VI. CHALLENGES TO INTERSECTORAL PARTNERSHIPS

It is not easy to develop ISPs. Challenges are likely to emerge at different moments. Because these are part of the nature of ISPs, it is useful for each partner to prepare for them in advance.

Challenge #1: Acknowledging that partnerships are incremental

Building institutional arrangements and improving organizational capacity is an incremental process that evolves over time. The initial time commitment is relatively intense as key players attend meetings, learn about each other, and develop strategies. It is important to establish milestones that can be monitored and ensure that results are viewed as commensurate with the costs incurred at each step of the process.

The speed of building partnerships can be significantly influenced by effective rules, strong participating organizations, a low level of conflict among partners, a commitment to the partnership, past experience with partnering, and knowledge of the problem at hand. Delays involved in building new institutional arrangements are affected by an inadequate enabling environment or a failure to ensure local ownership.

Challenge #2: Committing resources

Resources include finances, time, labor, materials, and ideas. At least at the beginning, the process requires senior-level participation and commitment. Staff time must be freed to implement ISP plans.

Challenge #3: Learning about diverse goals and values

Organizational culture will vary among and within different sectors. The lack of one sector's understanding of the other sector's culture can result in wasted efforts, misunderstandings, and tensions. Each sector has its own vocabulary, resources, strengths, and weaknesses that must be understood by all partners in order to work together successfully. This demands time and effort dedicated to getting to know each other and building long-term bridges.

Challenge #4: Managing risks

Knowledge about ISPs is expanding rapidly as the importance of institutions that combine market, governance, and voluntaristic characteristics is recognized. However, this new concept is still evolving and few precise evaluation tools exist. Partnerships may produce unanticipated outcomes. People initiating ISPs are responsible for ensuring support and communication among stakeholders in order to reduce risks involved in the process. It is important to disseminate lessons learned and best practices throughout the local and international development communities. At the same time, it is important to experiment and explore new ways of partnering.

Challenge #5: Overcoming systemic barriers

A commonly cited problem is the lack of an enabling environment to encourage corporate giving, or other factors over which each partner has little control. Structural barriers may inhibit innovation, constrain resources, reduce information flows, warp incentives, and encourage corruption. These barriers need to be identified early in the process. Working towards eliminating them will assist in the formation of future ISPs.

Challenge #6: Avoiding dependence on individuals

ISPs are often formed under the leadership of a charismatic "champion." Such ISPs become highly personalistic. While this leadership is good for the ISP in the short-term, problems may develop over the longer term when the individual leaves or if (s)he loses interest. Mechanisms must be put in place in order to prevent the collapse of the partnership upon the departure of a charismatic leader. Institutionalize rather than individualize.

Challenge #7: Building accountability and transparency

Mutual trust must grow in order for an ISP to thrive. Hence, operating rules must facilitate accountability and transparency, clarify performance goals, and clearly delimit authority and commitments in order to encourage trust over time.

There are no quick or easy solutions to these challenges. One must make an informed decision to undertake an ISP, gather as much data as possible, commit to a long-term process and constantly evaluate progress. Case after case shows that hard work and dedication pay off as the ISP becomes a sustainable mechanism to solve development issues.

Challenges and Opportunities within the USAID Framework

Donors will have different roles throughout the ISP process. Often USAID missions have initiated the formation of ISPs. Some have helped ISPs overcome obstacles through technical assistance and grants. However, because of declining program budgets, USAID officials face specific challenges when trying to implement or initiate an ISP. This section presents some of these opportunities and challenges within the USAID framework.

Reforms: Intersectoral partnering translates the Agency core values--customer focus, results orientation, empowerment and accountability, teamwork and participation, and valuing diversity--into practice. ISPs assist in institutionalizing a results orientation among partners, contribute to sustainability by providing the organizational capacity for participation and local ownership of development efforts, increase the impact of development programs, introduce cost efficiencies, and build intersectoral and society-to-society linkages that will outlive graduation.

Managing for Results: The requirements that go along with a results orientation make intersectoral partnering seem daunting. Partnerships seem difficult to capture in a results framework. But it can be done. Partnerships require clearly articulated agreement on goals, the distribution of costs and benefits, performance indicators and mechanisms for measuring and monitoring results, the delineation of responsibilities, and a process for adjudicating disputes. Members of ISPs can participate in the process of defining objectives and results. Missions report that they are better able to adapt to local conditions, leverage donor and local resources, and enhance program impact through these partnering arrangements.

USAID Processes: Some of the requirements that came with the reforms have led to an unintentional emphasis on short-term over long-term results. The incremental evolution of ISPs challenges this emphasis. Delays or a lack of clarity about interim markers increase the risk of disillusionment and/or defection. The critical brokering task is to move things along, to keep costs and benefits to partners in balance, and to demonstrate visible progress against intermediate benchmarks. Partners want to see results; it is one way they can demonstrate to their customers the benefits of reform.

Another common source of delay that missions face is the time it takes to obligate funds. Many of the delays in USAID partnering attempts are due to USAID's own bureaucratic processes or others imposed by circumstances outside the Agency's control. Budgetary or legislative constraints and design or contracting delays inhibit the partnering process by leading to uncertainty, false starts, and interruptions. Finally, when the donor is the critical catalyst, it can easily bias the institutional development in unsustainable ways by superseding consensus processes or substituting for local resources.

Cost Efficiencies: While the costs are never clear from the outset, missions attest to the fact that ISPs can increase program impact and efficiency. Adaptation to the diversity of local conditions has traditionally been a significant constraint on the impact of donor programs. ISPs unleash an entrepreneurial spirit by bringing together other donors, local stakeholders, U.S. partners, and the host government in a collective effort. The missions' role is to encourage institutional change and policy reform and provide technical services.

Exit Strategies: Partnerships have been an important facet of past exit strategies. Ideally, an exit strategy has two components: first, ensure that sufficient institutional capacity is left behind to sustain USAID's contribution to development; and second, ensure that society-to-society linkages facilitate continuing access to U.S. expertise and technology and support long-term cooperation on issues of common concern such as the environment, disease control, and trade. ISPs address both objectives.

Community Empowerment as an Assistance Strategy: To a much greater extent than other donors, USAID's commitment to local participation and ownership includes a commitment to community empowerment. ISPs facilitate assistance strategies that move beyond consultation with stakeholders to the development of institutional arrangements that guarantee that stakeholders have standing, formalized participation in decisions and the capacity to hold their own governments accountable.

Moving Beyond Stovepipes: Development programs have traditionally been organized around agriculture, economic infrastructure, education, and health. Although there have been some dramatic development successes produced by this approach (e.g., child survival and the green revolution), there has always been concern that such stovepipe programs may mean that opportunities to build synergies across sectors are lost. ISPs provide an opportunity to move beyond the stovepipes.