Assumption is the mother of all development...

(Ok good people, this post is long and based on ongoing inquiry into development mechanics. As with all my research based writing for mass media and blogs, the delivery is anecdotal and in this particular case, since it is still work in progress, I make no firm claims. However, given the fact that many of the southern economies are aid based development driven that urgently needs to be um... re-imagined, I thought I'd write this up a bit but sincerely apologize in advance for the rather lengthy yak) 

The point: 

CLASHING MULTIPLICITIES TAILORING DEVELOPMENT FOR DISASTER

In December 2012, at the annual symposium of the Center for Poverty Analysis (CEPA) and titled “Reimagining development”, Dr. Harni Amarasuriya, in her address, made one of the most significant observations on development that I have heard in recent times from anywhere in the world. Referring to log-frame analysis, she said “We discuss in particular the column that is titled assumptions and we reflect on how the assumptions columns describe in detail the context within which development is practiced. However, the logic of the log-frame places the assumption column outside of the project - what is listed in this column is usually regarded as those issues that may impede the successful implementation of a carefully constructed development project. In other words, the social, political, environmental and cultural processes that shape our lives are seen as external factors beyond the control of the development project. Herein lies one of the greatest contradictions of development: while professing to be about transformation, development is also particularly uncomfortable with risk, or uncertainty. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that more than after 50 years of development, we are still debating its worth”.

She goes on to pick apart the nature of development as essentially a process through which “global and local interests converge with a sufficient level of incoherence so that multiple interests can be served” through a delightful and insightful anthropological treatment of the issue, the full text of which may be read here. I propose, through this post, to consume a few hundred words to try to start the process of unpacking the implications of her assertion from a more procedural / mechanistic standpoint.

The first, most obvious assumption made by development practitioners is in the singularity of the meaning of the word “development”.  There is, among them, a refusal to acknowledge the multiplicity of meanings associated with (and implied by) any set of phrases identifying a given development project. A determination to studiously ignore the essentially subjective nature through which different parties and players, planners and ideologues, targets and beneficiaries view the same set of initiatives, their associated actions, their associated objectives, their associated goals. 

What results from such a multiplicity of attitudes and views is neither certitude, nor peace nor help for pain.  Instead, we land on a darkling plain, swept with loud alarms of struggle, fight and flight, where selectively knowledgeable and questionably learned armies clash by day and by night (sorry Matthew).

This is why the assumptions column is so important in project design. It gives the practitioner a false sense of safety from such skirmishes although they are intrinsic to the implementation process and critical to address if any semblance of success is to be achieved. Removed from the social, political, environmental and cultural attributes that background the development tapestry, it gives the practitioner an impetus to start with enthusiasm that which will eventually end in catastrophe.  It lulls the practitioner into a false sense of security and calmness and, at least initially, shields her from the fact that the situational implementation of a project will quickly degenerate, disintegrating into chaos.

The possible mathematical parallels to the point: 

Towards informing us on the issue, I believe that perhaps, theoretical mathematics might provide some helpful pointers.

On the one side, development practitioners might be informed by deterministic chaos theory (DCT), based on the fact that when the present determines the future, the approximate present does not determine the approximate future under certain conditions. As of this writing, I am not completely sure if development adheres precisely to the theoretical base of the math modeling but it is certainly interesting to note the parallels between development dynamics and chaos dynamics – both are sensitive to initial conditions, both are topologically mixing (in the case of development, via social, cultural, political and environmental rubrics and, to some extent, their metrics), and, both have periodic orbits that are dense (in the case of development, many if not all instances of a contiguous set of anthropological, social and financial occurrences are approached by the involved entities over a specific period of time).   Therefore, the approximation outcomes of DCT seem applicable to development at least in a general sense.

Now, assumptions are not simply approximations. They are very large, built in errors in identifying the present and therefore, can yield wildly differentiated results from the ones intended. I surmise that the inability of development mechanics and project programming to substantially address the chaotic nature of development or, its fundamental incoherence that Dr. Amarasuriya notes, is one explanation for the very low global achievements of the project of development. Additionally, I surmise that if a development goal is in fact achieved it is despite of the programming and designing but rather, results simply as a chaotic outcome of a highly inexact process.

On the other hand, development practitioners might be informed by catastrophe theory. Small changes in one or more specific parameters of a non-liner system such as development (for instance the amount of funds periodically skimmed off a development project or the amount of money paid to families that lost land to it) can cause the stability or equilibrium to appear and disappear or to change from attracting to repelling and back again, causing sudden (catastrophic) changes in its behavior. Depending on the number, intensity, pervasiveness and type of phenomena that impact each exercise, any of the catastrophic models can be identified and applied to a given development project.

For example, projects can annihilate according to fold models (such as might exist when fund embezzlement reaches a critical fiscal bifurcation point or when a delay in approvals reaches a critical temporal bifurcation point), get dropped leaving residual identifiers such as land and buildings according to cusp models (such as might exist when funding has not sufficiently addressed sustainability or when the continuity of application of state/donor policies and priorities reach into a project up to a given point and no further) or more complex models such as those applicable to say the Southern Transport Development (STPD) project in Sri Lanka which waxed, waned, waxed again, given up on, re-initiated, complained about…finally ending up with a road that neither completely satisfied nor completely dissatisfied the many thousands who got involved in building it, resulted in  near non-usage by the majority citizenry and irrevocably damaged wet zone agriculture and water management. 

In fact, the STDP is an ideal example of the wildly tangential results of  misguided assumptions leading to severe development astigmatism that ultimately, only served up a chaotic, confused, catastrophic meltdown. A tragic reality attested to by the fact that the estimated 30% graft off the project funds did more for the citizens through trickle-down economics in a pseudo-feudal political economy  than the highway itself and the fact that the environmental and sociocultural fallout of the project caused more real long-term socioeconomic damage than any originally imagined economic gains of the project (Seneviratne:2009). 

It might be of note here, that the stability point of the generally chaotic processes and catastrophic outcomes of most development projects is in the extraction of two phenomena that comes very strangely labeled as “lessons learned” and “best practices”. These are the job savers and safety nets of the industry. Commonly, from each initiative, we stabilize our feel-goodness and salvage our professional dignity from program disintegration and chaos with a very large number of lessons learned and a very small number of best practices. Development practitioners might be informed by the fact that in most human endeavors, history has shown us that very few lessons are actually learned and very few best practices have actually been replicated.

Addressing the point: 

Once the uncertainty principle of development is understood, the problem reduces to "how can/should/must we respond?". Well, I shall offer a caveat before I proceed: The denseness of the anthropological occurrences that exist in a given development situation are, at this writing, far too complex to chart to any degree of measure-based validity. 

However, a key requisite to at least move towards a less uncertain development environment is to integrate the assumptions column of log-frames directly into the programming. Instead of the classical matrix of “Goal/ purpose / outcome / output / activity / responsibility” against “description/ indicator / verification / assumptions” I propose that the entire process starts by removing the assumptions column.

Then, (pending affirmation of the math modelling, the efficacy of layering and the structuring of the specific matrices), the following steps are, at this writing, strongly indicated: 

• First, create a risk map of the social, cultural, political, environmental and economic parameters paying particular attention to the heat created by cross-pollination and overlap of linear risks in each discrete area of concern,  

• Next, replace the assumptions column with an assertions matrix of anthropological phenomena against groupings/sectors of entities impacted by them and informed by the risk map),  

• Next, move that in the priority lists to a point above the log-frame. Assertions, in this context, should be deep thought and not brought under silly little labels such as "power analysis”, “situation analysis”, “background” etc. but encompass as much of the spectrum of life parameters of the group(s) and sector(s) involved in and targeted by the project,

• Next, remove goals and objectives and replace them respectively with accomplishments (like-to-haves that are far better but less certain) and achievements (must-haves that are less tasty but more certain) both of which are informed by the assertive factors associated with as thorough a reading as possible of the social, cultural, political and environmental realities of the scope of control and scope of effect of a given development exercise,

• Next, since moving from assumptions to assertions and from achievements to accomplishments is fraught with high levels of applicability of the chaos principle, for each activity, output and outcome, have a column named reflections which inform the practitioner qualitatively on the fuzziness of the entire project process through language based on probabilistic logic that explicitly takes uncertainty and belief ownership into account and is based on thoughtful reasoning that understands that in development initiatives, there are no absolutes and that the truth value  of the linear combination of an idea-process-outcome  is simply an informed approximation based on consideration of the assertive factors, and, 

• Finally, perhaps most radically, remove the logical framework of action (LFA) completely and replace it with an Estimation Framework of Possibility (EFP), and, remove the results framework (RF) completely and replace it with an Approximations Framework of Aspirations (AFA).

Now, armed with an EFP and AFA, we are capable of improving the possibility of an outcome and, as programming goes into implementation, use a system of continuous evaluation to increasingly better approximate the reality to the aspirations of a development project over the associated temporal envelops and bounds. Most importantly, they will give us, by default, better predictive analytics, early warnings and durability measures related to overall project health. 

While it is obvious that this approach necessitates recursive revisits of the initial project design as well as significant levels of measurable, built in flexibility (has anyone ever even tried to understand how to measure the level of flexibility of any kind of effort be it development or otherwise... in quantitative terms? heh), such a course of action would remove us from making wild claims about the behavior or outcome of a development initiative and move us from the built-in opacity of assuming things to the comparative transparency of approximating things. 

Chaos certainly does exist but it is not completely incoherent or unconsidered or ignored and the truth value of our efforts, the level of trust of those who are part of its ownership cloud and the ability to manage the vector resultants would perhaps be substantially higher.

The problems associated with addressing the point: 

Well, simply put, going in this direction would be an absolute nightmare for development practitioners as well as development financiers. And that horror is not only in terms of the need to meet risk head-on or in terms of the massive amounts of additional time/work/expertise/resources required for it but also in terms of the sheer effort required to break the inertia of ingrained belief systems with respect to the procedural aspects of development programming. With the classic log-frame, scoping or designing a project is relatively simple, requires very little qualified expertise and is very easy to tag to results frameworks. Indeed, an entire industry has developed around MFDR (Managing for development results) which is strange given the fact that our accomplishments in the development arena are so few and so bereft of both qualitative and quantitative results as meta-research has shown us (Doucouliagos, Paldam et al:2007-2010). At present, though development modeling is relatively easy, we are merely engaged in a lot of busywork with very little practical take-home for those involved.

Furthermore, against the  existing development topography, practitioners know very well that the key resource that is always at a premium is time. Through no fault of their own, they are always pressed to deliver strategies, plans, programs, projects – mostly against externally imposed temporal limitations (funding cycles, election cycles, employment contract cycles, project life cycles etc.). 

It needs no rocket science to figure out that those are unnatural cleavages, mostly short or mid-term and guaranteed to negatively impact efforts that require long-term sameness of thinking to produce real results. So, it is not to be wondered that even the best, most thoughtful, most careful practitioners find themselves slap-dab in the middle of a sea of misery that is pervaded by a sense of less, loss and helplessness. It is not to be wondered that the ideology of the entire development industry can be synthesized by the sentence “never mind what it accomplishes in the end, just make the yearly target, process, management and M&E look good on paper. We can take heart in our MFDR, lessons learned and best practices and discuss the outcomes or the lack thereof through a report we can table at the next annual progress meeting”. 

This, to put it very mildly, is a copout. It is a virtual comfort-zone for all those within the development arena that is hard to attack and has the added advantage of ensuring job security.  Moreover, this type of thinking organically creates risk-aversion, reluctance and affirmation biases in reporting results and removes the mandatory requirement for reflection that can actually yield some real lessons learned (for example: “we must stop this method of trying to get development to become effective since it has failed over 40 years”) and best practices (for example: “we must insist on working with a broader, tougher, harder, sweatier set of parameters that can actually yield sustainable results).

It is a copout that need not be if people are willing to fight for risk, fight for better scoping,  fight for reality checks at every turn, at every milestone regardless of who may fight them back with more vicious weaponry, fight for a bigger slush fund to mitigate negative outcomes that are impossible to chart at project inception and always, always, fight, two swords drawn, for that not-really-contradictory self-contradictory need for a "carefully cavalier approach to development". 

But, no. I don’t think that people are interested in actually accomplishing something using a more inexact set of reference tools. Ten times out of ten, they would rather go for a gung-ho goal that makes great copy for political or mass media distribution but was always a bridge too far. Ten times out of ten, when they fail, they will hide behind that massive list of excuses built up over forty years of development madness that is so readily available to them.  

So, I believe they will continue with the status quo at the project level, at the community level, at the national level, at the state level - until an annihilation parameter reaches its chaotic, catastrophic critical mass with respect to the project of development.  I believe they shall take comfort in the fact that they don't really care that they have no clue as to why that happened. I believe that they will assume that the fault can be laid at every door but their's. I did not complete the title of this piece. I shall do so now:

Assumption is the mother of all development ef-ups.