The policy makers expressed a clear and urgent challenge of a lack of coordination within the policy space, and lack of coherence between policy space and social development strategies. All expressed a strong interest in being supplied with and supported by capabilities, processes and instruments that would enhance performance across various policy spaces and in their specific domains of responsibility. There currently is no policy advisory entity that supports government bodies in Uzbekistan with a robust protocol that integrates development efforts across diverse areas of social experience and enables coordination between the various government functions, systemic coherence with the strategic orientation and constant supply of policy briefs with which to manage dynamically. International Donor partners are challenged in their ability to support the Government in delivery of their mandate due to lack of access to and influence of the policy space. They convey to the local stakeholders an approach that thinks exclusively in terms of individual projects delivered within vertical areas of competence and therefore perpetuating a disjointed and ultimately not very effective support to the Country’s strategic and programmatic development and transformational intent. At the start of 2024, the CO will participate in a one-year scoping exercise to determine a new Country Programme Document (CPD), which will take effect in 2025. UNDP’s mandate as an Integrator of the UN system is not yet compatible with the current set up and practices in the Country Office, with its focus on project delivery standing in the way of taking an integrating and orchestrating role in and beyond the UN system. The work highlighted opportunities and some genuine interest to consider Portfolios of policy options as strategic instruments that can be leveraged across the CO’s work. It was observable that there are a few key individuals with the perspective and capabilities to connect to the vision of the UNDP as a Policy Advisor with the capability to design, dynamically manage and leverage Portfolios of Policy-making Options to deliver a constant stream of Policy Briefs and Propositions. There seems to be a tendency to formalise working structures in the office as a way to respond to the uncertainty a new situation (or capability) creates. This has meant that the most of the energy around policy making portfolios has materialised as a functional/hieracrhical discussion, rather than as one about impact and latent potential.

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Blogs to be published

Above data was used in diagnosing readiness of the CO and partners in adopting/applying portfolios in development programming.

Collective intelligence - We collected insights and inputs from the different groups (for example, during workshops with colleagues of UNDP from different clusters and projects).   System thinking is the main instrument we used in designing the portfolio. Visual Thinking and Mapping - Visualized ecosystems, partners, stakeholders, and other aspects of the portfolio.  Sensemaking is the key value generation mechanism in the dynamic management frameworks.

Activating portfolios is not an-end goal by itself but only a means. Nevertheless, the journey involves applying innovative methods. In this case, we just tried to apply whatever can be used to push for the wider acceptance, understanding, and adoption of the portfolio approach in our CO.