Document(s) 4 of 7

In the early 1990s, IDRC reassessed its vision of the process of development — “local research for local problem-solving”— and adopted a strategy it defined as “empowerment through knowledge.” To attract collaborators and funding to sustain its primary goals, IDRC mobilized its special strengths: research for development, the international Board, intellectual partnerships with researchers in developing countries, and its own organizational flexibility and agility.

The challenge to reduce overheads while maintaining the largest possible program budget inspired two new approaches to research management: program initiatives and research secretariats.

Program initiatives (PIs) are staff teams comprising multidisciplinary specialists who address specific problems and set their own research agendas. The idea echoed the growing feeling in the international research community that the traditional monodisciplinary approach to science was offering only marginal returns to the impoverished people of the world.

While IDRC’s early work supported problem-solving carried out on the basis of codes of practice relevant to a particular scientific discipline, PIs supported problem-solving organized toward achieving particular goals. This offered a better chance of revealing the right package of technical responses and “social innovation” that would address target problems.

Early initiatives reassigned resources to research new approaches to “community-based natural resource management,” on the “effects of macroeconomic policy on the poor,” and for better understanding of “the interaction of ecosystems and human health.”

Increasing awareness of the impact of information and communication technologies on development attracted more support for bridging the “digital divide.” IDRC insisted that research collaboration initiated by developing countries is the key to providing access to scientific information and to ensuring that data and analysis produced by developing-country scientists is captured and shared. Program initiatives for information science took account of the human and social dimensions that would decide what kind of impact the new technologies will have on health, education, human rights, and gender relations in development settings. IDRC’s support for developing-country researchers and decision-makers allowed them to participate fully in such new forums as the Global Knowledge Partnership and the G8 Digital Opportunity Task Force (DOT Force).

Program initiatives benefited both program and operational priorities. They enabled IDRC to provide its Board with comprehensive plans to assess the promise and risks of a new endeavour, assign staff and budget resources at the outset, improve monitoring over the course of the research, provide better evaluations at the end of each phase, and increase the possibility of the results being applied to the problem under study.

This system of research management has had other important benefits. The team approach to staffing preserved the collegial relationship between program staff and recipients — a hallmark of IDRC programing. It encouraged lower overhead costs by allocating larger fund packages, for longer periods of time, with day-to-day decision-making being passed to the team. And it added another dimension to IDRC’s use of research networks.

The secretariats are research consortia of several donors that pursue goals in common with IDRC. They were first devised to attract new funding. This followed staff concerns that fruitful lines of robust IDRCsupported research not be abandoned merely because of budget cuts. Gradually the secretariats demonstrated their potential as incubators for new research that could continue independently. Lessons learned from these mechanisms encouraged IDRC to seek more donor collaboration around research that was high risk and beyond the means of a single funder.

The success of these two innovative mechanisms in research management for development attracted new collaborations for IDRC, including with CIDA, NORAD (the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation), UNDP (the UN Development Programme), the SDC (the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation), the regional development banks, and private sector firms such as Microsoft Corporation and its Unlimited Potential program.

In the mid-1990s — as IDRC adapted within a changing development context — Canada as a whole reassessed its place in the global system and concluded that it is time to see “domestic policy is foreign policy … foreign policy is domestic policy.” In other words, a merger happened between IDRC’s particular concern for science and technology for international development and Canada’s mainstream preoccupation with science and technology for national development.

Next: Increased Commitment

Document(s) 4 of 7