Platform way of working: Reimagining development in the SDG era
By: Danish Design Centre
Tags: Development Tools, Sustainable Development, Sdgs, Platform Thinking

By Begovic Milica, UNDP / Dmitri Belan, UNDP / Giulio Quagiotto, UNDP / Christian Bason, CEO, Danish Design Centre

It seems like a paradox:

On the one hand, the world is operating under conditions that pose an extraordinary challenge to sustainable development: volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA). Mixed progress on democratic governance after the euphoric wave of political liberalisation in the 1990s, the spread of new technologies and knowledge and big structural shifts such as a rapidly evolving global balance of economic power, urbanisation and climate change — together with shrinking resources relative to the scale and intensity of the effects unleashed — has accelerated the VUCA effect in the public and international development sectors.

On the other hand, leaders in the development arena have access to abundant amounts of knowledge, creativity and increasingly cheap technology. And with the United Nation’s ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), public and private resources can potentially be aligned around common global goals like never before. Many development organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), are asking a critical question: how to navigate uncertainty while managing greater complexity, and deliver effective outcomes by crowding in knowledge no matter where it sits?

Towards networked governance for a networked world

In this context, a quest for a silver bullet and a linear concept of ‘scaling up’ borrowed from the engineering world no longer applies. At UNDP, the response has been experimentation with the principles of a platform way of working: the notion that public purpose organisations can orchestrate multiple external actors around a common mission. The idea seems attractive: what if the UNDP could design platforms — both digital and physical — which would enable it to shift from a project-based way of more or less top-down implementation working with few (but significant) clients, to a platform way of working which would reach out to the non-usual actors, including the private sector, civic activists, individuals, that might be crucial to achieving long-term development outcomes?

The rationale for shifting to a new mindset and governance model — a platform way of working — is to enable the organization to generate better outcomes at a higher level of efficiency. In other words, the UNDP would actively reposition itself and its resources as a key node in a bigger, distributed ecosystem of stakeholders bound together by purpose, and whose impact becomes bigger than the sum of its individual parts. This would not only gear UNDP resources with a much bigger pool of public/private funds and initiatives, but also emphasize its facilitating role without the UNDP having to carry all the weight. Lastly, but just as importantly, it would create a broader sense of co-ownership of the mission across a much wider range of stakeholders.

The platform way of working is also designed to change how complex problems are tackled, moving away from the application of often sectoral and standalone solutions towards a heterodox mix of connected solutions that impact key points in the systems that shape outcomes. This is often manifested in a portfolio of experiments, which is also one of the defining features of the UNDP’s emerging Acceleration practice currently being rolled out in 60 countries globally.

Practical manifestations of platform or networked governance are emerging many places around the world. For example, Estonia’s E-Residence programme offers a transnational digital identity that anyone in the world can apply for to obtain access to the European Union’s business environment and digital public services. It enables simplified online registration of businesses from any part of the world, and a growing community development function that encourages more serendipitous growth of joint business ventures among members. UNDP has also found inspiration from Climate KIC’s Winners Project platform that focuses on integrating evidence from varied sources (satellite data, academia and think tanks, insurance and banking sector, and global food suppliers) for design of an early warning risk mitigation system meant to protect both food consumers and producers from climate driven risks.

Experimenting in 40+ countries

Last year, together with the Danish Design Centre, a public purpose institution in Copenhagen, over 40+ UNDP Country Offices from Europe, Asia and Latin America, and an international advisory board (see at the bottom who they are), drew upon existing literature and practices looking for a big picture response to the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of the transition to the platform approach and broke this process down into a set of component parts with potential implications for the work of UNDP.

A collection of canvases and tools were developed, tested and revised over several iterations in close collaboration with a number of UNDP country offices. Through design thinking methodology this working package has been crafted in a manner that intuitively transforms the approach and mindset of the country offices while building a new platform offering.

What are the early learnings?

1. Platforms enable organizations to quickly identify non-traditional partners and hereby develop higher quality solutions.

In Ukraine, UNDP works on the development and operationalization of a platform that will function as a transparent, easily accessible market for services and resources available to home-owners and home-owners’ associations to boost energy efficiency in residential buildings. In order to set up this platform, UNDP is mobilizing the expertise of both traditional and non-traditional actors like construction companies, energy efficient solutions suppliers, home-owners’ associations and residents (individuals). By activating these networks, UNDP will be able to help identify better development solutions that reflect the genuine needs of stakeholders and begin to bridge investment gaps.

2. Organizations create new types of engagement — both digital and physical — that can generate new interactions through platforms.

In Rwanda, where over 70% of young people are underemployed, the YouthConnekt platform, supported by UNDP, provides an integrated physical and virtual platform to enable youth to create employment opportunities and engage in their community, supported by a partnership of the private sector, youth groups, international organizations, government, banks and NGOs. The platform has already helped to create 8,000 new jobs, enabled 1 million young people to engage in voluntary community service, and engaged over 4 million young women and men in activities that promote positive values and attitudes, nurturing a new generation of leaders. YouthConnekt has expanded to Cape Verde, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Zambia.

3. Platforms harness collective intelligence by adopting signals from the ground into new products and by enabling a continuous learning process.

In Brazil, growing urban populations and inequality are pushing demand for better public services such as sanitation, lighting, public security, education, transport and health. UNDP is working with subnational authorities, civil society, businesses, media outlets and universities to create SDG Commissions, Dialogue Groups and online platforms to map, track and improve local services. These platforms will source and manage local data using AI algorithms to track progress of development indicators and public service targets, informing local planning and monitoring of implementation. The platforms are designed to help integrate services to be more efficient and effective at reaching those furthest behind, boosting healthy lives and promoting well-being for all.

4. Platforms enable rapid spotting of emerging trends and continued experimentation.

In 2016–17, Somalia narrowly avoided drought-related famine, raising a record USD 1.3 billion in humanitarian assistance. But this type of intervention is unsustainable. In response, the Government established a Recovery and Resilience Framework (RRF) — or a platform — with UNDP, the World Bank and the EU as well as the private sector, investors and humanitarian actors. This platform has helped the government adapt to changing events, improved how different streams of resources are blended and managed for improved investment, and enhanced the availability, analysis and use of data. As a result, it is building confidence, attracting investment from new sources, and improving resilience of the local economy. The aim is to ensure that a drought never turns into a famine again.

5. Working in a platform can speed-up learning and create alignment around missions by putting outcomes first.

UNDP Moldova is setting up a data sharing platform to improve the lives of people in urban settlements using new types of evidence (open data, big data, user-generated data) and appealing to collective intelligence. For this purpose, the platform (digital and physical) will enable private companies, urban residents and City Hall to share data to address development issues. By working in this way, the platform is expected to reduce transaction costs and allow traditional and non-traditional actors to engage actively in the identification of solutions to urban issues.

As we move forward, we place premium on learning how these principles are applied in diverse development contexts across the world and how they generate different solutions to sticky problems. For example, the Accelerator Lab initiative has drawn strongly from this work as it seeks to operationalize 60 teams in 60 countries to address the deep-seated issues of depopulation, migrations, and implications of the changing climate.

In addition to the cited examples of platform way of working in UNDP, there are a number of other Country Offices that are putting this approach to work (In Serbia, Argentina, Indonesia, Turkey, etc). We will be posting stories from those experience in the upcoming period so stay tuned. We’d also like to thank the following individuals for guiding our thinking and providing critical advice and council on the basis of their experience and expertise on applying platform design principles in development:

Geoff Mulgan, Nesta

Kees Dorst, UTS

Sarah Josephine Hjorth, Canopy Lab

Michel Bauwens, P2P

Stephanie Wade, Bloomberg Philanthropies

Jono Bacon, Jono Bacon Consulting

Thomas Ugo Ermacora, Machines Room

Gabriella Gomez-Mont, Lab de la Ciudad

Marco Steinberg, Snowcone & Haystack,

Indy Johar, Dark Matters Inc.

Daniel Zimmer, Climate KIC

Simone Cicero, PlarformsDesign

Banny Banerjee, Stanford ChangeLabs

Gabriella Gomez-Mont, Lab de la Ciudad

Gorka Espiau Idoiaga, La Caixa Foundation