Agile Bureaucracy: BHA and Tufts Use CLA for Program Sustainability

When considering how a large bureaucracy like USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) advances issues like program sustainability – that is, the persistence of program benefits after the program ends -it helps to combine a “worm’s eye view” with a “bird’s eye view” to appreciate the progress made in 20 years to boldly tackle challenges.  

Authored by sustainability champions within BHA and researchers from Tufts University Friedman Nutrition School, this case study establishes that their collaboration over more than 20 years steadily advanced learning and shaped program goals and strategies to achieve sustainability beyond impact within Resilience Food Security Assistance (RFSA) activities. While seemingly executed in increments (one activity at a time), overall this collaboration is marked by a rich partnership and mutual determination to learn and act on evidence and is fueled by commitment to advance iteratively in understanding where, for whom, and under what circumstances sustainability strategies work.

Zooming in to PAST-Forward (their latest ongoing joint initiative), the case study highlights how this project supports BHA’s efforts to reflect on successes and challenges in mainstreaming sustainability capacity in RFSAs, among staff and implementing partners. This ongoing collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) effort will enable further evidence-based refinement of BHA’s sustainability guidance and improve the uptake, understanding, and application of that guidance across RFSAs, with implications for programming across USAID.

Steps taken, lessons learned, and reflections from BHA (in the role of an adaptive manager) and Tufts (in providing expertise to build the technical evidence base on sustainability issues) illustrate the benefit of such accountability and learning partnerships to improving organizational-level processes.