Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a number of people contact me about USAID’s Local Systems Position Paper.
I wrote a review of it in December, but a number of the documents mentioned in that review have fallen victim - along with millions of people around the world - to the Trump regime’s brutal and chaotic destruction (pending the courts standing up for the rule of law …) of USAID.
So, I’m making a number of these documents available. Some of them show the highlights that I made on the docs, and they are hosted on a domain that I need to make some changes to, but perhaps they will be helpful for some.
They are, in roughly chronological order:
- Local Systems: A framework for supporting sustainable development (2014)
- The 5Rs Framework in the Program Cycle (2016)
- USAID Policy Institutional Assessment of the Local Systems Framework (January 2021)
- On the 10th Anniversary of the Local Systems Framework (David Jacobstein’s excellent 2024 review)
- USAID Local Systems Position Paper - Summary of feedback (Feedback on an early draft, 2024)
- USAID Local Systems Position Paper (The paper itself, 2024)
- Annotated Systems Practice Literature Review (2024)
- Video of launch event for Local Systems Position Paper, 30th October 2024
- Ten Years of Implementing the Local Systems Framework (A short reflection, January 2025)
I also strongly recommend the two podcasts (episodes 3 and 4 of a series) produced by Abt Global Britain about USAID’s Local Systems work, which feature some of the USAID folks who have led the way on local systems, with tireless dedication and service for many many years.
https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/systems-practice-in-global-dev-7265023548367290370/
Thank you to all the USAID staff, in Washington D.C. and around the world, who led the way on local systems thinking and practice. The ripples of impact that their work has inspired will continue to be felt.
It would be so much better if USAID was in a position to continue contributing to thinking and practice about local systems - and I very much hope that that will be possible at some point. In the meantime, it’s good to know that the spirit of local systems will be kept alive by a strong, resilient and global network of determined and creative people all around the world, collaborating, learning and adapting in the face of complex social and political challenges. That’s a resource and a community that we will all be thankful to have.
First published on LinkedIn, 18 February 2025.