The aspirational fellowship program: improving efficiency or bringing innovation to the government?

As part of our internship, we were requested to reflect on the aspirational fellowship program and how its structure relates to other government innovations to improve public delivery service. After interviewing the entire leadership team and four fellows, and conducting a survey with all of the fellows, we develop a document that synthesizes our impressions. The following is an extract from the document submitted to TRI:

Aspirational District Fellowship (ADF) is an initiative of MHA that seeks to transform 35 Districts, aiming to reduce violence by improving the wellness of their population. Tata Trusts is providing support to MHA at various levels in this ambitious initiative and Transforming Rural India Foundation (TRI) is in charge of the design and implementation of ADF. A key feature of the ADF is the placement of two Aspirational District Fellows within each district, supported by special staff embedded within both State and Central Government. Fellows get the opportunity to assist and work closely with the District Administration to provide inputs on strategy setting, planning, implementation, monitoring, and reporting for TADP. TRI is in charge of selection, placement, orientation and subsequent professional guidance to the ADF’s fellows and continues to work with MHA to ensure that systems are created for structuring the task of the fellows as well as ensuring that their roles receive legitimacy in the District Administration.

ADF arises as a creative government innovation that helps the District Administrations tackle typical public service delivery challenges, and innovate within the system, placing fellows and key staff in the State and Central Government. They support the planning, design, implementation, and monitoring of government policies, solving typical challenges linked to alignment of actors, accountability and monitoring, technical skills, government inertia, and context-adapted policies. ADF is already showing evidence of successfully tackling many of these challenges, both through mechanisms to improve the efficiency of delivery and through fostering innovation.

ADF by design and initial practice is applying the principles of what we call the delivery efficiency approach (Deliverology) and bringing innovation to government approach (as in PDIA) into the existing government system. They are improving the delivery of services, not by creating a new delivery unit, but by supporting the existing structures to work better. ADF has some elements of using information and attention to processes to improve the efficiency of the delivery of public policy. However, we believe the more powerful role is linked to generating a space to introduce data and organizational processes to drive design, innovation, and evidence-based adaptation and result focus to the bureaucratic system. Especially on Aspirational Districts that require context-specific policies and iterative learning to improve the well-being of their population.

ADF is beginning to move in both directions—of improved service delivery, and innovation in areas of development challenges. While too early to assess impacts on the ground, it is noteworthy that 8 out of 18 of the fast-moving districts are ADF’s districts. There is a clear path forward in terms of strengthening data precision and innovation processes but there is still a big space for improvement, that will require a combination of support from TRI, Tata Trust and the government, mainly, on further institutionalizing the programme. Initial evidence suggests that this is a value-added that makes a difference to aspirational districts overall performance.