When innovation in development is a distraction

It has become a fad to pursue innovation in development. It's not that innovation is bad, but just that in many areas it's becoming a serious enough distraction from serious engagement with development. 

I have therefore come to the view that it would do development a lot of good if we eschew the out-sized importance given to innovation and instead focus on just executing better what's been going on. After all there are only so many ways in which teaching, diagnosing and treating, skilling, farming etc can be done. And the search for innovation has become an end in itself, detracting from the main purpose. 

Let me point to a few common examples where innovations replace priorities, displace effort, and often leave the system worse-off than before the innovation's introduction. 

1. In the last two decades the use of incentives to encourage people to do certain tasks which they ought to be doing (send children to school, do ante-natal checkups, immunise their children, for delivery at institutions, undergo skilling, segregate garbage at source etc) has become acknowledged as innovative. In other cases, people are incentivised to do what are their social responsibilities - keeping environment clean etc. 

The problem is that the effect of such incentives decay over time and they come to be seen as an entitlement. In the absence of such incentives, or (more likely) without periodic increases in the incentive, people feel discontented, thereby reducing off-take. In other words, the cognitive focus of the individual shifts from the primary task to the incentive, and changes in their perception of the incentive determines the fulfilment of the task.

More importantly, the introduction of the incentive has also the effect of taking away the collective focus  of the public system from governance improvements that are critical in public services delivery. The attention on implementation of the incentive displaces effort from the regular service delivery and its monitoring, and collectively the system feels a lesser need to prioritise delivery and supervision. The net result is a system which often delivers less than before. 

2. Information Technology interventions have become common place. And they have brought about dramatic improvements in service delivery in many areas. However, it's also the case that people have come to believe that IT solutions can address most problems in development. So, the entire process of painstaking inspections and supervision, granular monitoring, and intense high-level periodic reviews have all come to be marginalised by the presence of ubiquitous Dashboards. Or simple analysis of administrative data is displaced by search for hifalutin solutions involving AI/ML and Random Forest algorithms. Or, the accountability of ensuring eligibility or qualification has been dispersed by excessive reliance on technology-based work-flow processes and validations. Or a smart electricity meter ends up eliminating the requirement of painstaking energy audits and field inspections. 

There is also the psychology of IT interventions. Everyone is looking for solutions to persistent problems. Once a technology solution is presented as a panacea, alongside the psychological drive to ensure its quick implementation there's also a lurking belief that officials would henceforth be freed of their current drudgery of physical monitoring. Further, once implemented, the lurking belief takes over and the officials relax their attention on their original governance and oversight roles. 

3. Process re-engineering is a management fad that has found its uses in public systems. The idea of eliminating redundant processes is unexceptionable. But going beyond and introducing innovations like deemed approvals or eliminating supervisory layers can be counterproductive in weak capacity systems. So, for example, deemed approvals of building plans or statutory certificates without the necessary safeguards (which are very difficult) can result in emergence of abusive practices, which worsens the problem.

In all these things, a common feature is the displacement of bureaucratic effort. In weak capacity public systems, the administrative bandwidth of officials is heavily constrained. There are only a few things that they can concentrate and do well at any time. The introduction of the innovation adds to the already big list of priorities they are supposed to implement and/or supervise and/or monitor. Besides, any innovation being new, there will always be greater uncertainties in its implementation which in turn demands greater administrative attention in implementation. The net result is that the attention bestowed on the innovation will displace that given on the original task.

A good example of this is the emerging body of evidence which shows that the implementation of Edtech interventions in schools end up lowering the time teachers spend on classroom instruction, thereby reducing learning outcomes.

In conclusion, we should prioritise governance of implementation and monitoring of development interventions. Innovation should be about tinkering at the margins to improve governance. It should not become the central focus in addressing the development problem.