Written by Blair Glencorse

As we launch our new 2023-2026 strategy, we have been reflecting on the challenges we faced during our last strategy. The 2020-2023 period was a very difficult time for many organizations, of course, ourselves included. Just as we finalized our new strategy at the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 began to fundamentally upend global health, politics and economics. As our strategy came to an end, the war in Ukraine and related political problems, and broader economic challenges had undermined our ability to plan or deliver on organizational goals. At the country level, during the 2020-2023 period we worked through violence, coups and attempted coups in Mali and Niger; political crises in South Africa and Pakistan; and continued insecurity of different kinds in Nigeria and Mexico, among many other challenges. As a result, we did not make as much progress as we had hoped- in five key areas, outlined further below: 

1. Building out our learning– over the past three years we have improved our ability to carry out relevant “action research” that we hope can help to inform our own work and that of the accountability field more broadly. For example, during the most acute phase of COVID-19, we collected thousands of rumors and tracked mis and dis-information through the COVID-19 Civic Action Teams (CivActs) Campaign, which were brought together in infographics distributed widely in 9 languages across 7 countries. We also worked with the team at the Corruption Justice and Legitimacy Program to begin an investigation into the role of social norms in corruption within the Emergency Services in Johannesburg; and with an independent researcher to better understand the role of music in shifting understandings of accountability. But we had hoped to build out learning capacity within our teams with a focus on longitudinal learning beyond the project cycle, which we simply did not have the resources to do; and to better link these efforts to larger advocacy campaigns- both of which we will focus on in 2023 and beyond.
2. Integrating our programs– again, we have made some great progress in understanding how our work fits together and thinking through our Theory of Action (see our updated Theory of Action evolution document here). The growth of Accountability Lab Zimbabwe has been fantastic in this respect- because the support we have received from USAID has allowed us to begin all of our programs at once in a way we have been unable to do elsewhere. This has provided a unique opportunity to understand how the linkages between elements of those programs can be adapted and reinforced. Over the next three years we want to focus in particular on programmatic linkages such as building connections between our Voice2Rep artists and process to other efforts, such as the Civic Action Teams (CivActs) and Accountability Incubator; ensuring our Integrity Icons are integrated fully into our Integrity Innovation Labs; and reinforcing connections between program participants across countries- such as our film fellows, for example.
3. Engaging alumni– now, nearly 11 years into this work, the Lab has built out an impressive global network of alumni- of staff, program participants, fellows, Integrity Icons and others. While we have active virtual networks of alumni, because of the successive nature of the crises in the 2020-2023 period- and resource constraints- we were not as able as we would have liked to engage these alumni consistently and constructively. During our external organizational review in mid-2022 the need for greater engagement of these groups came through as a key area of need. So, in our new strategy, we are going to work on doing this in four key ways- first, through more regular virtual meet-ups; second through continued efforts to bring alumni together physically at events (our own and those of other organizations); third through doubling down on the hands-on support we provide to them (such as support for applications for funding and opportunities); and fourth, through focusing on telling stories and building narratives about their work wherever we can.
4. Centering inclusion– we have always aimed to ensure that inclusion is at the heart of everything we do, and the Lab’s focus constituencies- particularly young people, women and people with disabilities- reflect that fact. But we also know that being meaningfully inclusive is difficult and expensive; and we have been working where we can- given resource and capacity constraints- to ensure that we have led by example on this issue. For example, our teams, Boards and volunteers are diverse; our documents and key events are translated; our duty of care provisions account for people with disabilities, and more. But again, as this table we brought together shows, there is still much more to do. In the 2023-2026 period we want to focus in particular on three areas: i) making our websites more screen-reader friendly; ii) revision of our accommodation policies for staff with disabilities; and iii) the potential for child-care options for participants in our events.
5. Growing into a translocal network– developing what we call a “translocal network” was not a stated aim in those terms in our 2020 strategy but over the past three years it quickly became not only a core goal but an important way for us to describe what it is we are trying to do at the Lab (here and here, for example). We made some key practical progress in this regard over the past three years- for example, we’ve put in place bodies for collective decision-making across our network of Labs (such as the Global Leadership Council and the Junior Staff Council); we’ve facilitated staff exchanges and cross-country collaborations; and we’ve begun to better connect our Boards of Directors across Labs into a meaningful governance-learning community. But there is much more we want to do now. As we outlined in the new strategy, for us, being a translocal network means distributed, decolonized and equitable leadership. We are working to ensure that the Accountability Lab is led through a progressive, collaborative and shared network of leaders across the countries in which we work, through an internal process of mutual accountability. We’ll be announcing many more changes in this respect in 2023.

We look forward to keeping you posted on all of this and more, and as always, we’re eager to hear ideas and feedback- feel free to reach out to us @accountlab or directly to the leadership team: Cheri ([email protected]); Sheena ([email protected]); Jean ([email protected]); and Blair ([email protected]).     

Sheena Adams