Define the Problem Narrowly
Almost all social problems connect with each other. Ignoring their interrelationships can doom a planning process, but it is equally futile to try to solve all of them at once. At Vera, therefore, the first step in our planning process is to narrow the definition of the problem that we will actually try to solve, remaining aware of its larger context. To do this, planners analyze statistics, read literature, interview experts, observe current practices, and talk with people delivering and receiving public services. Sometimes these observations and discussions are informal; other times they involve formal research. The goal always is to define a problem both tightly and strategically: tightly so that it can actually be solved, strategically so that its solution makes a real difference.

Identify Potential Government Partners
Next our planners identify the government officials or agencies with a stake in solving the problem. Planners document how each agency is affected by the problem and what the responsible officials stand to gain by solving it. While one agency may emerge as the lead partner, Vera’s demonstrations often involve several agencies reporting to different elected officials. Finding safe and politically acceptable ways for these agencies to pool their information and resources is often part of solving the problem.

Explore Promising Practices Nationally
Vera demonstrates its solutions locally, but always with the hope of influencing practice nationally. Before designing their own solutions, therefore, Vera planners visit promising programs across the country created to solve similar problems. The planners identify the strengths and weaknesses in each program, while they begin to distinguish the practices that might apply anywhere from the inevitable accommodations to local political and structural realities.

Craft an Innovation
Planners then propose a way to remedy the problem. If the remedy is merely a change in the law or regulations, no demonstration project is necessary. But if government employees or contractors should be playing new or different roles, the planners design a demonstration in which those new roles can be defined, practiced, and evaluated. From the start, planners must craft roles that our government partners can afford to institutionalize if the project succeeds. Usually that means that the innovation is likely to save money somewhere in the system. Similarly, planners must anticipate the risks that always accompany innovation: personal risks to participants in the new programs we are testing and political risks that government officials take when they challenge longstanding practices in their own agencies. Planners try to minimize these risks, but they can never eliminate them. The demonstration projects must therefore offer personal and professional rewards for our participants and partners that make the remaining risks tolerable. In other words, planners craft solutions that deliver social, financial, and political value to our partners and the public.

Secure Government Funding
While many Vera demonstration projects depend partially on support from private foundations, Vera only launches a demonstration when the government officials responsible for the function we are testing are willing to invest their agency’s resources in the project. Usually that means that one or more agencies contract with Vera to operate the project. Negotiating those contracts in compliance with the various government procurement rules begins during the planning process. The successful completion of these negotiations usually marks the start of the demonstration.

Implement the Demonstration
Each demonstration project is like its own mini-organization, with its own staff, work environment, and culture. Hiring and training staff, equipping offices, creating information systems, and establishing management practices are some of the recurring challenges of implementation. To help keep the demonstration relevant to its field as the project changes over time, each project director also establishes a national advisory board for the demonstration.

Measure Performance
Vera’s research department evaluates all of our demonstration projects, but we have learned that this is no substitute for routine performance measurement. Researchers typically evaluate a program over a limited period, collecting and analyzing data and then writing a report. But demonstration directors, along with their government partners and funders, need to review the project’s performance continuously, both during any period of research and afterwards. To meet this need, each demonstration director constructs a one-page, monthly report that includes key performance measures drawn from the project’s information systems.

Refine the Innovation
Vera tests each solution on a small scale, small enough to allow demonstration directors to refine the design during the three to five years that Vera runs the project. The project’s advisory board reviews any changes to the program plan every six months in order to ensure that the demonstration remains relevant to its field nationally. By the time the project is ready to spin off from Vera, the design will have been revised several times, tested repeatedly, and shown to make a difference in the quality of justice.

[ last modified 10/8/2004 6:46:05 AM ]