Owen abroad

Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

Here is a  really nice animated talk by Dan Pink on what really motivates us.

For those who can’t play the video, he says that monetary incentives work for simple, straightforward tasks, but they don’t work at all well for tasks that require conceptual and creative thinking.  According to him, what motivates people is autonomy, mastery and purpose.

One conclusion I draw from this is that there are probably a lot more people than you might think who would be willing to spend a lot of time and effort helping to make the world a better place by reducing poverty, if we did a better job of enabling them to give their time and abilities.  According to Pink, what will motivate them is the challenge, the opportunity to develop mastery, and the knowledge that they are making a contribution to a purpose they believe in.  Those of us who work in development need to do some more thinking about how we can provide more platforms on which those contributions can be made, rather than just asking people to pay money in taxes or in donations.

In a more satirical vein, if you work in the aid business I think you’ll enjoy the “Hand Relief International” blog. Here’s the latest post, on innovation in development:

Speaking about thinking – I have been thinking about “innovation” a lot lately, as I noticed the word is all the rage these days. The challenge in our sector is how to “integrate innovation” in our language without changing much about the way things work.  … Passing innovation in a world dominated by career professionals with many years in the business and certain ways of doing things is a pretty tall order but then donor’s don’t really want to see much rocking of the boat happening either – that would force them to change their ways, which always makes them uncomfortable – they want to see the word used a lot, and they want to hear the occasional 300-words story about it, that can be put in a neat textbox in a report.

(Thanks to @AIDSPolicyProj for the link to the Dan Pink video)

… is here.  Simon’s stuff is always well worth reading – he has an enviable ability to synthesize ideas from across disciplines, and explain them with a coherent narrative.

Every time I add a new blog post, several hundred people now receive it automatically by email.  (If you would like email updates in future, just type your email address into the box at the top right of the page.  You can also remove yourself from the list at any time in exactly the same way.)

It isn’t surprising that people prefer to have blog posts come to them, rather than to have to make the effort to visit every blog they want to read.  This is especially true if you have low bandwidth or if internet access is expensive, as is often the case in developing countries. I guess that’s why some people like the email option.  But most blogs do not offer email subscriptions; and if you follow several blogs you might find it a bit of a pain to have your email clogged up with this stuff.

So you don’t to want to visit each blog individually, and you can’t or don’t want to get them all by email.   Not everyone knows that there are some good solutions to this problem, especially if they are not all that interested in technology. So here’s a quick guide to how to read blogs and other websites easily.

I read over 250 blogs regularly, because I find them informative, entertaining and interesting.  I get more diversity of opinion and ideas from those 250 blogs than from reading one or two newspapers; and often you get the chance to learn from real experts in their fields, without the casual mistakes, prejudices and dumbing down that you get when those views are intermediated by lazy journalists.

But I don’t want to visit 250 websites each morning. Nor do I want all that stuff arriving in my email each day.  I don’t want to read everything that they all write: I want to skip through the headlines, or a brief summary of each article, so that I can see which ones I want to read properly.

Fortunately there is a wonderful behind-the-scenes feature of almost every blog – and many other websites – called RSS.  I’ll spare you the technical details, but this stands for “Real Simple Syndication” and it means that you can pull the contents of a blog or website to another place.  And that in turn means you can get all the blogs you want to read in one place.

The simplest and most widely-used solution is Google Reader.   This is a website which lets you read blogs, rather like Hotmail or GMail lets you read your mail. You tell Google Reader the addresses of all the blogs you want to read, and it pulls all the posts to one place.   It looks a bit like an email programme: you can easily see what’s new, and skip through the headings until you find something that looks interesting.  When a blog post is new and unread it shows up in bold.

As well as blogs, you can subscribe to the feeds of other websites, such as the BBC Africa News or DFID Press Releases.   You can even set up a Google Alert for a specialist subject – such as your own name! – and have that appear among your feeds.  You can have all your friends’ Facebook statuses in a feed.  This means that you can decide what you are interested in, all over the net, and bring it all together in one place.

You can put the blogs in folders – mine are grouped into “Africa”, “Development”, “Technology” and so on.  Some people put their “must read” feeds into one folder, which they look at each day,  and their occasional reading in another folder for when they want to do some browsing.

However, Google Reader is an online website, and that may not be ideal for you if your internet connection is slow, or if you are on a plane.  One solution to this is Google Gears, which is a way to access Google services like Google Mail and Google Reader if you are not online.  I have found Gears a bit unreliable in the past, so it is not my preferred solution.

There are many other ways to have your computer fetch the information from these feeds when you are online.  (These programmes are technically called aggregators or feed readers.) Some of them can be set to download the content to your computer so that you can read it later offline, like you can with your email.

If you have Outlook 2007, then you have a feed reader right in front of you.  You can tell Outlook which RSS feeds you want to read and they will appear in a separate folder underneath your Inbox.  To use this, you can go to the Tools menu, choose Account settings, then RSS feeds.  Paste in the address from the blog or website you want to subscribe to.  (Use Ctrl+V to paste into the box).  Apparently you can also add feeds to Outlook automatically from Internet Explorer.

I prefer not to use Outlook for reading blogs, however.  I use FeedDemon instead, which is a free download. This is very easy to use, and it has the neat feature that it synchronises with Google Reader. So if I add a new subscription to Google Reader, it is automatically added to FeedDemon.  If I have read something in FeedDemon, it is marked as read in Google Reader.

There are other feed readers, such as SharpReader.  (I use FeedDemon because of its synchronisation with Google Reader.)

If your office does not let you install new software, you may be stuck with Outlook (if you have Outlook 2007) or an online service like Google Reader.

Which blogs should you be reading?  If you are in to development you may be interested in my list of the best development blogs – look at the suggestions in the comments, which include some important omissions from my original post.  There is a longer list of what I am reading down the right hand side of my blog page.

How do you get started? Adding subscriptions manually is a bit of a bore at first.  Fortunately there is a way to share subscription lists.  To get you started, here are twenty two key development-related blogs in the form of an OPML file.  Right click the link and download this file to your computer, and save it to your desktop. Then in Google Reader or Feed Demon you can import this  file and it will automatically add these blogs to your subscriptions. (You can always unsubscribe if you don’t like them or if you find this too much).  I can’t see a way to import an OPML file into Outlook, unfortunately. ** UPDATE: See the comments for how do to this in Outlook. **

The key point of all this is that there is a way to subscribe to blogs and websites, so that all the information you are interested in comes to you in one place, whether from blogs, newspapers, website, facebook or even search.  This makes it really easy for you to see what is happening all over the world as you drink your morning coffee.

And if all that sounds terribly complicated, don’t forget you can get this blog by email by putting your address into the box on the top right of the page – or, if you must, send me an email and I’ll add you manually.

Happy reading …

It would be invidious to recommend particular blogs, and what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t be invidious? So, if you only read a few development blogs, here is my list of who I think you should be reading. I expect I have embarrassed myself by leaving out somebody crucial – if so, please tell me in the comments and I’ll fix it.  I’ve also updated the blogroll on the right of the page.

Development blogs you should be reading

To make this pleasingly controversial, I’ve also put them roughly in order, from “must read” at the top to “probably should read”.  I’m not going in for that “in no particular order” fence-sitting stuff.

• Chris Blattman
• Duncan Green
• Bill Easterly (and colleagues)
• Aid Thoughts
• Karen Grepin
• Blood and Milk and everything else by Alana Shaikh
• Texas in Africa
• Global Dashboard
• Wronging Rights
• Tales from the Hood
• Transitionland
• White African
• Good Intentions Are Not Enough
• Hand Relief International (spoof)
• Wandering Thoughts
• Rethinking Development Economics
• Aid on the Edge of Chaos
• last and least, me: Owen Abroad

If you want an email whenever this blog is updated, please put your email address in the box top right.

Development organisations and think-tanks

Here are some blogs from development organisations and think tanks – some of them can err on the wrong side of the blog/flog boundary from time to time.  Again, best ones are first.

• Center for Global Development(disclosure: I work here)
• Shanta Devarajan at the World Bank
• Global Economic Governance group at Oxford
• Aidinfo (disclosure: I work here)
• Development Initiatives (disclosure: I work here)
• Publish What You Fund
• Danny Kaufmann at Brookings
• UK Department for International Development bloggers
• Ideas 4 development
• Overseas Development Institute (ODI) Blog

Development podcasts

Here are some development-related podcasts. (I’m about to start a new series of Development Drums, by the way).

• Development Drums (self publicity alert!)
• The Center for Global Development Prosperity Wonkcast
• Think Before You Give
• BBC Africa Today
• Peterson Perspectives
• PRI: Global Health and Development
• The World Bank Podcasts
• Philanthropy This Week
• PRI: The Changing World

Bubbling up: newer development blogs

Here are some more you might want check out – they are too new (to me, at least) or slightly off-topic to be included in my “must read” list, but they look promising:

• Access to Action
• Do No Harm – by folks at the London School of Economics
• Waylaid Dialectic
• Lindsay Morgan’s Despatches
• Wait  … What?

And of course there are more also-rans and off-topic blogs on the right of the screen.

On Twitter

If you are a Twitter user, you might be interested to add these to your list of people you follow:

• A list of Center for Global Development Fellows on Twitter
• Jim Cashel’s list of global development types on Twitter
• Mike Gechter’s list

Who are we missing?

I’m looking forward to being introduced to new blogs, and being reminded of blogs I’ve forgotten, in the comments.

I generally assume that people who read blogs use an RSS reader, like Google Reader or FeedDemon (which is what I use), rather than hopping from one website to another in your web browser.  You can even use Outlook 2007 or 2010 to gather blog updates automatically.  But talking to friends and acquaintances leads me to suspect that not many people are using feed readers.

So in response to a few requests, I’ve added a “subscribe by email” box on the top right of the my blog. If you want an automatic email every time a new blog post appears here, please put your email address into the box and press the subscribe button. You’ll get an email asking you to click a link to confirm that you really do want to receive updates. Once you’ve pressed OK on that, you’ll get every new article by email.

Please let me know if you experience any problems making this work.

You can also follow me on twitter (@owenbarder).

(For the technically minded, I’m using the Subscribe2 WordPress plugin.)

Good news: the Center for Global Development has started a new podcast series, the Global Prosperity Wonkcast.

In this first episode, host Lawrence Macdonald talks to Todd Moss about his new paper, Saving Ghana from Its Oil: The Case for Direct Cash Distribution.  Todd proposes ways for the citizens to have more oversight of Ghana’s oil revenue, and to contain oil-induced patronage, by distributing the benefits of oil directly to the citizens.

The podcast lasts about 20 minutes, and you cou listen directly on line or subscribe on iTunes.

As you would expect from CGD, this first episode sugests that the wonkcasts will be essential listening.  CGD has a knack of addressing important developing issues in interesting and innovative ways, and basing its ideas on thorough research and evidence.

And if CGD’s wonkcast doesn’t satisfy your entire appetite for podcasts on development, there is always Development Drums.

Chris Blattman has a thoughtful post about his decision to continue blogging.

He gives a bunch of reasons – to paraphrase, they are: (a) it is way to have influence; (b) it is probably a good career more; (c) it forces the author to think more carefully about the issues and to think about the big picture; (d) it acts as a an academic memory or diary; and (e) it subjects the author’s thinking and arguments to the wisdom of crowds.

These are all good reasons.

I started to blog because I wanted to stand up and be counted on the things I think are important.  Because I work at home on my own most of the time, blogging lets me get things off my chest without bothering my long-suffering partner about every issue.

I am very glad that Chris has decided to continue to blog.  I learn a lot from what he writes, and I can hear his voice in every post.

Ryan Briggs has a good round up of development-related podcasts

Fall classes have started again so my time on the DC metro has increased greatly. The commuting has meant that I’ve been blowing through podcasts at an alarming rate, and I’ve come across a few that are worth sharing. These links are to the webpages of the podcasts, but all of them can be found in iTunes as well.

Awesome awkward photos.

Here is a job I might have applied for if I were in London: Director of Digital Engagement:

Develop a strategy and implementation plan for extending digital engagement across Government

But I’m quite glad not to be eligible. Here are some phrases from the job description that should give pause for thought to anyone with experience of Government:

… You will manage a small team, directly, but will have to manage relationships with a wide group of senior officials across Government. This will require developing working arrangements in which departmental officials feel they are accountable to the Head of Digital Engagement without the benefit of a formal line management arrangement…..

… you will have to develop these relationships from scratch in a pressured environment in which Ministerial expectations of delivery are high.

… You will have a small budget

… Within two years the use of world class digital engagement techniques should be embedded in the normal work of Government

Or, in plain English, the post will have no staff, no budget, no power, and yet Ministers expect you to see to it that within two years the UK Government will make world class use of digital engagement.

Good luck to whoever gets this job!

• Ngaire Woods on what Africa needs from the G20
• Bill Easterly’s new AidWatch blog
• The Global Crisis Debate in the run up to the G20 (moderated by Dani Rodrik)
• Simon Maxwell’s reflections on Davos

Jeremy Gould, one of the few civil servants who “gets” the internet, is leaving to spend more time with his family.

I’ve been scouting around for a new challenge in Whitehall for a long time now but the truth is that beyond building and managing corporate websites, those roles don’t exist. There’s been a lot of talk over the last four years of how more senior strategic web roles are inevitable, but in that time its been just talk. So there was no next move for me.

It isn’t a good sign that people leave the civil service partly because it is so frustrating to be an advocate of change.  On the positive side, things are starting to change – mainly in local government rather than central government – but the UK Government is miles behind where we could be.  Jeremy also describes the way that he was discouraged from blogging, which is worrying.

Dave and Simon both highlight the significance of Jeremy’s departure.

The Cabinet Office has now published guidance for civil servants for blogging and participation in online sites.

How the Civil Service Code applies to online participation

The Civil Service Code applies to your participation online as a civil servant or when discussing government business. You should participate in the same way as you would with other media or public forums such as speaking at conferences.

Disclose your position as a representative of your department or agency unless there are exceptional circumstances, such as a potential threat to personal security. Never give out personal details like home address and phone numbers.

Always remember that participation online results in your comments being permanently available and open to being republished in other media. Stay within the legal framework and be aware that libel, defamation, copyright and data protection laws apply. This means that you should not disclose information, make commitments or engage in activities on behalf of Government unless you are authorised to do so. This authority may already be delegated or may be explicitly granted depending on your organisation.

Also be aware that this may attract media interest in you as an individual, so proceed with care whether you are participating in an official or a personal capacity. If you have any doubts, take advice from your line manager.

Good luck to civil servants as they try to implement this. I had rather a torrid time when the Mail on Sunday chose to attack me for my previous blog.

Simon Dickson has more.

The Economist highlights the importance of improving the way aid is given:

Because the aid they receive is such a capricious, volatile commodity, governments dare not make full use of it. They could hire legions of extra teachers, clinicians and civil servants, but only if they are prepared to fire them when the aid spigot is closed. They could put AIDS-sufferers on anti-retroviral therapies, but only if they are willing to discontinue treatment once the money stops.

The article explains why the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness is such an important step towards reducing the costs of aid to beneficiaries and donors alike, and so greatly improving the effectiveness with which aid is used.

It is a rare pleasure to read this well-informed comment about the need for donors to align their aid with the systems they are trying to support, to make aid more predictable, less likely to undermined domestic accountability and to duplicate each other less.

US Presidential hopeful John Edwards has set out a plan for fighting global poverty:

As president, John Edwards will fundamentally transform America’s approach to the world. As part of his $5 billion initiative, he will bring high-level attention to help people in three priority areas: primary education, preventive health, and greater economic and political opportunity.

He proposes a Cabinet level post to tackle global poverty (which the UK introduced in 1997) and promises a new Global Development Act to consolidate and simplify the US foreign assistance system.

Comment: It would be good news for development if this becomes an issue in the US Presidential elections.

More at CGD.

Chris McGreal has a piece in the Guardian today about DFID's work in Africa. (Disclosure: I work for DFID).  Chris McGreal says:

The result, say DFID officials in Africa, is that they are able to direct large amounts of money to areas of greatest need, including putting millions of pounds directly into government budgets. Speaking on a visit to Malawi, Mr Benn added that routing aid through African governments makes them more accountable to those it is supposed to benefit.

Tim Worstall agrees in part.  He likes the direct payment to the poor, but dislikes paymens through government budgets:

Given my views on governments, this doesn't strike me as all that good an idea. Most especially given my view that most poor countires are in fact poor because they have grasping, venal and incompetent governments, this really doesn't strike me as a good idea. But I'm aware that there are those who hold different opinions on this matter. 

There are indeed those who hold a different opinion on this.   The main reasons that we give money in the form of Budget support are:

• all countries, rich and poor, need governments that are accountable, capable and responsive to their people.  If services such as education and health are provided directly by other agencies – such as international donors – then there is no accountability of the providers to the intended beneficiaries; the results will be weak and marginalized governments, and unresponsive services;
• though there are short-term needs to get essential services to people, the only long run, sustainable solution for these countries is to run the services themselves; if we set up parallel systems that hire the trained people away from government, we delay, rather than accelerate, the day when these countries can build sufficiently strong and effective systems for themselves;
• the services can only be delivered cost-effectively as part of a joined-up system; you don't want an AIDS clinic separate from a vaccination centre in the same town: you want a single health centre; if you are building schools then you need to train teachers or procure text books.  So a bunch of separate initiatives to provide specific services in particular places will be very inefficient compared to building an effective, joined up service.
• in the past, we have ignored and bypassed poor financial management (or even corruption) in governments in poor countries because we can work around them; we cannot do that if we are going to put British taxpayers' money into those systems, so giving budget support forces us – and everyone else – to tackle one of the long-term causes of poor government.

My view is not just speculation or ideology.   Here is an independent, international review of Budget Support.  There is a lot of evidence gathered there.  The summary says:

when a developing country’s government has the political will to reduce poverty, budget support can be an effective way for donors to deliver aid. Overall, it has helped to strengthen the relationship between donors and developing country governments, and encouraged better coordination between different donors. It has helped to strengthen planning and budget systems, making them more transparent and therefore accountable. It has also helped to prioritise areas of expenditure that target the poor like health and education.The team of evaluators found no clear evidence that budget support funds were, in practice, more affected by corruption than other forms of aid.

The ODI blog uses the debate about BAE in Tanzania as a hook for the broader issue known in Whitehall as "Policy Coherence for Development" – that is, the extent to which our policies on issues other than aid – such as trade, arms exports, financial stability, corruption, climate change, migration, intellectual property  – either support, or perhaps undermine, the prospects for developing countries.

In my view, getting these issues right is at least as important as aid for providing the circumstance in which poor countries can lift themselves out of poverty.

DFID will be publishing its first annual report to Parliament on policy coherence, following Tom Watson's Tom Clarke's Private Members Bill (International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill).  This should help to build awareness across Government of the importance of these issues for promoting international development, which is in all our interests in the long run.

[Thanks to Richard for spotting that I had the wrong Tom] 

Very interesting paper by James Harrigan and Geoffrey Barrows at NBER which quantifies the benefit to the United States of ending the Multi Fiber Agreement (which had regulated the global textile trade), and which was ended as part of the Uruguay Round.

The paper finds that this change in trade policy was worth approximately $12 billion a year to American consumers.

That is in addition to the benefits to many people in China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, who are now better able to earn a living producing and exporting goods to to the United States. (The paper does not seek to quantify these benefits).

Via Trade Diversion 

The UK Government is today hosting a conference on the proposed Arms Trade Treaty. The treaty is being promoted by  Argentina, Australia, Costa Rica, Japan, Kenya and the UK and it would create a framework to regulate the arms trade so that all countries adopt similar standards.While the treaty is not perfect, it would be a significant step forward in the control of the proliferation of weapons.  Ambassadors from more than 50 nations will meet to discuss the proposal, which the UK aims to take to the UN General Assembly later this year.

Alex Singleton at the Globalisation Institute reports that all is not well, in at least some fair trade cooperatives

Sadly, for too many farmers in poor countries today, they are trapped in not terribly voluntary co-operatives. Out in rural Kenya last week, I found that there was some scepticism towards the traditional view the co-operatives are always forces for good. In fact, in Kenya, the coffee co-operatives have suffered from significant mismanagement, with individual farmers often exploited by the leaders of the co-operatives. In fairness, Kenya has been trying to help rebalance the situation, for example introducing six year term limits on co-operative leaders. I do worry that spokespeople for the Fairtrade movement suffer from a myopic romantic vision of the coffee farmer in a co-operative, which the truth such an existence is backbreaking and mired in exploitation.

It would be a cruel irony if the fairtrade movement itself became a new form of expoitation.  The principle of fair trade – that people should be able to spend more buying products that they know to have been produced without exploitation – is a good one.  But the recent articles in the FT and Alex's report from Kenya suggest that more needs to be done to ensure that the fair trade certificate means what it says.

See also today's FT leader. 

Update: the Fair Trade Foundation replies here.