Piloting and Scaling Up Local Experience

The concept of scaling-up has become increasingly popular as donors have acknowledged the relatively poor record of innovative pilot projects in extending their reach to large populations. In the context of decentralization and local governance, development cooperation often starts with pilot interventions in selected municipalities or communes, with the idea of establishing best practices in a model context to be replicated more broadly later.

Scaling-up methods are generally used to reach different goals, such as increasing and deepening the impact of a successfully tested innovation, expanding its reach (to other geographical regions, population groups, individuals), or making the intervention more sustainable. This means that scaling-up may mean different things, according to one’s vision. In decentralization and local governance scaling-up is often used with a vision of expanding to other local government units, and/or using local best practice for improving national decentralization policy, to make relevant innovations more sustainable.

Successful scaling-up depends on many factors which should be thought of even before starting the pilot. According to the MSI Scaling-up Management Framework, key components include:

· An innovation that is effective and successfully tested. In many cases, however, the key factors of success are difficult to document, since they include invisible soft factors such as personal motivation and engagement of stakeholders (ex. the commitment of the mayor of the pilot municipality), the mutual relationship of stakeholders involved. It has to be carefully assessed whether what worked successfully e.g. in one sector will also work in other sectors without unwanted side-effects.

· Political support for the issue at stake (ex. improving the management of local government units) and the innovation itself (ex. manual for management procedures). Scaling-up strategies in decentralization and local governance will have to consider building such support among relevant stakeholders at national and local level.

· The financial and human capacity for scaling-up. In many cases, the organizations implementing the model will not have the adequate capacities (skills, infrastructure, legitimacy, financial and human resources, systems and policies) needed for replicating and expanding. Different and often several types of organizations are needed.

Useful links and documents:

· Larry Cooley / Richard Kohl, Scaling Up – From vision to Large-scale change: A Management Framework for Practitioners, Washington D.C. (Management Systems International) 2006 (with a set of guidelines offering practical advice on how to carry out each of ten key tasks needed for effective scaling up);

· Hans P. Binswanger / Swaminathan S. Aryar, Scaling-up Community-Driven development, Theoretical underpinnings and program design implications, The World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3039, Washington 2003 (with various examples),