Ministry of Internal Affairs Moving to a Development Phase, Collaboration Among Partners Critical

I serve as special advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs in Liberia who is the head of local government (not internal security). Our team at the Ministry is moving from a humanitarian/emergency support phase to a development phase – described simply in the words of Dennis de Tray as shifting assistance from “doing for countries” to “helping countries do for themselves”. In this post-conflict setting, our Ministry has to deliver better services, more jobs and better opportunities for all citizens right now. Unfortunately, we can’t wait for institutions and the capabilities of civil servants to develop to the point where they can effectively handle the challenges ahead – in a post-conflict setting, the need to produce tangible, visible progress in a short time period is all the more important. The UN and other development partners have been filling critical gaps to meet the demands of today. What needs to be focused on is helping the government handle the challenges of tomorrow.While I’ve heard many development veterans and experts talk about challenges of helping countries “do for themselves,” this is my first crack at working with the UN and other bi-lateral partners to make it happen. The Minister of Internal Affairs has made very clear that he wants all development partners to actively build the capacity of our ministry as they provide development assistance. In practice, this hasn’t happened in the way we had hoped for. There are multiple programs that are focused on capacity development at the county and district level, but a critical link is missing at the central ministry level.In the central office, we are tasked with designing, planning and overseeing a large and challenging development agenda – but so much of the designing and planning happens outside of our office and in the offices of our international development partners (just a ten minute walk from the ministry, but a world away when it comes to day to day operations – we have only one Internet connection for the entire ministry at this point). With the UN separated from our staff in the Ministry we lose two things: the UN doesn’t benefit from our civil servants’ knowledge about Liberia – a very important aspect of making the programs work; and the Ministry doesn’t benefit from the project planning and management experience of our UN counterparts. Our UN partners agree that more and better teamwork is needed, and now is the time to make it happen. We are self-evaluating all Ministry of Internal Affairs programs to see how we can do a better job of putting our employees in a collaborative work environment – all day, every day. The need for better partnership is one of those “lessons” that everyone seems to recognize but still no one acts on. With the leadership of the Minister of Internal Affairs, we are focused on ensuring that lessons learned are incorporated into the ministry’s development programs – more to come as we work through implementing these changes…