Research

From becoming the last century’s original tool of last resort sanctions have become, by its most prolific user’s own admission, the tool of first resort this century. Across the G7 and beyond officials are reflecting on their experience of mounting the largest economic response to a security crisis in institutional memory.

This paper studies mid-level bureaucracies: organisations operating between national and street levels that are commonly tasked with implementation of sector plans. We examine how these bureaucracies approach policy implementation, how they perform, and the relationship between the two.

High-frequency granular data can enable senior government officials to hold poorly performing members of the service delivery chain to account; however, centralised management must translate large volumes of data into appropriate management actions to be effective. 

This report synthesises the findings of a multi-country, multi-team research project into the effectiveness of delivery approaches at improving education service delivery. The main countries studied were Ghana, Jordan, and Pakistan, with smaller studies in Sierra Leone and a soon-to-be-completed study in Tanzania.

This note on policy delivery in Sierra Leone is one of a series of research products that are being produced as part of the DeliverEd Initiative. This note is based on a qualitative analysis of a small number of semi-structured interviews with government officials and partner organizations working with the delivery unit.

Governments around the world have sought to strengthen accountability for results in the public sector by introducing central or sector-specific delivery approaches, such as delivery units.This retrospective study investigates the assumption that these delivery units could improve performance by enhancing accountabilityrelationships within the system.