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Community Contribution

Participate in a CLA Experiment for USAID/Azerbaijan

Jul 20, 2017
Amy Leo
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USAID Foreign Service Officer and self-proclaimed “CLA Guru” David Ratliff (you may remember his interview with Don Draper or appearance in episode 4 of the USAID Learning Lab podcast) recently transitioned from the USAID/PPL/LER CLA team to USAID/Azerbaijan and wasted no time in coming up with a CLA experiment for the mission.

David says:

We have a Monitoring Mission Order that has been in process for months and just hasn't been finalized yet. So, I'd like to use this opportunity as a CLA experiment.

I'd like to use the CLA Community of Practice, M&E Points of Contact group, and USAID Learning Lab (I'd love non-USAID feedback) to put the draft Mission Order out for public feedback. I would call it a "Creative Ideas and Strengthening Exercise" NOT a "Let me tear your document apart to prove how smart I am exercise."

Mission Order screen shotThe rules would be:

  1. The Mission Order is open for a two week period for comment (July 20 - August 3).
  2. All comments must be constructive in nature or they will be disregarded and deleted.
  3. Any comment picking apart something in the Mission Order must include a creative idea or solution to remedy the issue.
  4. The Mission reserves the right to pick and choose those suggestions and ideas for incorporation into the final draft that are appropriate for the Azerbaijan context and where we have the staff and resources to be able to actually implement the idea. For example, we won’t be procuring a $100 million MEL contract with our very limited resources.

Once the comment period is finished we will try and finalize the Mission Order within two weeks. That's the goal anyway. When we have a final draft we will post it on ProgramNet and USAID Learning Lab as an example that other Missions might be able to use with an accompanying blog detailing the process and our reflections on what worked, what didn't, and anything we would do differently next time.

Interested in weighing in? Find the draft Mission Order here and share your feedback via this Google Form.