Hi, I am Sandra, I am behind Better Govs. I started Better Govs in an effort to put together ideas and resources for a better, more efficient and more effective public sector. After working as a cabinet minister and acting Vice President in Ecuador, and as a consultant with various international organizations, I have seen the transformative power that well-designed and implemented public policies can have. However, effective public policy implementation is not as easy as it sounds, and the challenges are exacerbated in low-capacity and institutionally-weak contexts.
In the international development field, often the focus is on understanding what to do, which depends on the accumulation and assimilation of knowledge. A lot of time and energy is devoted to policy and project design at the start of a government intervention, and to the evaluation of that policy or project at the end of its life cycle. Implementation, in contrast, does not get the same amount of attention; it is implicitly assumed that projects ‘will be implemented’. Reality has repeatedly proven this assumption to be incorrect. I am more interested on implementation; on the how to do it, which generally comes through practice. I want to keep finding ways to help governments and development practitioners increase the likelihood of implementation success.
I want to use this space to share ideas that combine the theory with my own experience, and hopefully other’s too. There will also be a section with free resources available for: policy design and implementation, political economy analysis and public financial management.
I hope with time Better Govs grows into a place where public servants and development practitioners come for inspiration that contributes to better public policy implementation. If you have new resources or ideas you would like to share or see in the website, please get in touch.
Thanks for joining me!
Photo credit: Sandra Naranjo Bautista
