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Thanks Stephen for your review and for sharing your thinking with us. Great to have your support and input – iXc has been an experiment, an innovation itself, so we’d expect not to get it all right, and learning from external opinions is valuable – so thanks again. As DFAT’s new Chief Innovation Officer though I obviously have to make a few comments. iXc has been operational for just over 3 years now with an early focus on trialling new approaches, seeking new ideas, attracting others to invest in our region and finding new partners. We’ve done a great job of that: • supported 106 innovative programs sourced from around the world through global challenges, applied in 32 countries in the Indo-Pacific; • delivered 3 internal Ideas Challenges, generating over 500 DFAT staff ideas, of which over 100 proceeded to implementation; • attracted investment usually focussed on other geographic regions to the Indo-Pacific (e.g. partnership in the Global Innovation Fund has directed 67 per cent of their investments into the Indo-Pacific region, and overall leveraged over USD150M of follow on funding); • Worked closely with private sector partners such as Google and Atlassian; • In July, one of the technology innovations we have supported, Tupaia, won the Digital and Data award in the 2018 IPAA Innovation awards and was identified as a “game-changer” for how Australian aid is delivered. This has been a very broad approach, and you are right, diversity of experimentation has made managing this challenging. But, in the early days of such an entity, in startup phase, when you don’t know where the demand or supply will lie, it is a good idea to experiment broadly and see where the uptake is. The beauty of the Open Innovation approach we have used (through Challenges) is that you don’t need to be an expert in all fields – the ‘global crowd’ and our collaborating partners are. As you state, we are focussing in on a few areas in our recently launched DFAT Innovation Strategy. We are also looking at how we scale some of the early stage ideas we have supported – we have experimented with how to access ideas, now we need to build our capability regarding scaling the ones worth scaling. Lots for us to develop, such as decision methods for which ones would benefit from further support, and who to support them as DFAT will not necessarily be best placed to do that. With regard to your comment on communicating more about our projects and journey, this is something we are addressing in the new DFAT Innovation Strategy – it’s a key pillar and I personally am highly engaged in this. Check out one of my speeches from this year where I start to talk about our journey (which you can find here https://psn.webcastcloud.com.au/Mediasite/Play/2b056ac888e54e68bc5079e3aae1a3681d and on our iXc resources page – recognising I’d been in the role only a few weeks so still had lots to learn) - I am lined up for more of these. We are also working on podcasts and short videos so that interested parties can get bite size info. Another of our four new pillars is evaluation and learning – we have an external entity evaluating our programs (initiated earlier this year), and have M&E incorporated into our individual projects. We are about to set up a Champions network and hope that this will be a channel to share lessons learnt across DFAT. We are also an active member of the International Development Innovation Alliance (IDIA), where we share lessons learnt with like-minded donors (such as USAID, DIFID and Gates Foundation). We have also engaged in the usual DFAT internal processes of Aid evaluation such as AQC. And finally, I think we will probably disagree on our definitions of innovation – a much debated word. As you suggest, iXc has been focussing on new technological solutions to development problems and greater engagement with the private sector. Some of the ideas we have supported are not radical innovations, but in the context of their application they may as well be; and in terms of partnering with the private sector have been highly valuable, drawing new investment into our region. Innovation encompasses much more than technology solutions. It also encompasses doing our work differently, and the piece that excites me most, helping people in the Indo-Pacific to innovate themselves. We have started working with entrepreneurs, investors and governments to help grow the necessary innovation infrastructure to allow people to solve their own challenges, build their own economies. Check out this video of entrepreneurs who are changing the shape of their world (you can find the link here https://ixc.dfat.gov.au/projects/scaling-frontier-innovation/). So change is happening, building on our valuable early experience. We are treading this path with others - USAID for instance has been on a similar journey and we are learning with them. We expect our early experimentation to take a while to reap benefits – that’s experienced globally, inside government and industry innovation entities and labs. The important thing is to keep doing – innovation is a verb – to pursue it consistently and collaboratively with agility and for long enough to reap the benefits.

Hi Amanda, Simcard registration yields dividends, however, it has associated with challenges. Uganda embarked on Sim card registration nearly five years ago but the exercise was delayed until the government introduced national identity cards in 2014 for clear identification of customers. Apart from managing security – which was the major objective of the exercise – telecom firms are now better positioned to offer numerous services including micro-credit to customers without asking for collateral because they know their customers well. The Uganda Communications Commission(UCC) and telecom firms are now able to trace individuals who commit crimes using their mobile phones. With Simcard registration, SIM card boxing or grey traffic which involves incoming international calls into the country without paying excise duties to the government, has reduced as fraudsters now fear that they can easily be netted. UCC has engaged the operators and advised them to buy Fraud Management and Revenue Assurance Software which both MTN and Airtel have done to be able to dismantle SIM card boxing,” he said. “The other players are expected to do the same. The introduction of social media and mobile money tax in Uganda has however, downplayed the realization of Simcard registration dividends.

https://www.communications.gov.au/have-your-say/review-australian-broadcasting-services-asia-pacific There is a push for some submitters to start DRM transmissions because of its clear sound, text, images (from the RA website) and emergency warning facilities. Also the frequency switch at sunrise and at sunset can be automated in receivers. Submissions close on 07:00 this Friday UTC. 17:00 AEST

Thank you, Miranda and Fiona, for a really useful couple of posts on the cultural complexities of running workshops when dealing with competing world views. Your observations and analysis are extremely valuable and I shall be adapting your ideas to my work.

Beware PNG Police at APEC, they may even arrest Donald Trump for faking his identity if the money looks legal tender!

Hi Chris, Thanks for your comment. I think you're likely correct and that the claims about poverty and hunger come from Hickel. I'm familiar with his research and more general claims. The critiques he makes of the MDGs (and the broader argument that some seem to have been retrofitted for success) sound plausible. But then again so do William Easterly's claims that the MDGs were constructed in a such a way as to make improvements in many African countries seem like failure: https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-the-millennium-development-goals-are-unfair-to-africa/ Global goals are imperfect at best. More importantly, in most of the areas of human development captured by the goals, progress was made in most parts of the world. This is true regardless of flaws in poverty lines chosen or yardsticks of progress, or whatever. In the case of poverty and hunger, data indicate real improvements. You can check this out yourself from the links in my blog post. One final point: Hickel often makes his arguments in terms of absolute numbers. (i.e. the absolute number of poor in the world). But given the world's population is growing, speaking in terms of percentages (% in poverty) makes a lot more sense if you want to track development progress. Terence

Wood criticises the claim that global poverty and hunger have been increasing. This claim seems to be based on research by Jason Hickel, who is one of the signatories on the letter in question. Perhaps Wood would find it useful to read the underlying research before he weighs in? Here is an example: https://www.academia.edu/21593862/The_True_Extent_of_Global_Poverty_and_Hunger_Questioning_the_Good_News_Narrative_of_the_Millennium_Development_Goals

It is good to see that 1 year after graduation the employment rate doubles. At the PNG University of Technology in Lae 3 surveys were done at graduation in April 2015, April 2016 and April 2017. Students graduate in October the year before. The overall employment rate 6 months after graduation was only 40%. There were noticeable differences per academic department. In 2018, the survey was not held.

The issue of foreign aid is a menace to poor countries, it has put their development strategies in jeopardy. I would argue in favour of no aid/donors. We need to wake up from this "begging" situation for heaven's sake. The UK, US and Japan were poor - no one was born wealthy. It's upon us to change our destiny. Its now or never Wakanda forever.

Hi Gerard, Final comment from me. It seems that your position is, in a sense, not that far from Garth's after all. You appear to believe, as best I can tell from your comments on pedagogy, that we know what to do, we just don't do it. Minor technical points from me: 1. Cost benefit will be a function of two things: (1) benefit & (2) cost. Small benefits may well be worthwhile if the economic cost is itself small. 2. The standard deviation is itself a function of variance around the mean. If variance is high, it is possible to achieve a non-trivial absolute benefit, on average, and still have a gain, in terms of standard deviations, that is not especially high. Under some circumstances (amidst a diverse population, say) I would be interested in knowing the substantive absolute improvement, more than some figure expressed in terms of standard deviations. Anyhow, that's mostly by the by. It's been interesting to hear your thoughts on education. Terence

Hi Terence This is an interesting summary of school effectiveness research. Like most such research, the studies focus on managerial findings rather than classroom practice. While quite large compared to most developing country studies, the improvements indicated mostly fall below the 0.4 of a standard deviation recommended by Hattie as a cutoff for cost-effective investment. Encouraging but not convincing. In any case, little of the research reported deals with the classroom teaching style and professional issues that I raised. The one area that does relate is teaching to the test. The assumption that this is a bad thing is culturally biased. In societies where poverty is endemic, public examinations are a high stakes opportunity that might provide a rare, and hopefully corruption free, opportunity for upward mobility, escape from poverty, and capacity to support family: one of the many things not well-understood in the western literature! Gerard

Very interesting and motivational story here. Your hardwork made you prosper as you are today but the sad part is the rural decay and that is the biggest problem and disaster to your siblings at Kolombi and Ewa Paiyala that you could ever imagine of. Your story here needs to be shared to the public of Hewa Paiyala as you made the history in our society. Everyone in Paiyala heard of your story. Thank you big bro. Lawrence Koma.DWU.