Public sector reform is hard, not due to a lack of effort, but often because the real problem isn’t clearly understood, the space to act is misjudged, or solutions are borrowed rather than built locally. This course equips mid- to senior-level public servants with a practical, problem-driven approach to designing and driving effective reforms in complex government systems. 

This course draws on the Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) methodology developed by the Building State Capability (BSC) program at Harvard University’s Center for International Development. PDIA materials — including the PDIA Toolkit and the book Building State Capability (Andrews, Pritchett & Woolcock) — are used here under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).This is a free, non-commercial educational resource. It is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or certified by Harvard University or the Building State Capability program.

By the end of this course, participants will: