Embracing Governance Innovation: An approach from [and for] the Global South

This week completed one year of my greatest professional (and perhaps personal) challenge where I had the unique opportunity to work as a Designer Researcher Affiliate for MIT GOV/LAB , testing and validating the Lean Governance Innovation Design approach applied in collaboration with the Freetown City Council , capital from Sierra Leone. Below I will share a little of this unique journey of a Recife native in Freetonian lands.

About the Journey

In July of 2022, I was honored to have been chosen as a participant in a groundbreaking project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and spearheaded by MIT GOV/LAB , an innovation laboratory with a dedicated focus on governance. This ambitious endeavor sought to cultivate innovative and collaborative approaches to invigorate new governance models that seamlessly integrate a diverse array of stakeholders, ultimately targeting implementation and validation in the dynamic contexts of Global South countries.

Within this framework, my colleague, researcher Federico Vaz , and I were selected with te goal of execute and validate the approach known as Lean Governance Innovation Design (LGID). Our mission was to apply this innovative approach in the municipal administration of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, as well as within the federal government in Abuja, capital of Nigeria.

Before embarking on our journey with the West African governments, we underwent a comprehensive introduction to this pioneering approach. This preparatory phase provided us with a valuable opportunity to inject our perspectives, thereby contributing to potential adjustments and enhancements, ensuring our readiness to engage directly with the governmental entities in this region. The LGID approach is structured around 4 pillars:

And its application is anchored in 5 steps:

0. Building Your Team And Research: Build the local team and deploy the research tools to start documenting governance innovation.

1. Identifying A Real Problem: Find the cause of the problem.

2. Getting And Sustaining Support: Use power as an enabler instead of an obstacle. Design the network you need to sustain the innovation.

3. Finding Ideas Worth Testing: Understand which ideas are appropriate and are likely to thrive in the local context.

4. Testing Ideas, Pretotyping: Before prototyping, there’s pretotyping. Test the ideas wherever you are, with as little time as possible, and at no cost.

5. Getting To Pilot, From V 0.1 To V 1.0: Tell the story of the governance innovation you’re proposing and developing your pilot plan.

In this sense, each stage was anchored in viable activities to be carried out together with the government teams of each country, since one of the objectives of the approach is also to encourage an approach to innovation by integrating local technologies, allowing a greater chance of adoption and evolution by local teams. After the training and discussion cycle with the MIT GOV/LAB team, it was time to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

From Recife to Freetown

Famous for his obsessions with grandeur, as a good Pernambuco native, I researched my final destination, and that was when I discovered that Freetown was the closest African capital to Recife in a straight line (3023 km), being almost the same distance to Porto Alegre (2978 km). Which, initially I believed could be a relatively quick trip to execute, considering that a flight between Recife and Porto Alegre lasts 3h55m.

In practice, to reach my final destination I would have to go to Guarulhos, sleep at the airport, go to Paris and, after 27 hours of travel (and 19227 km), reach my final destination. I discovered that Lungi airport receives flights from only 9 airports, with Belgium and France being the only ones in Europe and the others in West Africa and Morocco.

About Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone, a country located on the West African coast with more than 8 million inhabitants, currently has one of the smallest GDPs in the world. In 2022 it is projected to have the third lowest GDP per capita in Africa, behind only Buruind and South Sudan. Although there has been constant growth since 2002, stimulated by the end of the civil war that lasted two decades, in recent years the GDP has experienced a sharp decrease, making Sierra Leone rank among the 30 poorest countries in the world in 2021.

Also Sierra Leone has been experiencing rapid urbanization at a current rate of roughly 24%, which is expected to increase to 50% by 2040. In Freetown, the country’s economic center, development has been taking place in the context of a limited urban planning regulatory framework, with the latest land use plans for the city dating back to 1948.?

Despite this national scenario, Freetown, the country's capital, has a more favorable economic scenario, where 30% of the country's GDP is concentrated in the capital, causing the poverty rate to be 22% in 2018, compared to 56% of the country. In this perspective, Freetown manages to largely absorb foreign direct investment (FDI) projects, being responsible for 3.3% of the country's GDP in 2020.

Inserted in this political scenario, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr OBE was elected in 2018 (and re-elected in 2023) for the position of mayor of the national capital, Freetown. Due to the territorial dimension and political structure of the country, the relationship between the central government and the municipality is very close, with emphasis on the Freetown City Council uncil (FCC) in depending on a good articulation to be able to implement projects in the capital.

?Urban Planning Challenge

Because there is a very particular topography, formed by valleys and hills, one of the great challenges is focused on the urban context of the city. The Freetown Structure Plan (FSP) was developed to guide and control development within the city boundaries; however, the plan has not yet been endorsed and is currently being updated. In the absence of a robust urban planning framework, development has taken place in unsuitable parts of the city such as steep slopes, floodplains, wetlands, etc.?

It is estimated that 38% of Freetown development has taken place in areas considered to be at medium- or high-risk of floods and landslides. The World Resources Institute report inform that between 2016 and 2021 the available non-urban areas in the city decrease 7.68%.

Regarding changes in the land use, the top 3 classes with highest urban expansion (conversion to urban use) were Waterbody, River, Creek (28.09 %), Woodland, Forest (18.39 %), and Urban Agriculture (14.3 %).?Land Surface Temperature (LST) maps of Freetown indicate that from 1988, 1998, 2000, 2010 to 2018 LST has increased due to development of human activities and climatic change and the trends observed would be expected to continue through 2030 if nothing is done about it.?

85% of Sierra Leone ‘s rural population depends on subsistence farming and extreme heat leads to crop failure. The low yield of crops has led to the movement of people from the rural areas into the city in search of better livelihood opportunities.??Freetown now has 74 informal settlements that account for 35% of the population.

Addressing this growing challenge, the city of Freetown became one the founding members of the Arshot-Rock City Champions for Heat Action and appointed the first Chief Heat Officer in Africa. The city also launched the Freetown the Tree Town projects, that aims to increase tree and vegetation cover by 50% from 2018 levels by planting, growing and tracking 1 million trees across the Freetown Peninsula by 2022. In addition, Freetown and Arsht Rock are codeveloping a project to install permanent shading structures that reflect sunlight and power solar lighting in markets across Freetown.?

Innovation in the Freetown City Council

One of the innovations proposed by the current mayor Yvonne during her tenure was the creation of a strategy to prioritize actions for the capital through a collaborative process, bringing together different teams and advisors to be able to structure a vision of the future that is desirable and feasible to be achieved in 04 years old.

This process culminated in the launch of the Transform Freetown program, where 11 sectors were developed to be prioritized, being worked through an inclusive approach, supported by innovation and performance management based on data.

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As an implementation strategy, the plan aimed to articulate with international institutions and global governments in order to create partnerships to implement different innovative solutions for Freetown.

In order to structure this management, in addition to defining 12 administrative councilors who work in specific sectors, and articulating with 48 councilors representing the 48 communities of the capital, the mayor developed the Mayor Delivery Unit (MDU), with qualified and specialized teams that could address the challenges prioritized by the Transform Freetown program in an innovative and collaborative way, through data and evidence.

Mayor Delivery Unit (MDU) innovative structure

The Mayor Delivery Unit (MDU) would be responsible for raising international funds and executing them directly, with the aim of reducing bureaucracy in the articulation process with the central government.

The structure of the MDU has a team leader and each specific sector has a specific leader, such as the area of Disaster Management, Urban Planning, Sanitation, among others. These teams are usually lean and evolve from raising funds from international projects such as the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), 世界银行 , Global Environment Facility , C40 Cities , which focus on the opportunity to run pilot projects in the territory and gather relevant data for decision making.

Innovation in urban planning

One of these MDU teams that we had the opportunity to work directly with was Urban Planning, led by Mr. Modupe Williams whose challenge is to develop strategic projects focused on long-term urban planning, with actions that can be implemented in the present. For this, a series of data and information is being collected to facilitate strategic decision-making.?

Despite the team of specialists present at MDU, it becomes an even greater challenge when we try to innovate in urban projects in the sense that, in general, it takes longer for us to be able to demonstrate a transformation in the territory, since the intervention process at the level of infrastructure usually takes years to be completed.

In this sense, the challenge of aligning and maintaining expectations in the communities that will receive the intervention becomes of paramount importance so that engagement does not become a disappointment for these people.

Another major barrier identified not only by the MDU but also by local councilors and organizations that operate in the territory is in terms of communication and engagement since a large part of the population living in these communities has challenges in terms of mobility and interaction with public agents, with highlights for the rainy season when these territories become even more vulnerable.

One of the councilors elected by the community informed that for him, in addition to infrastructure actions in the community, a priority would be the interaction with the community, since there are 40 thousand people living in the community and only a single representative, being challenging the part of research and interaction.

“my priority would be to consult with the community, because if I can call all the religious leaders, teachers, tribal chiefs, relevant agents, I would call all the people to decide how to invest the resource in the community.”?

Councilor of Community

The territorial challenge is not only addressed to the urban planning team, having repercussions in several other areas such as the Disaster Management Team created in 2020 whose mission is to manage actions in the 322 communities in Freetown, articulating with the national government and stakeholders such as red cross and police in emergency cases.

“We have a group of volunteers who form the Communities Disaster Management Committee - CDMC, but of the 322 communities we have, only 93 have volunteers. Communication is always a challenge, as we do it manually through whatsapp or call and we don't have any platform to manage efficiently and quickly.”

Disaster Management team

In this sense, based on the interaction with different stakeholders of the MDU, the community and advisors, the present project defined as scope to identify challenges that could be addressed in an innovative and collaborative way through an agile process together with the FCC government.

For this, we defined as a pilot project the development of an Action Plan for the Moyiba Area, where the project in the initial moment would need to identify processes of communication and engagement with the community.

For this, what would be the challenge to be solved was chosen, using the tool "How Might We" we defined:

“How might we create an accessible process to improve responsiveness from the community in communicating with the government, particularly in times of emergency?”

Moyiba community interview

Based on this definition, a field survey was carried out to understand the process of communication and engagement between the community and public management. For this, 33 interviews were carried out with families throughout the community, where they were asked "how people address problems in the community in cases of emergency" and "how people interact and communicate with the government in cases of need".

It was identified that almost all of the participants answered that they cannot depend on public management, especially in an emergency, depending only on the help of neighbors.

“When we have a problem, especially during the rainy season, we cannot depend on the government. We usually rely on the help of our neighbors to solve the problem.”

Member of the Community

An important point to highlight is that the least dissatisfied families are those who live close to the community counselor, who can be quickly accessed in an emergency. In other cases, communication is scarce, making periodic interaction with everyone in the community unfeasible.

To improve this interaction, the community counselor informs that the area was divided into 10 zones where in each zone there is a volunteer who centralizes communication mainly during the rainy season, but even so the scale is insufficient to monitor 40,000 people.

As main limitations, we can highlight:

• most people in the community do not have a smartphone
• the vast majority of the families have a cell phone, which they use to listen to the radio, send SMS and make calls
• communication between the community and the volunteers is done via telephone and the volunteers communicate with the counselor through whatsapp and calls
• the councilor meets monthly with the mayor and the other 47 councilors to define action strategies in the communities. In emergency cases, the counselor calls the mayor directly

From the cycle of identifying the challenge in the community, we identified other relevant stakeholders who could participate in the collaborative innovation process of the project. For this, we identified the Disaster Management team as a group of interest, so that we can identify opportunities within the current journey.

It was reported that they centralize the information and can pass it on to the central government, the Police or the Red Cross depending on the level of urgency of the incident.

?The main highlights of the Disaster Management team process were:

• the team was created in 2020 and has volunteers in 28% of communities to monitor accidents
• management is done manually and interaction is via call and whatsapp
• the team meets monthly with the national Disaster Management team to develop action strategies
• there are 3 levels of occurrence: Level 1 (addressed to the city hall), Level 2 and 3 (addressed to the national government), however there are no clear criteria that define what these 3 different levels are

Collaborative process

Based on the diagnosis of the community and the MDU teams, an ideation process was carried out to identify which possible solutions could be applied in view of an ideal journey of management and communication between the MDU and the community.

For this, a workshop was held with the Urban Planning team and the Disaster Management team in order to prepare a blueprint bringing the layers of information and interaction necessary to be able to manage mitigation actions and collect information from the affected people.

Ideation workshop

The activity lasted 60 minutes, with the participation of 6 people from the MDU team, where we focused on resolving the main bottlenecks of the current journey. For this, we divide the phases into Steps, from the beginning of the occurrences until reaching the assessment and decision-making stage.

It was identified that, due to the absence of a smartphone, the ideal solution should have a free georeferenced SMS sending system where people could select the type of occurrence:

Types of accidents:

1 - Acident

2 - Someone Injury

3 - Loss of person

4 - Death

1.1 - Flood

1.2 - Mudslide

1.3 - Landslide

1.4 - Road block

1.5 - Fallen trees

1.6 - Fire accident

1.7 - House damage

1.8 - Loss of property

In this moment the Disaster Management team and the community counsilor were able to view the information in real time and are able to identify if there is someone from the CDMC team to be able to provide support on site.

The criteria should be structured between FCC and National Gov to define whether the occurrence is Level 01 (lesser impact, can be directed to FCC), Level 02 (joint work FCC + National team) or Level 03 (higher urgency, National Team).

From the understanding of the emergency context, the committee can direct calls to the responsible sectors. The national government management team - NDMA and the FCC team should have direct communication to be able to determine actions in urgent cases, such as:

1 - Police (miss or death)

2 - red cross (injury)

3 - NDMA (major accidents)

After address the challenge, the FCC team should have an assessment period to assess whether cases have been resolved and a committee between the FCC and NDMA could interact to follow up on cases in the communities.

The data can be accessed by the FCC to define mitigation strategies based on georeferenced information. The solution should allow data to be accessed by the FCC to define mitigation strategies based on real-time georeferenced information. The system provides real-time georeferenced information, showing action status indicators, % of actions in arrears, quantity in each community. In this way, it is possible to accurately identify the number of occurrences in each area of the city.

From the data collected, the planning team can make better decisions because the system also allows the team to conduct research directly with the communities to collect information relevant to the implementation of projects in the territories.?

The solution allow to the Urban Planning team to define some quantitative questions with multiple options and forward them to the phones in a given community. The community is encouraged to respond via credit rewards. In this way, it is also possible to articulate partnerships with local telephone companies that can benefit from research actions.

From this interaction, the city could be able to collect different perspectives from the entire community to make better decisions based on georeferenced data, being possible to define strategies and articulate international projects based on data and evidence.

Stakeholder interaction blueprint

The main insights generated in this process were:

• The system must be activated by a numerical code on the cell phone
• Messages should be georeferenced
• Multiple stakeholders could access the system by computer
• People could receive automatic SMS reply informing them that the message was received by the government and that it is being resolved
• Automatic message triggering for residents in risk areas
• In addition to the management solution, an offline communication strategy should be considered, which can be articulated through local radio stations and people who use megaphones in the community
• It is necessary to structure a committee with different spheres of power to manage this process in an agile way, especially during the rainy season when the occurrence of disasters increases dramatically
• Identify opportunity to develop projects in Public Private Partnership with local telephone companies

Benchmark

From the identification of reference projects with similar challenges, the Future journey was structured to make available to the MDU team. 3 similar solutions from the Global South were found with the aim of facilitating communication and interaction between the population and governments. For this identification of solutions, the following selection criteria were established:

• Solution using open software
• App and desktop solution interface
• Offline use
• Data georeferencing
• Citizen and government interface
• Application in governments
• Have already been successfully applied

3 solutions were selected, having been applied in Latin America and Asia:

1. Mapeo
2. Petabencana
3. Colab

Mapeo

It is an open digital tool that aims to facilitate the documentation of mapping and recording of different types of geolocated information. This solution was developed by Awana Digital and has already been applied to indigenous peoples in Ecuador and Peru to map the delimitation of indigenous lands, collect information and improve decision-making.?

link: https://www.digital-democracy.org/mapeo/

They present the tool as:

A POWERFUL MAPPING TOOLSET FOR COMMUNITIES. MAPEO IS A FREE DIGITAL TOOLSET FOR DOCUMENTING, MONITORING AND MAPPING MANY TYPES OF DATA. HELPING COMMUNITIES OWN THEIR DATA

The main functionalities of Mapeo are:

• User-Friendly: Mapeo Mobile is incredibly easy to use and learn, making it accessible even to those who have never used a smartphone. In just a few hours, users can confidently collect data, GPS points, and photos. Mapeo Desktop, offers a simple interface with a limited feature set. For more complex tasks, data can be exported to other tools, facilitating broad community engagement and project ownership.
• Offline Capability: Mapeo thrives in completely offline environments. All data collected or generated is stored locally on your device, eliminating the need for an internet connection or centralized server. Users can effortlessly synchronize or share data via a local Wi-Fi network without exposing it to the internet. Additionally, Mapeo Desktop enables data exchange using a USB drive.
• Peer-to-Peer Database: Mapeo employs a peer-to-peer database system, ensuring that all collected data remains on individual devices and not on external servers or the internet. When synchronizing with fellow Mapeo users in a project, each device obtains a complete copy of the entire project's data, fostering a redundant and decentralized data storage approach.
• Highly Customizable: Mapeo offers extensive customization options, enabling users to tailor their experience. You can personalize language settings, incorporate detailed offline maps of your specific area, and modify icons and data collection questions. Additionally, Mapeo supports multiple languages and allows users to contribute translations, ensuring a flexible and adaptable platform.
• Secure, unfalsifiable data

The development of MAPEO is financed by grants from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, Knight Foundation, Abundance Foundation, All Eyes on the Amazon (Dutch Postcode Lottery), and Samsung Next Zero.

Petabencana

Run by Yayasan Peta Bencana, as a free and transparent platform for emergency response and disaster management in megacities in South and Southeast Asia. PetaBencana.id leverages the use of social media during emergency events to collect, classify and display confirmed hazard information in real time.

link: https://petabencana.id/?

The PetaBencana.id community is made up of a diverse group of volunteers, local community leaders, and professionals dedicated to building capacities for community-based disaster co-management.?

PetaBencana.id provides residents, government agencies, and first responders with a real-time disaster information sharing system at an unprecedented scale. It is the first platform of its kind to harness the power of crowdsourcing through social media to aid humanitarian response and recovery.

Powered by CogniCity Open Source Software, PetaBencana.id is a free, web-based platform that produces real-time disaster maps using both crowd-sourced reporting and government agency validations. The platform harnesses the heightened use of social media and instant messaging during emergency events to gather confirmed situational updates from street level, in a manner that removes the need for expensive and time consuming data processing.

Since its debut in 2013 (as PetaJakarta.org), the PetaBencana.id platform has been used by millions of resident users to make time-critical decisions about safety and navigation during emergency disaster events; it has also been adopted by the National Emergency Management Agency (BNPB) to monitor flood events, improve response times, and share time-critical emergency information with residents.

In the 2015 World Disaster Report of the International Federation of the Red Cross, the project was recommended as a model for community engagement in relation to disaster response. In 2016, the Federal Communication Commission of the United States also recommended the project as a best practice regarding disaster information crowdsourcing.

Colab

It is a free digital platform to be downloaded on mobile devices, where the population can request urban services, make suggestions and evaluate the performance of municipal management in cities in Brazil, through interaction through messages, photos and georeferenced videos. It aims to be a platform for social participation and promote improvements for more efficient and innovative management in public administration.?

link: https://www.colab.re/?

Next steps

Based on the project carried out, an agreement was made with MIT Media Lab so that a partnership could be structured to develop an MVP for this solution, integrating the necessary functionalities and limitations identified during the process.

Conclusion

Amid the current maelstrom of global transformation, it is becoming clear that this rapid movement often leaves a negative impact on nations that lack a mature system of governance, especially those in the Global South that have endured centuries of colonial rule. The need for an agile and unbureaucratic global support network is essential to catalyze these regions to achieve a sustainable recovery.

Analyzing this scenario through a strategic design perspective provides a promising path to crafting innovative governance solutions in a collaborative, transparent and engaging way, while actively involving key stakeholders, including citizens, who will be profoundly affected. To face the challenges ahead, we must approach each unique context with empathy and adopt a resolute stance, ensuring that the solutions we develop leave a lasting impact on these societies in the long term.

Our evolution is at a crossroads, where extreme weather events are becoming an increasingly widespread part of our journey, disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable communities. On the other hand, there are already technologies and solutions that can address the various challenges we face, both in the climate and social, economic and urban contexts, making the main challenge focus on government decision-making. Therefore, it is imperative that we cultivate clarity and maturity in our global approach, driving disruption with purpose.

We find ourselves in an urgent situation where sustainable and long-term action is imperative. By acting now with a focus on the future, we pave the way for subsequent generations to follow suit, thus ensuring a more resilient world for us and the next generations.