Innovation in government!

We don't usually associate government with any kind of innovation. Its all about following rules and procedures and delays, particularly in most of the developing countries. So when you come across an instance of creative thinking and innovation, you stand up, take notice and most importantly, applaud an effort that would have an impact throughout the society that the particular government is operating in.

The Philippine government is much maligned- known for cronyism and corruption, but there are pockets of excellence and I observed one such pocket in the my recent visit to the country. I met with Mike Luz, former Professor of mine at the Asian Institute of Management, an alumnus of Harvard (much before my batch, I must add), and currently the Undersecretary of Education in the Phillipine government. As I spoke to him and asked him about what he was doing, he started animatedly telling me about some of the things he has been involved in.

Amongst the many initiatives he spoke about, one stood out in my mind. This was about the distribution of books in schools all over the country. This is a massive undertaking and given the fact that Philippines is an island country and the roads and railroads aren't the finest in the world, it is very difficult to reach the remote corners of the country. As a result, books that were meant for students would get purchased but would never be distributed to some parts simply because of logistical constraints. Areas were far off, there was barely a motorable road and just the cost of getting the books there was a humungous undertaking for the government. Like a true social scientist, Mike decided to go to one such far flung area and find out for himself what was going on. He chose the area of Masbate. I haven't been there but apparently, the place is pretty difficult to get to. It was raining, the roads were muddy and even as Mike travelled in the jeep for three hours, he realized people had a point. This was indeed a very difficult area to distribute books to. And to have dedicated trucks that would carry books to these areas would be pretty darn expensive and the government wouldn't have the money for it.

As Mike travelled with his team in the jeep, they stopped by a food stall just to have a break. It was muggy, it had been a long journey and this was a forlorn area. Three hours of bumpy travel in a rickety jeep had not been pleasant. Just as there were some seeds of despair weaving their way in, there was a while and red truck that passed by- the only the other vehicle they had seen for about the three hours of travel that they had done. This was Coke! And Mike knew what he had to do. He immediately went back to Manila, called up the Coke guys and struck a deal with them that they would distribute the books to the remotest parts of the Philippines even as they would distreibute their bottles during the normal course fo duty. No extra cost, no hassle, no extra government spending and efficiency of combining the two things in the same distribution mechanism. The solution was a classic win-win. The Department of Education would be able to distribute books in a timely fashion to the remotest corner fo the Philippines, Coke would do its bit for social responsibility with just the extra effort of picking up the books along with the bottles!

I found this story fascinating in terms of getting to the root of the problem, identifying it, thinking out the box and finding a solution that would benefit everyone involved. Too often, we throw up in hands and say this can't be done. And what better place to say it than in the government. The Coke- Dept of Education partnership is a classic case of innovation in the government and if it can be done there, I dont see why such initiatives cannot happen everywhere.

Why such initiatives are even more fulfilling is that they are attempting to raise the level of education in the developing countries and good education is only sustainable antidote to poverty in my view. Lets hope many more initiatives like this happen in the future.