Inroads to formal organizations

Opening Vollies

Q: Why is you’re doing community work would you go through a “formal institution?”

Q: How do we get more people to help who are already in the institutions? They house the resources.

The large institutions have mandates and resources. This presents a challenge for playing nicely. New things coming into the ecosystem mean giving up power and money. How do we break that model?

Community Participation

Challenge: Disjoint / lack of relationships between the communities and the institutions.

Q: How might civilians affect policy-making?

For example: There are civilian groups doing who who might design valuable policy - to address ebola, for example - who do not have access to the people within institutions who can implement. One researcher, an anthropologist, discovered that changing burial practices could dramatically reduce ebola outbreak. It ended up being one of the most significant advances in policy and helping the crisis.

Q: What are the possible mechanisms for this sort of exchange between institutions and civilians?

Good Examples:

• Denmark Mindlab
• White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation

There is often a disjoint between what is said and what is done, for example: The World Humanitarian Summit consultations went well (“you should do this”). But the results of the conversations were miscommunicated, resulting in problems and ambiguities in the actual final outcomes.

Logistical Barriers vs Cultural Barriers

Many of the perceived cultural and attitudinal barriers to getting things done in “formal” institutions have roots in logistical problems.

For example: Procurement process raises the cost of bringing anything new into the system, therefore raises the political pressure, fear of failure, often results in refusing to try.

Systems map of interconnected logistical + cultural issues within UN’s Office of Information Communication Technology