads into a small office space. The crew inside looks up perplexed.
"What is this space?" asks the Chairman.
"The communications office" replies the head of the shop, looking around a bit nervously.
Turns out it was the place where they ran the phone system for the legislature, but that equipment was destroyed during the war years, so they've been working on small electronics repairs and such since.
"We will fill this with new people who communicate" he declared. Turning to the maintenance director, he instructed him to move them to another office and have the room cleared to become a new IT office.
And so, with the wave of a hand, our intractable space problem of 18 months appears to have been taken care of.
Even for things that are less controversial than kicking people out of their office - like, say, the idea of wiring the entire building - still require approval from various actors, and that can be hard to get with a hydra-headed organization like a legislature. Keeping the momentum going on such significant projects will be one of our biggest challenges as we race against time with the end of the program.