News

Enhancing development effectiveness at core of HAI changes

This year has brought exciting changes and opportunities to the international division of Hassall and Associates. As an organisation committed to maximising its contribution to poverty alleviation, good governance, and sustainable development in Asia and the Pacific, we continuously seek ways of ensuring our relevancy in the marketplace and the quality of the services we provide. To this end, HAI has recently undergone a structural reorganisation aimed at enhancing our development impact. This reorganisation is reflected in part through:

• Reorientation from a geographical to a sectoral focus, with an emphasis on: Community Development; Agriculture and Natural Resources; Health and Education; and Governance.

• Establishment of a Development Impact Group (DIG) aimed at identifying and integrating ‘best practices’ in development in all programs; and incorporating lessons learned into program implementation and management systems.
• Establishment of a Business Strategy Section, aimed at supporting the international division to ensure currency in strategic focus, planning and program implementation.
• Formation of a Program Management Section, aimed at improving quality assurance mechanisms for administrative, financial and management systems and ensuring that program implementation is maximised through robust administrative support systems.
• Establishment of a Program Delivery Section, aimed at ensuring proposals submitted to clients incorporate best practices in development, are innovative and strategic in focus, and use the highest calibre advisory and technical support.

• Initiation of an International Representation and Strategic Alliances Unit, aimed at strengthening our international presence, encouraging strategic partnerships in program implementation, and bringing proven complementarities in skill sets to our programs.

Through these changes, our intent is to stay focused; capitalise on our internal and external technical expertise; excel at what we already do well; and continuously reflect on how we can improve.

Our expectation is that the reorganisation will allow us to be increasingly responsive to our client needs—in terms of donors and beneficiaries—and to enhance our ability to not only respond to our client needs, but drive processes for improved development impact forward.

Already, we are seeing tangible benefits in enhanced services and support. For example, through the DIG, we have developed a best practice guide in monitoring and evaluation with best practice guides in gender, anti-corruption and capacity development in the pipeline.

The full impact of this reorganisation will be seen over time through the quality of our services and ability to demonstrate development impact through our programs. We look forward to the challenges ahead and are confident that the way forward will translate into best practices, best programming and positive impact on our partners in development.

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