Review 3 final 2 - TAU - National Treasury

TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE UNIT REVIEW | Blending Voice and Text
“Blending Voice
and Text”: A
Collage-type
Article 1
- based on an Interview with John
Saxby, Evaluator on a Mid -Term
Review under Development Cooperation
within South Africa’s
Development Co-operation
landscape
First, thank you for the opportunity to reflect on
my recent work in South Africa – as ever, a thoughtprovoking
and challenging time. I’m flattered you
should ask me to do an email interview for the TAU
Review, and I hope ‘my notes’ are useful to the TAU and
your readers.
Let me take the liberty of clustering the four questions
into two groups. Questions (1) and (4) touch on “what
success looks like” – case studies, and stories of work
done by the TAU and its clients. Questions (2) and (3)
examine innovation – examples and opportunities.
I will offer some observations on each of these two
pairs of questions, drawing on what I learned during
my recent work in South Africa. The core programming
issue for the Mid-Term Review was the challenge of
making institutions more effective, both in the public
sector and in civil society. The TAU is obviously a
primary actor in this task of “institutional development”,
1 A collage, in its true sense, is a collection of “bits and pieces”: cut
out scenes and text that are pasted together to make a composite
picture –with diversity and often disparity drawn together into a
holistic view. This article is meant to ‘feel’ like a collage-showing a rich
picture of some interesting and thought-provoking ideas; with the
formal text transposed next to the ‘voice’ of the interviewee.
or “building institutional capacity”- the enterprise has
different names - in the public sector. So, I will refer to
the TAU’s work in the public service, but also to other
examples of this society-wide project (project under
mid-term review).
I should emphasize that these notes are my personal
reflections, offered from the point of view of a
sympathetic visitor. That said, I do owe a debt to the
Development Partner concerned and International
Development Co-operation Chief Directorate of
National Treasury for giving me the opportunity to
work on the review of the programme. Also, to the
dozens of people who are working on the programme
who gave me their time and consideration, and to my
consultant colleagues in the review team.
And so onto the questions that
you asked:
(1) Your report speaks compelling around
Knowledge Management in terms of
highlighting the opportunities for case studies
so that stakeholders may get a more vivid feel of
what “success looks like”
Is there an example of such a ‘case study’ from the
TAU implementation of the Development Partner
programme which shows the elements of success
that you identify elsewhere in the report: namely
innovation, catalytic potential, deep capacity
development, strong alignment with South African
priorities in line with the Paris Declaration and Accra
Accord
(4) In your focus group discussions with the TAU, you
encouraged them to overcome the linear nature
of the log frame project management tool by
“telling their stories of successes and learning”.
page 19
Enabling change for development