Para bebé

Não consegui regressar a casa. Mas, encontrei um bebé muito bonito! Ele nasceu no dia 26 de março 2013 @ 11hrs. 3150g.

Quality and Quantity

When quantity of knowledge is selected as a variable for measuring efficiency of our cognitive ability, our behaviour might be analysed applying some methods used in economics.

Apparently, trade or division of labour can be interpreted as our behaviour that maximises efficiency of knowledge accumulation which overcome limits inherent in our individual cognitive capacity.

Nonetheless, my interests go to the question what motivation leads individuals to such behaviour that can generate benefits which are unlikely to be enjoyed if all the individuals wish to possess and share exactly identical quality of knowledge.

The interpretation that trade or division of labour is a result of our having sought for the most economical ways of knowledge accumulation seems to be looking at collective quantity of knowledge.
Since useful knowledge must be of quality that satisfies certain needs of us, it might be OK to understand that the more knowledge is accumulated, the more benefits we can enjoy.
However, when an individual decides to work on a certain area of knowledge, thus, to give up other areas, he/she must find any merit in doing so. Hence, when we talk about efficiency of collective knowledge accumulation, it seems critical to me to note that some coordination among individuals must be taking place in the course of collective knowledge accumulation.

I am assuming that our cognitive ability is not designed to conceive computational efficiency so immediately that out behaviour should be led towards collective efficiency.

Although trade or division of labour appears efficient in accumulating knowledge on the surface, that must be containing more complex processes of selection and relinquishment of knowledge as a result of our simpler and more innate perceptions or appreciation of our surroundings.

Corruption questioned

Corruption is frequently referred to as if it were scientifically proved most critical negative factor for stagnated development in less developed world.

However, I cannot simply accept this assertion.

I should have to admit that corrupt behaviour of politicians and public servants has adverse effects on development in developing countries. Nonetheless, only complete elimination of corruption does not seem to bring about even more efficient and effective development.

On what ground has corruption come to the fore in the arguments on inefficiency and ineffectiveness of development?

It could have been substantiated by tracing back the history of development cooperation. As a simple matter of fact, several hundred million people are still living on their income of less than $ 1 per day despite the enormous resources having been spent on development cooperation. In the course of investigating causes of the failure of development cooperation, while admitting necessity of reform on the side of donor countries concerning the ways they extend assistance, capacity of aid-receiving countries has come to attract donors’ attention. The capacity in this context refers to various aspects relevant to national development from human resources to organisational capacity to institutional aspects. Corruption has been discussed in relation to institutional capacity or more specifically to governance of developing countries. It is said that efforts at economic development can best bear promised fruits under the condition that market is functioning governed by consistent and transparent rule of law, and that nation states shall just assure participants in the market of such conditions. Corruption is seen as serious opposing force to that ideal situation by encouraging abuse of resources directed by arbitrary decision-makings of politicians, senior management of public service, or those who have advantages in accessing public resources. What has been discussed to date concerning corruption and its negative impacts on development would theoretically and empirically be true. However, I feel uneasy about those arguments as if something more critical had been overlooked. What is it?

This, I think, is lack of consideration for mechanisms in which money is flowing to be transformed into goods and services which can make anything (normally expected to be positive change) happen on the ground.
Mechanisms here refer to simply who use the money to produce goods and services appropriate in terms of beneficiaries’ needs and clients’ requirements.
Once we start thinking of those who are supposed to use the money, it must be unavoidable for us to be concerned about their capacity.
Such concerns especially of clients (in other words, the Government) should not be confined only to quality of the goods and services but also to effectiveness of re-distribution of resources on the side of clients (not those who use the money).
Nevertheless, what has been happening in developing countries, especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa?
In comparison to the Asian and Latin American countries, we are to find that scale and scope of economies in Sub-Sahara African countries are apparently smaller than those of counterparts in other regions.
In other words, at least the number of companies or individual entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa is extremely lower than that in other regions, and quality of them too may be inferior to their counterparts.
Therefore, it is quite important that we investigate the reasons why it is like that.
In my view, this seems to originate in development conceptualised by planners primarily exogenous to development on the ground.
Taking into account of the experiences in their colonial past, the concept of nation state and governance structure attached to it appear relatively new to people of Sub-Sahara African countries.
I am assuming that considering the exploitative nature of colonial governments, the critical role of nation state, that is, re-distributing resources to their respective nationals in sufficiently fair and accountable manner does not seem to properly be understood by the leaders. Rather, legitimacy of imposing taxes seems to consciously or unconsciously be abused.
My assumption is as follows:
If at all the role of re-distribution is properly understood as one of the most critical roles of the leaders, they would have paid even more attention to the quality of those who use public money. Otherwise, no one can assure that collected money is spent prudently enough to bring about tangible improvement of the nationals, but it has to end up with being wasted.
This is considered to be implied by incapability of the Sub-Sahara African aid-receiving countries to spend money in time in accordance with planned objectives.
However, it must be noted that only with efficient and effective government money cannot be used properly, but there must be competent users of that money.
Looking at the quality of general public in those countries, I cannot but being surprised at the situation where people exposed to even very basic level of business practices are virtually non-existent.
This is a matter of human resource development, but not that of school education.
To enhance human resource development in this respect, I would rather put an emphasis on how to increase opportunities for them to acquire hands-on experiences of running business.
With sufficiently developed general public and pressures backed by logical strengths, it may be possible to see the situation in which government could be reminded their roles to serve for the benefit of them; thus, as a consequence for the benefit of entire country.

HTC Touch 3G

I've got HTC Touch 3G in French version completely depending on the seller's explanation that the language can easily be converted. But, according to my research, the language of Windows Mobile seems not to be converted so easily...

Is there anyone who could guide me in this respect??

At the same time, there are some options including my learning French, though...

My Library

http://books.google.com/books?as_list=BDX_Vq5oQ_6qv1ZnWgIzRARoUjIdriti4mK7jCerAJJaHbDEvcg4

Concept and Reality

Concepts are often useful in explaining complex information involved, in acquiring shared knowledge, or in other ways.

However, it is sometimes possible that concepts blur our reality.

Let’s look at the example of “Decentralisation”.

This is often discussed as an antithetical concept to “Centralised administration (or systems of a government)”.

It is said that “Decentralisation” could be classified as “De-concentration”, “Devolution”, and “Fiscal decentralisation”.

At this point, people who are not very familiar with Decentralisation are likely to start being faced with difficulties in making sense of them. Some may like to know what all of those sub-concepts signify. Others may feel like further studying Decentralisation. And, concepts (and sub-concepts) developed in the field of decentralisation certainly help such peoples’ research activities.

Having acquired certain levels of knowledge, it is quite a natural tendency for people to develop discussions over the issue. Some of those discussions may be related to some actions to be taken on the ground, and others may be purely theoretical. In either way, discussions like those will have both positive and negative effects: positive effects in terms of deepening understanding on the issue, or inventing further more effective products, i.e., practical measures, new sub-concepts, or theories; and negative effects as some people start developing discussions for the sake of continuing discussing the issue.

Negative effects are likely to take place for the concepts which involves various sub-concepts, or more simply issues to be dealt with. This happens because such concepts could be interpreted, thus, discussed differently by different discussants, and more problematically it is very difficult for us to attribute any positive change in our lives to such internally diverse concepts. Can we assert that better performance of Grade 12 graduates this year is attributable to devolution which was introduced previous year? Can we conclude that increased revenue of Council A is due to financial decentralisation, not to increased economic activities in A? Will it be easy to measure performance of council workers paid by the council as compared to workers paid by central government? In this way, only “Decentralisation” can further develop various arguments almost endlessly.

Of course, it is important to continuously refine concepts and related theories as tools for investigating our reality.

However, if the concept in question is closely related to practical actions to be taken for improvement of peoples’ livelihoods, too much attention to the concept and its refinement (or further diversification?) may result in just waste of time with having discussants lose sight of real peoples’ livelihoods.

The implementation of “Decentralisation” is no question influenced by highly political issues from head of state level to budget allocation among departments of public sector organisations. We can perceive this, substantiate it by studying theory, and become more competent in terms of conceptual knowledge. But, so what?

Knowledge concerning Decentralisation may not directly contribute to improvement of people’s well-beings. It principally deals with effective ways of governing or administering of organisations (mostly of public sector). Hence, it cannot directly contribute to improved well-beings of the people even though Decentralisation in the present context of international development has been related to Poverty Reduction (through more efficient service delivery by public sector organisations).

This is not stating that Decentralisation is useless for improving people’s livelihood. To the contrary, especially for the case of the aid receiving countries who have already developed Policy for Decentralisation, like Zambia, it is very important (or obligatory) for donors to respect it with special attention to domestic coherence based on which development for people’s well-beings will more efficiently take place. It is, therefore, critical for donors to come up with a kind of fine-tuned strategy with which they help an aid receiving country maintain political stability or coherence of the country as a whole on one hand, and strengthen its functions of delivering various services to the people on the other. To do this, it is a donors’ critical task that correctly point out what is really absent from public sector organisations in terms of service delivery while considering institutional or organisational reforms which require deliberate analyses on related concepts and substantial time.

What is lacking in public sector organisations is experience in using money.

No argument is required to this point.

What needs to be argued is how to have them experience that.


The picture shown above tries to map out a possible framework within which actions are to be undertaken primarily for increased experiences of public servants in using public funds.

Since this framework presumes necessity of fast tracking, it does not aim at any major change in business processes in public sector organisations, but starts with dissemination on improved cash flow of the central government.
This dissemination should emphasise that MPSAs can never impute their delayed implementation of planned activities to unavailability of cash or delayed disbursement of funds from the central authority.
As a result of the dissemination, number of applications for budget allocation is expected to increase.
It is obvious that if those applications sufficiently justifies their costing and purposes of use, or, clearly show timeframe before completing disbursement, the requested funds will smoothly be released.
However, especially at its initial stage, refusal of those applications by the central authority may also be increased due to some quality problems anticipated in those increased applications. What is important is that such refusal of request must be done as quickly as possible with clear explanation, which is expected to feed into subsequent requests for budget allocation in such a way that further lower probability of refusal.
When increased probability of receipt of requested budget is perceived, further more applications are likely to be encouraged.
As a consequence, number of activities undertaken by MPSAs will increase, thus, number of staff experiencing in using public funds will also increase.
Regardless of quality of business processes, efficiency increased through repeated practice is also likely to be achieved.
In addition to achievement of the purpose of increasing experiences in using public funds, some other effects on furthermore broader institutional/ organisational aspects are also expected.
At the beginning of the framework shown above, we cannot but using plans and budgets developed for this year, which are considered to further be improved.
However, once the changes indicated above are realised especially at MPSA levels, both motivation towards developing their work plans and budgets and quality of them will significantly be improved because staffs get accustomed to procedures, come to know better about information that applications for budget should contain, thus, overall efficiency and effectiveness of planning and budgeting would be achieved.
The plans and budgets prepared by MPSAs with even higher motivation should also change the substance of negotiations between MPSAs and MoFNP over budget allocation. Apparently, all the planned activities and their budget are unlikely to be approved. On MoFNP’s side, again, clear explanation for decline of some of the planned activities and budget must be communicated to MPSAs. On MPSAs’ side, it is expected that their plans and budgets are further refined through negotiation with MoFNP.
These increased levels of activities regarding planning and budgeting may also enhance internal negotiations within each MPSA, i.e., coordination between planning department and executing departments.

In this way, Zambian public sector will be able to improve their ability of delivering services regardless of progress of the implementation of Decentralisation Policy.
This is possible because of favourable government’s revenue prospects backed by current higher commodity prices.
What should again be remembered is the fact that cash flow situation of Zambian public sector is completely different from that of the recent past.
What should be done by donors shall be to make public servants in Zambia aware of this difference and to have them make the most of it for improvement of service delivery through increased experiences in using public funds.

Fundamental reforms of the public sector aimed at further more efficient and effective service delivery for improved peoples’ livelihoods may be built on the public servants’ changed mindset through experiences in using public funds.

We should be careful enough not to be distracted by complexities involved in decentralisation or development in general, which have to be treated with thoughtful application of concepts, from capturing real needs of different countries which have been and are surrounded by different circumstances.

Do not use the term “Division of Labour”

Division of Labour refers to specialisation to specific tasks which collectively increase total outputs compared to the situation in which those integrated tasks are conducted by single entity.

The current misuse of the phrase in the context of international development must lead us to misunderstanding of its original meaning.

The phrase in international development signifies just allocation of sectors among donors.
It may be aiming at increased productivity with reducing unnecessary congestion in which a number of donors are trying to do the same things (duplication) with their intention to show off their presence in some popular sectors.

However, just sharing sectors among donors is not accompanied by vertical division of tasks.
If we follow the original meaning of division of labour, tasks to be specialised comprise an integrated project for which we are to maximise outputs.
When we look at the international development version of division of labour, tasks engaged in each sector are yet to be divided for maximisation of outputs.
Similar tasks in different sectors remain, and those involve different donors if the number of them can be reduced.

When donors seriously want to apply the concept of division of labour, they need to analyse tasks involved in their work by dividing them into vertical pieces.
It may not be so difficult to show some generic system in which donors interventions are operated.
Needs identification, design of intervention, bilateral agreement between a donor and aid recipient government, disbursement of fund, monitoring and evaluation, etc.
It is these tasks that donors should allocate among them with consideration to maximum outputs, in other words, minimum transaction costs.
As long as all of the tasks shown above are separately conducted by donors in different sectors, transaction costs cannot be considered minimised.

Furthermore, when we take up an example of Zambia, the false usage of division of labour is made even clearer.
In the so-called DoL Matrix, donors are classified as Lead, Active, and Background.
The most critical issue is “Active in what?”
Without mentioning this, the DoL Matrix is just useless because it promises nothing with regard to increased productivity of donors, or the whole aid system.

My argument here is not how to apply genuine division of labour to international development, but what causes this kind of misapplication of words should be taken more seriously.

Our behaviour cannot but being affected by our perceived understanding.
Neither is this blamed for, nor can completely be eliminated.
But, even if we start using a certain word with insufficient understanding of reality or genuine meanings of that word, we can review, analyse, and put such mistakes back to something correct.
Since the inception of the usage of Division of Labour in the international development arena, it has already been several years.
Why has nobody questioned about this?
This seems to me that what aid community is doing can never be qualified as something professional.
We have just been accumulating products of our perceived understanding.
When we name us serious professionals, how come could we be satisfied with this kind of opportunistic behaviour, not with critical thinking of what we are doing?

Coming back to the issue of proper application of division of labour to international development, is it really possible?

I do not think so.

Even though we have started talking about more pooling our resources for development, it must further be advanced if division of labour is applied to the aid system.

How advanced should it be?

No single donor can conclude bilateral agreement with aid recipient countries because as long as this remains overlapping operations concerning concluding bilateral agreements cannot be eliminated if reduced, thus, overall productivity should still remain lower level.

On the other hand, in reality, international aid is being operated under the framework of bilateral diplomatic relationships. Therefore, I cannot foresee any revolutionary advance in pooling our resources in any single account which should be dealt with by a single entity designated by individual nation states especially when remembering that we have already had the UN system.