On Friday, January 12th, 2024, the LPSA Advisory Board invited all LPSA Advisory Board members, LPSA Working Group Co-Chairs and members, as well as all interested policy practitioners, government officials, researchers and scholars, civil society stakeholders and other members of the global community of practice on decentralization and localization to an Open Community Meeting for their inputs into the activities and work program of the Alliance for the ongoing period 2023-2024.
Enid Slack, LPSA’s Advisory Board Chair, began the meeting with a warm welcome to participants, and outlined the agenda for the meeting. Before jumping into the main agenda, Slack asked attendees to take this opportunity to introduce themselves.
Jamie Boex, the Executive Director of LPSA, provided a comprehensive overview of the organization’s activities in 2023. In his presentation, Boex highlighted the notable increase in LPSA membership and the expansion of working groups. Currently, LPSA oversees 7 regional and thematic working groups, each guided by dedicated volunteer co-chairs. Updates on knowledge development included progress with LPSA’s assessment frameworks, including the Local Governance Institutions Comparative Assessment (LoGICA), Intergovernmental Profiles (IGP), Intergovernmental Fiscal and Expenditure Review (InFER) Framework, and Multilevel Governance as an Opportunity or Obstacle to Development (MOOD) Assessment. In terms of knowledge sharing, LPSA observed a substantial growth in interactions on Decentralization.net (e.g. number of users and page views).
Working group co-chairs from Asia, ECA, Sub-Saharan Africa, LAC, Gender Equity and Women’s Empowerment, and Subnational Finance each provided an update on their working group’s activities in 2023. Generally, all working groups have been focusing efforts on organizing informative working group meetings. Meeting participants from various organizations contributed their expertise and emphasized collaboration opportunities and proposed strategies to enhance cross-collaboration between working groups.
In conclusion, the meeting demonstrated the dedication of LPSA and the larger community of practice to fostering discussions on decentralization. Participants were encouraged to remain actively engaged with LPSA events, fostering continuous collaboration, and advancing progress in LPSA’s mission to advocate for more inclusive and efficient decentralization and development.
