Capacity building

Launching of the “Strengthening Capacity and Institutional Reform for Green Growth and Sustainable Development in Vietnam” Project in 2015

Capacity building (or capacity development, capacity strengthening) is the improvement in an individual or organization’s facility (or capability) “to produce, perform or deploy”. The terms "capacity building" and "capacity development" have often been used interchangeably since the 1950s by international organizations, governments, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and communities as part of “social and economic development” in national and subnational plans. The United Nations system defines itself by “capacity development;” as the “how” for “’how UNDP works” to fulfill its mission and applies it in almost every sector, including now many of the Sustainable Development Goals. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 17 advocates for enhanced international support for capacity building in developing countries to support national plans to implement the 2030 Agenda. According to UNDP promotional campaign in 2009, “capacity is development” and “the urgency of ‘how’”.

Under the codification of international development law, capacity building is a “cross cutting modality of international intervention” that often overlaps or is part of interventions in public administration reform, democracy/good governance, and education in “line sectors” of public services.

The consensus approach of the international community for the components of capacity building as established by the World Bank, United Nations and European Commission consists of five areas: a clear policy framework, institutional development and legal framework, citizen/democratic participation and oversight, human resources improvements including education and training, and sustainability. Some of these overlap with other interventions and sectors. Much of the actual focus has been on training and educational inputs where it may be a euphemism for education and training.

The pervasive use of the term for these multiple sectors and elements and the huge amount of international development assistance funding devoted to it has resulted in controversy over its true meaning and also concern over its use and impacts. In international development funding, evaluations by the World Bank and other donors have consistently revealed problems in this overall category of funding dating back more than two decades.

Outside of international interventions, capacity building can refer to strengthening the skills of people and communities, in small businesses and local grassroots movements. Organizational capacity building is used by NGOs and governments to guide their internal development and activities as a form of managerial improvements following administrative practices.

Definitions

Training at Wynne Farm, a training facility for farmers in Kenscoff, Haiti as part of Watershed Initiative for National Natural Environmental Resources program (a five-year, $126 million dollar project to build Haiti’s agricultural infrastructure, capacity, and productivity in a sustainable way (2010).

Field training by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) team within the scope of "Building Groundwater Management Capacity for Armenia’s Ararat Valley" project funded by the USAID (2016)

The definitions of capacity development vary by sector and by organization:

• A good practice paper by OECD-DAC defined capacity development as follows: “Capacity development is understood as the process whereby people, organizations and society as a whole unleash, strengthen, create, adapt and maintain capacity over time." Capacity itself is understood as "the ability of people, organizations and society as a whole to manage their affairs successfully". The European Commission Toolkit defines capacity development in the same way and stresses that capacity relates to "abilities", "attributes" and a "process". It is an attribute of people, individual organizations and groups of organizations. Capacity is shaped by, adapting to and reacting to external factors and actors, but it is not something external — it is internal to people, organizations and groups or systems of organizations. Thus, capacity development is a change process internal to organizations and people.
• The World Bank, United Nations and European Commission describe capacity building to consist of five areas: a clear policy framework, institutional development and legal framework, citizen/democratic participation and oversight, human resources improvements including education and training, and sustainability. This can be regarded as the consensus approach of the international community.
• The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), formerly the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), defines capacity development in the disaster risk reduction domain as "the process by which people, organizations and society systematically stimulate and develop their capability over time to achieve social and economic goals, including through improvement of knowledge, skills, systems, and institutions – within a wider social and cultural enabling environment."
• The United Nations Development Group Capacity Development Guidelines presents a framework of capacity development comprising three interconnected levels of capacity: Individual, Institutional and Enabling Policy.
• Many organizations may interpret capacity building differently than others. Some methods of capacity building include fundraising, training centers, exposure visits, office and documentation support, on-job training, learning centers, and consultations.

Thinking about capacity building as simple training or human resource development is regarded as too limiting. Likewise, increasing the capacity of the individual is not enough to contribute to the advancement of sustainable development alone, and needs to be paired with a supportive institutional and organizational environment. The three aspects of capacity building that are essential to creating better cities are human resource development, organizational development, and institutional development.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) defines community capacity building as a long-term continual process of development that involves all stakeholders. This includes ministries, local authorities, non-governmental organizations, professionals, community members, academics and more. The UNDP outlines that capacity building takes place at an individual, an institutional, societal level and non-training level.

• Individual level – This requires the development of conditions that allow individual participants to build and enhance knowledge and skills. It also calls for the establishment of conditions that will allow individuals to engage in the "process of learning and adapting to change."
• Institutional level – This should involve aiding institutions in developing countries. It should not involve creating new institutions, rather modernizing existing institutions and supporting them in forming sound policies, organizational structures, and effective methods of management and revenue control.
• Societal level – This should support the establishment of a more "interactive public administration that learns equally from its actions and from the feedback it receives from the population at large." Capacity building must be used to develop public administrators that are responsive and accountable.

• Non-Training Level - This should provide an enabling of an environment for the trained staff to perform at their optimum level.

Purposes

Capacity development is regarded as critical because "weak institutions and under-skilled individuals are often central to the failure of development efforts".

Evolution of the term and concept

The discourse on and concept of capacity development has traditionally been closely associated with development cooperation.

The UNDP was one of the forerunners in developing an understanding of capacity building and development. Since the early 1970s, the UNDP offered guidance to its staff and governments on what was considered "institution-building". In 1991, the term evolved to be "community capacity building".

In the 1970s, following a series of reports on international development, an emphasis was placed on building capacity for technical skills in rural areas, and also in the administrative sectors of developing countries. In the 1980s the concept of institutional development expanded even more. Institutional development was viewed as a long-term process of building up a developing country's government, public and private sector institutions, and NGOs. Though precursors to capacity building existed before, they were not crucial topics in international development like capacity building became during the 1990s.

Capacity building for some is concerned with increasing the ability of the recipients of development projects to continue their future development alone, without external support. It is a parallel concept to sustainability, as it furthers the ability of a society to function independently of external factors. For others it has had a wider connotation for several decades. For example, the lead within the UN system for action and thinking in this area was given to UNDP and it has offered guidance to its staff and governments on what was then called institution building since the early 1970s. This involved building up the ability of basic national organizations, in areas such as civil aviation, meteorology, agriculture, health, nutrition to do their tasks well.

“Capacity development” is understood as the process whereby people, organizations and society as a whole unleash, strengthen, create, adapt and maintain capacity over time. The phrase capacity development is used advisedly in preference to the traditional capacity building.

The OECD-DAC stated in 2006 that the term "capacity development" should be used rather than the term "capacity building". This is because "capacity building" would imply starting from a plain surface and a step-by-step erection of a new structure - which is not how it works.

Since about 2005, the capacity development agenda has also been adopted beyond the traditional aid community. This is particularly true for Africa: for example the African Union has developed a Capacity Development Strategic Framework and is using capacity development as one of three themes to structure its Development Effectiveness internet portal.

Trends in development cooperation shape how capacity development is discussed. These include for example: new forms of financing and less of a North–South dichotomy; more in-country leadership and less donor power; resilience as a framework in fragile environments; increasing private sector engagement.

Community capacity building

The term "community capacity building" has evolved from past terms such as institutional building and organizational development. In the 1950s and 1960s, these terms referred to community development that focused on enhancing the technological and self-help capacities of individuals in rural areas.

Community capacity building is defined as the "process of developing and strengthening the skills, instincts, abilities, processes and resources that organizations and communities need to survive, adapt, and thrive in the fast-changing world." Community capacity building is the element that gives fluidity, flexibility and functionality of a program/organization to adapt to the changing needs of the population that is served. Community capacity building is a conceptual approach toward social and behavioral change and leads to infrastructure development. It focuses on understanding the obstacles that inhibit people, governments, international organizations, and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) from realizing the goals that will allow them to achieve sustainable results. The term community capacity building emerged, in the context of international development, during the 1990s. Today, "community capacity building" is included in the programs of most international organizations that work in development. This includes organizations such as the World Bank, the United Nations, and non-governmental organizations like Oxfam International.

Community capacity building often refers to strengthening the skills of people and communities, in small businesses and local grassroots movements, in order to achieve their goals and overcome particular issues that may cause exclusion.

Community capacity building uses a country's human, scientific, technological, organizational, institutional, and resource potentiality. The goal of community capacity building is to tackle problems related to policy and methods of development while considering the potential limits and needs of the people concerned.

Scale

As of 2009, some $20 billion per year of international development intervention funding went for capacity development; roughly 20% of total funding in this category  The World Bank itself committed more than $1 billion per year to this service in loans or grants (more than 10% of its portfolio of nearly $10 billion).

A publication by OECD-DAC in 2005 estimated that "about a quarter of donor aid, or more than $15 billion a year, has gone into “Technical Cooperation”, the bulk of which is ostensibly aimed at capacity development".

Methods and processes

Under the UNDP's 2008–2013 "strategic plan for development", capacity building is the "organization's core contribution to development". The UNDP promotes a capacity-building approach to development in the 166 countries it is active in. It focuses on building capacity at an institutional level and offers a six-step process for systematic capacity building.

The six steps are: Conducting training need assessment, engage stakeholders on capacity development, assess capacity needs and assets, formulate a capacity development response, implement a capacity development response, evaluate capacity development. The capacity building response should be created based on four core issues: Institutional arrangements, leadership, knowledge, accountability.

Building the capacities of governments

One of the most fundamental ideas associated with capacity building is the idea of building the capacities of governments in developing countries so they are able to handle the problems associated with environmental, economic and social transformations. Developing a government's capacity whether, at the local, regional or national level will allow for better governance that can lead to sustainable development and democracy. Capacity building in governments often involves providing the tools to help them best fulfil their responsibilities. These include building up a government's ability to budget, collect revenue, create and implement laws, promote civic engagement, be transparent and accountable and fight corruption.

Governments can strengthen weak states by building capacity through changing land tenure patterns, adjusting methods of taxation, and improving modes of transportation. Adjusting methods of taxation is another way to consolidate power in a weak state's government. This can be done through increasing government revenue through increased taxation and also formalizing tax collection by collecting taxes in cash instead of in kind. New modes of transportation can strengthen a state's capacity through decreased isolation leading to increasing economic opportunity by regional trade, increased accessibility, and reduced cost of transporting goods.

Building the capacities of local communities and NGOs

International donors like USAID often include capacity building as a form of assistance for developing governments or NGOs working in developing areas. Historically this has been through a US contractor identifying an in-country NGO and supporting its financial, monitoring & evaluation and technical systems. The NGO's capacity is developed as a sub-implementer of the donor. However, many NGOs participate in a form of capacity building that is aimed toward individuals and the building of local capacity. In a report commissioned by UNAID and the Global Fund, individual NGOs voiced their needs and preference for broader capacity development inputs by donors and governments. For individuals and in-country NGOs, capacity building may relate to leadership development, advocacy skills, training/speaking abilities, technical skills, organizing skills, and other areas of personal and professional development. One of the most difficult problems with building capacity on a local level is the lack of higher education in developing countries.

Organizational capacity building focuses on developing the capacities of organizations, specifically NGOs, so they are better equipped to accomplish the missions they have set out to fulfil. Capacity building in NGOs often involves building up skills and abilities, such as decision making, policy-formulation, appraisal, and learning. Capacity building in NGOs is a way to strengthen an organization so that it can perform the specific mission it has set out to do and thus survive as an organization. It is an ongoing process that incites organizations to continually reflect on their work, organization, and leadership and ensure that they are fulfilling the mission and goals they originally set out to do.

Building the capacities of organizations

For organizations, capacity building may relate to almost any aspect of its work: improved governance, leadership, mission and strategy, administration (including human resources, financial management, and legal matters), program development and implementation, fund-raising and income generation, diversity, partnerships and collaboration, evaluation, advocacy and policy change, marketing, positioning, planning. Capacity development of organizations involves the build-up of an organization's tangible and intangible assets. Capacity building and organizational development in organizations should first focus on intangible qualities such as: Conceptual framework, organizational attitude, vision and strategy, organizational structure. These intangible qualities are important. Furthermore, tangible qualities such as skills, training and material resources such as tools, handbooks, manuals, advisories, primers, guidelines, etc. are also imperative.

This section is an excerpt from Organization development.[edit]

Organization development (OD) is the study and implementation of practices, systems, and techniques that affect organizational change. The goal of which is to modify a group's/organization's performance and/or culture. The organizational changes are typically initiated by the group's stakeholders. OD emerged from human relations studies in the 1930s, during which psychologists realized that organizational structures and processes influence worker behavior and motivation.

Organization Development allows businesses to construct and maintain a brand new preferred state for the whole agency. Key concepts of OD theory include: organizational climate (the mood or unique "personality" of an organization, which includes attitudes and beliefs that influence members' collective behavior), organizational culture (the deeply-seated norms, values, and behaviors that members share) and organizational strategies (how an organization identifies problems, plans action, negotiates change and evaluates progress). A key aspect of OD is to review organizational identity.

Evaluation

Accountability and effectiveness of public spending

By 1995, the UN General Assembly had commissioned and received (1998) evaluations of the impact of the UN system's support for capacity building. These evaluations were carried out as part of the UN General Assembly's triennial policy review during which it looks at and provides overall guidance of all UN system development activities.

The difficulties with achieving results from capacity development projects have regularly been described in a range of publications. For example, in 2006, a document by OECD-DAC stated that: "evaluation results confirm that development of sustainable capacity remains one of the most difficult areas of international development practice. Capacity development has been one of the least responsive targets of donor assistance, lagging behind progress in infrastructure development or improving health and child mortality".

Since the arrival of capacity building as a dominant subject in international aid, donors and practitioners have struggled to create a concise mechanism for determining the effectiveness of capacity building initiatives. Only since 2015 has there been an independent public measurement indicator for improvement and oversight of the large variety of capacity building initiatives, with scoring, and based on international development law and professional management principles.

Recognition of problems in capacity building interventions in evaluations funded and managed by international organizations dates back more than two decades, with a World Bank review noted that “examples abound” in which these initiatives “severely undermine public management in recipient countries and unwittingly block rather than promote progress in public sector reform and institution-building”. Five years later, the Bank noted again in its evaluations that, “The Bank does not apply the same rigorous business practices to its capacity building work that it applies in other areas. Its tools—notably technical assistance and training—are not effectively used…. Moreover, most activities lack standard quality assurance processes at the design stage, and they are not routinely tracked, monitored, and evaluated”.  A UNDP study of its capacity building projects in 2002 reported almost exactly the same phenomenon; as of 2016, there does not appear to be any enforced change at UNDP corrects the problem. Among the implementing practitioners, “There were no generally agreed standards as to what should be expected of newly created or strengthened national capacity or of institution or organization building".

In 2007, specific criteria for effective evaluation and monitoring of the capacity building of NGOs were proposed, though only in generalities without clear measures for the tool. The proposal suggested only that evaluating the capacity building ability of NGOs should be based on a combination of monitoring the results of their activities and also a more open flexible way of monitoring that also takes into consideration, self-improvement and cooperation. Other wishes were that monitoring for capacity building effectiveness should include an organization's clarity of mission, an organization's leadership, an organization's learning, an organization's emphasis on on-the-job-development, an organization's monitoring processes.

In 2007, USAID published a report on its approach to monitoring and evaluating the capacity building. According to the report, USAID monitors program objectives, the links between projects and activities of an organization and its objectives, a program or organization's measurable indicators, data collection, and progress reports. USAID noted two types of indicators for progress: "output indicators" and "outcome indicators." Output indicators measure immediate changes or results such as the number of people trained. Outcome indicators measure the impact, such as laws changed due to trained advocates. Both the “numbers of people trained” and “laws changed” are, however, just inputs or intermediate inputs and do not measure actual improvements in “performance” in terms of measurable outcomes of public agencies that are the definition of capacity building.

Despite these claims of existence of these evaluation approaches, there was little more than lists of inputs and outputs without use of professional management standards or any kind of real oversight, and a report for the World Bank in 2009 noted that the failures were deep and systemic, where the measures used are “smile sheets”, asking beneficiaries if they are “happy” or “better off” and measuring things like “raised awareness”, “enhanced skills”, and “improved teamwork” that are “locally driven”, rather than on whether the underlying problems are solved, and refraining from asking whether there may be hidden agendas to buy influence, subsidize elites, and continue dependency.

The comprehensive indicator for capacity building that now exists as part of the elements codifying international development law in a treatise, consists of 20 specific elements that apply law, administrative principles, social science concepts, and education concepts, to troubleshoot the actual problems that occur and to promote public oversight and accountability. The indicator has two sections: one with 11 questions to assure proper application of the five recognized principles of capacity building, analyzing their application in diagnosis and design of an intervention (7 questions), sustainability of reform (2 questions), and good governance (2 questions), and second, with 9 questions to assure professionalism and safeguards against conflicts of interest, unintended consequences, and distortion of public and private systems. This indicator is one of 13 that is part of the treatise of international development law and can be applied with the other indicators for specific sectors and development principles, as well as assurance of quality of evaluation systems.

Critique

Critique of capacity development has been around:

• the ambiguity surrounding it in terms of its anticipated focus (varying definitions as shown above)
• its effectiveness and
• the unwillingness or inability of public agencies to apply their own principles and international law.

Capacity building has been called a buzzword within development which comes with a heavy normative load but little critical interrogation and appropriate review.

Despite some 20 years recognizing the problems, practitioners continue to note that some capacity development projects are just "throwing money at symptoms with no logic or analysis". Others are "disguised bribes to government officials and attempts to undermine entire government structures by setting up foreign run Ministries and foreign influenced political parties or civil society to lobby for foreign interests" using the interventions as a form of “soft power”. One common problem of interventions that focus on education and training of foreign government officials is that they are akin to trying to “teach elephants to fly” or to “teach wolves not to eat sheep” while avoiding the actual changes needed for impact.

Under international development law, there is also concern that much of the implementation of capacity building has been and continues to be in violation of existing international treaties such as the U.N. Declaration Against Corruption and Bribery, Articles 15, 16, 18, and 19.

Global goals

The UNDP integrated this capacity-building system into its work on reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the year 2015. The UNDP states that it focused on building capacity at the institutional level because it believed that "institutions are at the heart of human development, and that when they are able to perform better, [...] they can contribute more meaningfully to the achievement of national human development goals."

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals mention capacity building (rather than capacity development) in several places: Sustainable Development Goal 17 is to "Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development". Target 9 of that goal is formulated as "Enhance international support for implementing effective and targeted capacity-building in developing countries to support national plans to implement all the Sustainable Development Goals, including through north–south, South-South and triangular cooperation."

Sustainable Development Goal 6 also includes capacity building in its Target 6a which is to "By 2030, expand international cooperation and capacity-building support to developing countries in water- and sanitation-related activities and programmes, including water harvesting, desalination, water efficiency, wastewater treatment, recycling and reuse technologies". Similarly, Sustainable Development Goal 8 Target 8.10 states "Strengthen the capacity of domestic financial institutions to encourage and expand access to banking, insurance and financial services for all".

Examples

Below are examples of capacity building in developing countries:

• At state government level: In 1999, the UNDP supported capacity building of the state government in Bosnia Herzegovina. The program focused on strengthening the state's government by fostering new organizational, leadership and management skills in government figures, improved the government's technical abilities to communicate with the international community and civil society within the country.
• Since 2000, developing organizations like the National Area-Based Development Programme have approached the development of local governments in Afghanistan, through a capacity-building approach. NABDP holds training sessions across Afghanistan in areas where there exist foundations for local governments. The NABDP holds workshops trying community leaders on how to best address the local needs of the society. Providing weak local government institutions with the capacity to address pertinent problems, reinforces the weak governments and brings them closer to being institutionalized. The goal of capacity builders in Afghanistan is to build up local governments and provide those burgeoning institutions with training that will allow them to address and advocate for what the community needs most. Leaders are trained in "governance, conflict resolution, gender equity, project planning, implementation, management, procurement financial, and disaster management and mitigation."
• The Municipality of Rosario, Batangas, Philippines provided a concrete example related to this concept. This municipal government implemented its Aksyon ng Bayan Rosario 2001 And Beyond Human and Ecological Security Plan using as a core strategy the Minimum Basic Needs Approach to Improved Quality of Life – Community-Based Information System (MBN-CBIS) prescribed by the Philippine Government. This approach helped the municipal government identify priority families and communities for intervention, as well as rationalize the allocation of its social development funds. More importantly, it made definite steps to encourage community participation in situation analysis, planning, monitoring and evaluation of social development projects by building the capacity of local government officials, indigenous leaders and other stakeholders to converge in the management of these concerns.
• In India the Sanitation Capacity Building platform (SCBP) was designed to "support and build the capacity of town/cities to plan and implement decentralized sanitation solutions" with funding by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2015 to 2022.

External links

• Official UNDP web site