Inspiring innovation to meet development challenges

IT is not so unusual to hear citizens across the world complain about their local government. How little things, such as fixing broken street lights or clearing garbage, can get neglected. So how do you create a more responsive government?

One small island, Fonadhoo, in the Maldives, is testing an idea that is connecting the dots to generate dialogue between residents and their municipality.

The concept is called Make-My-Island. It draws inspiration from two ideas.

The first is the UK-based site Fix-My-Street, which connects communities to their council through mobile technology and the web. The site helps link residents, who have needs and concerns regarding the state of their town's infrastructure, to local politicians, who have the decision-making authority to address the issues.

The second inspiration comes from the fact that there are
over 600,000 mobile phone subscriptions in the Maldives, twice the national population. UNDP's goal was to capitalise on this high mobile subscriber base to connect islanders to their municipal authorities through mobile technology. A mobile application and website allows residents to flag municipal issues directly to the island council.

For instance, if a local fisherman notices that people are discarding garbage in an area not designated as a dump, he can immediately send a text message from his mobile phone to the council, identifying the location of the problem. The complaint is recorded on the website and mapped digitally

As more community members raise concerns about illegal dumping of garbage and other issues, the number of complaints recorded about an issue allows the council to quickly ascertain which concerns should be designated as a priority, and thus respond accordingly and efficiently.

Make-My-Island demonstrates how UNDP is increasingly looking to innovative approaches that focus on looking for solutions across the spectrum, and reaching out to non-traditional partners. Our approach is to put an emphasis on rapid prototyping and testing of ideas to come up with the most innovative and efficient solutions.

In the Maldives project, Fix-My-Street, partnered with UNDP to tailor a cost free solution for the island's residents. The prototype places the users at the centre of the design: they identified the issues and are championing the testing phase.  

Since the testing began a few weeks ago, residents have reported a more engaged local council that is responding to their concerns. This effort will hopefully lead to improved local services in Fonadhoo, and become an example of what is possible for other remote islands of the Maldives.

For UNDP, this solution goes against the popular misnomer that innovation is all about technology. Along our innovation journey, we have found that the key contributing factors to innovation are iterative design thinking, understanding behavioural insights, rethinking the way we approach challenges, and pushing beyond our comfort zones.

For several years, UNDP has been driving for innovation in the development arena. We recognise that in an increasingly complex world where development challenges are continuously emerging and changing, there is an urgent need to move away from business as usual, to provide more agile solutions.

Early this year, we instituted an innovation fund to allow our staff in countries across Asia and the Pacific to be creative and experiment with new ways to tackle complex development issues in a 'safe to fail' space. We also encouraged them to reach beyond our traditional networks and partner with like-minded innovation champions.  

By fostering innovation, the practical experience we gain will equip us to become better advisors to governments, on the next generation of services.  

Our approach has led to innovative projects across several countries:

* In Nepal, a UNDP project is using games and social media to question gender stereotypes;

* In Sri Lanka, we're crowd sourcing youth engagement to aid in policy making;

* In Bangladesh, UNDP is gathering behavioural insights to address traffic problems in mega cities like Dhaka;

* In Malaysia, we are crowd funding citizen contributions to help with biodiversity conservation;

* In Papua New Guinea, we are using mobile technology to monitor corruption.

These projects are the vanguard of UNDP's drive for innovation in the development arena. This year UNDP was named a global leader in transparency, our next objective is to be global leaders in innovation.  In keeping with that commitment, UNDP's Asia Pacific Hub is hosting a two-day Innovation Summit in Bangkok, at the end of this month. It will explore how we can inject innovation in all the work we do.  

By encouraging innovation and partnering with thinkers and innovators UNDP hopes to spark conversations and collaborations that can lead to transformative solutions that address the complex development challenges we face across the world.

The writer is Deputy Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, UNDP, and Director of the Bangkok Regional Hub.