While there a general coherence between “Anticipatory, Agile, and Adaptable” principles and the government’s strategic direction for local governance, there is still a lack of technical frameworks, operational mechanisms, and formally documented implementation models that clearly articulate how AAA could be translated into action, particularly for Philippine local governance. Moreover, “AAA Governance” as a concept risks sounding alien or even comedic to stakeholders (AAA is commonly associated with contractor ratings or with battery types), thus the preliminary branding of the work has pivoted to “Future Fit Local Governance,” consistent with the terminology used in the recently-released Human Development Report for Asia-Pacific. To better increase confidence for eventual scaling, the development of models and policy integration will specifically focus on two areas of work that is common to all LGUs by administrative design: (1) the planning and budgeting processes of local governments, including revenue and asset management, and (2) civil society and citizen participation in local governance, particularly in making institutional mechanisms for participatory governance function. Moreover, the prototyping and modeling work moving forward could focus on key thematic issues, including disaster resilience and universal healthcare: two areas where local devolution needs to be strengthened or at least clarified.

This work has not yet been fully realized and handed over to the intended partners, although the work entails close collaboration and cooperation with them, particularly internally with the UNDP PH Institutions and Partnerships (I&P) Programme Team, and externally with the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM). For now, key outputs have been produced and submitted (or are about to be submitted) to these partners. First, on the design of the envisaged programme/portfolio on Future-Fit Local Governance (instead of AAA Local Governance), the conceptual framework, theory of change, and package of interventions have been drafted. ALab PH and I&P Programme will need to work closely and allocate roles towards the completion of the portfolio/programme document (e.g., projects, components, resources) and its marketing to potential donors. Second, on ongoing research, the two data analytics project are near completion, and the stocktaking interviews with local multistakeholder networks who were involved in a prototyping exercise last year is currently midway. Once these are completed, the findings will be discussed with the government partners and will ultimately be integrated with the programme/portfolio design. Finally, the accompaniment of DBM, other government partners, and civil society partners in the Open Government Partnership (OGP) National Action Plan (NAP) development process is still underway, with key milestones being primed for early next year. These include engagement of broad civil society to be take part in the Philippine OGP activities and vie for the steering committee membership; and discussions with commitment-holders among the government agencies to explore areas for collaboration including opportunities for experimentation. Indicatively, commitments around civic participation in planning and monitoring of government policies and programmes especially at the local government level are being sought, for testing of how AAA principles could help enhance these processes.

In seeking to operationalize AAA principles, the programme/portfolio design work had to review available literature and legal administrative issuances to assess the current state of policy and institutional arrangements that could define, enable, and measure AAA. The analytical work leveraged administrative data on local expenditures and local governance metrics, but unfortunately no progress has been made to open these rich data sets. Finally, in-depth interviews and focused group discussions had to be pursued with national and local stakeholders to scope out how they understand AAA principles and their impressions of it.

Supervised machine learning and advanced econometrics tools, in combination with data visualization, were used to find patterns and relationships in the available data of local governance and local finances. Two policy papers will be produced from this work towards (a) defining better indicators to measure local governance capacity and performance particularly AAA capacities and desired outcomes; (b) and how resource management is deeply ingrained in how LGUs are able to innovate and act nimbly in the face of crises.   On the qualitative side, a combination of ethnography, sensemaking, and participatory design was used in scoping the current state of play of local governance and how AAA approaches can be used to enhance the same. In particular, in-depth stocktaking sessions are currently being conducted with participants of the prototyping exercise conducted in 2022 where local multistakeholder networks were armed with social innovation tools as they engage their local governments and undertake participatory planning for their localities’ socioeconomic recovery from the pandemic. Insights from this work, once completed, will feed into the programme design.

While the methods used are not very sophisticated yet and the data and partners not very unusual, the Future-Fit Local Governance programme is itself emerging to be innovation-driven in its design and implementation. The AAA approaches to be introduced in planning and budgeting processes, for instance, leans heavily towards foresight and systems thinking; and the participatory process enhancements are emerging to be inspired by participatory design. As it is emerging, capacity building on AAA is going towards the direction of mainstreaming key social and digital innovation competencies in local governments and local multi-stakeholder coalitions.