The first case of COVID-19 in Uzbekistan was officially identified on March 15. The government took quick actions to curb the spread of the virus adopting strict measures from the beginning. On April 30 Uzbekistan had 2,039 cases and 9 deaths for a total population of 34 million people.

In this blog we want to have a 360-degree look at this ongoing experience as a big lesson by itself with many important take-aways for the post-pandemic future of our Lab. By doing so, we hinge on our Lab’s role in the overall response by UNDP in Uzbekistan, our identity as an Accelerator Lab, and experience of being a part of “the world’s largest learning network”.

COVID-19 Response by UNDP Uzbekistan

UNDP Country Office in Uzbekistan realigned its efforts to support the country in weathering the crisis right after the crisis emerged. It spanned all fronts and ranged from urgent medical procurement to long-term economic recovery initiatives. This response strategy builds around several distinctive but interconnected directions: risk communication, urgent procurement, mobilizing community response, early recovery support, digital solutions, and socio-economic impact assessment. At the focus are the most vulnerable groups: those who lost their income source, victims of domestic violence, people with disabilities, the population in rural areas, and others. The response package encompasses a multitude of separate initiatives but is managed as a single portfolio. The package is in growth with new initiatives in the pipeline.

From the beginning, our lab has been actively contributing in all stages of delivering this support package – in developing the portfolio, coordinating, and monitoring activities. We also contributed by leading and co-leading several initiatives that fed into the general efforts. These include the launch of a challenge for digital solutions to COVID-19 related problems, setting up a system for collection and proper disposal of medical waste from the public during the crisis, and working on a “pay-in-advance” system for small enterprises. Many other ideas are at the elaboration stage. 

It is early to share learning results from these specific initiatives in detail, and we plan to do so in separate blogs in the future. However, at this stage, we want to share our general reflections of working under these circumstances as part of the global Accelerator Labs Network, and to try to draw lessons for our future. 

Lessons and Reflections through the Prism of Lab Roles

We summarize our reflections under three phases of the Accelerator Lab Learning Cycle corresponding to three primary roles under the staffing structure: Exploration, Solution Mapping, and Experimentation. But this division is relative, and borders are overlapping. 

Exploration

·       Changed assumptions – After the crisis assumptions will not be the same. There will be new normals in all areas of our life. We will have to reevaluate our prior assessments, frameworks, and models based on these changed assumptions. For example, our views on the prospects of digitization of government services, online education, telemedicine will need total revision. Entire areas will be redefined, so will the trends, challenges, our attitude, and solutions. As we engage in horizon scanning and identifying emerging signals, we have to be aware of these new assumptions and new normals.

·       Foresight is not perfect but still important – Quoting Niels Bohr, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future”. The coming of the global pandemics and its scale were largely missed. As most agree, this was a “white swan”, which could be predicted or at least detected at early stages. Nevertheless, for us this fact shows that there is potential for the development of foresight tools, not that they are obsolete or useless.

·       Demand for innovative approaches increase as challenges intensify – The crisis amplified the magnitude of already complex challenges. Problems of inequality, poverty, inclusive governance, gender equality, responsible resource usage, universal education will only intensify and will require more innovative solutions and approaches.

·       Early actions can be game-changing – Understanding that a problem is looming in advance and taking early actions are very critical. As the experience of this crisis shows, countries adopting early measures to curb the crisis, fare much better than those which ignored or missed the window for early action. We can take this lesson to our future work by addressing the challenges before they become too complex or too fast evolving. A good plan today is better than a perfect one tomorrow.

·       Wide range of promising instruments – With the work-from-home limitations, the surge in online communication and collaboration, the need to navigate in the ocean of data and information, we discovered or rediscovered for ourselves many online tools which we will be applying more actively in the future. If tools like Zoom, Trello, and Mural have proved to have more functionality and flexibility than we knew of, we newly discovered tools such as WEF Strategic Intelligence Platform, Trend-Watching, Dataminr, and others.

Solution Mapping

·       Power of collective intelligence – When the whole society mobilizes against an issue, you can see the true power of collective intelligence and actions. During the crisis ideas are sparking in various hackathons, contests, challenges, or just in lone manifestations of ingenuity. For example, here in Uzbekistan we received 600 applications in just two weeks within the COVID-19 challenge for digital solutions. Having seen that it works and how it works, harnessing the power of collective intelligence will be in our priorities in the future.

·       Grassroot doesn’t mean only local – This period highlighted one of the advantages of being part of a global learning network: ideas, experiences, and lessons are in free circulation within the network. Especially, when, suddenly, the main focus of all the labs within the network shifted to a single topic, the network was bubbling with the exchange of ideas and grassroot solutions, identified locally by each lab. If there is a potential in developing and testing a grassroot solution that came up in another continent, why not to try it. 

·       Power of the network – Engaging in the Accelerator Lab Network’s vibrant communication platforms, mainly the Teams group, we are always on top of the network zeitgeist. For example, this was how we learned that “pay-in-advance” ideas are also considered and even practically promoted by other labs. As we are working on our own “pay-in-advance” solutions, we got in touch with our colleagues in Argentina, who were happy to share their vision and promotion materials. Many interesting ideas regularly come up in the group chats and email threads, which inspire us to look at things from different angles and perspectives. It is especially the case in these times. 

·       Private sector companies have their edges – To our immediate discontent, but ultimate delight, we frequently observe that an idea, we were thinking on, was quickly taken over and developed by some private entity. Private companies are good at deciding quickly, taking risks, and mobilizing resources. Mapping solutions for our “pay-in-advance” initiative in Uzbekistan, we found many private companies trying to create a platform for such needs; and odds are that one of them already has an effective solution.

·       Online challenges as virtual solution safaris – Our understanding of grassroots solution mapping as primarily mud-on-the-boots field trip exercise with face-to-face meetings has changed. We witnessed and benefited from the usage of hackathons, online communication and web-monitoring tools to conduct virtual solution mapping. We have tried it with our challenge in Uzbekistan and seen the success of similar events by other labs around the world.

Experimentation

·      Context matters – This is an old mantra, but the crisis gave us another object lesson. Countless variables like economic status, governance system, cultural background, geographical location, and current political conjecture influence representation of the same issue in different countries and locations. During the crisis countries acted in a wide spectrum of patterns sometimes diametrically opposite. A policy that is effective in a certain place might be inefficient or counter-productive in other settings.

·       UNDP intra-portfolio cooperation – Working across different dimensions of the COVID challenges, we are closely working with various projects specializing in relevant topics. This allows us to cross-fertilize each other with expertise and experience. Conceptualizing our Medical Waste Initiative, we benefited from the work of another UNDP Uzbekistan team which worked on waste management issues before. Their advice was valuable to find optimal solutions. Subsequently, our results will benefit for better such programs in the future. We have practiced this previously too, but the exigency of the situation allows for more flexibility and opportunities.

·       Bureaucracy is subjective – Over the period we have seen the extent of how much bureaucracy can be streamlined, if there is a sense of urgency and internal mobilization. This applies both to our government partners, as well as UNDP itself. Agreement processes quickened. Procurement procedures are more efficient. Operations are optimized. These are good touchstones to assess the potential of the systems that can be achieved without any serious investments, but with only a strong will. 

·       New benchmarks of accelerated learning – The word “accelerator” in the name of our labs is for acceleration of learning. The range of the required time for running a full learning cycle, from exploration to growing a solution, might be from a week to several months. During the crisis time is a luxury. We have to make things quick and get results for today, not for tomorrow. This pressure raises the bars and sets new benchmarks. For example, our Medical Waste Initiative took about three weeks from conception to launch, including time for establishing partnerships, conducting procurement, and preparing promotion materials. While there is a lot to follow-up after the launch, it is still a good “team record” to aim to beat after the crisis.

·       Scale-up vs Growing – At times of urgency we use everything from our arsenals. A solution applied in one area might be efficiently applied in other contexts too. One of our initiatives before the COVID-19 crisis was the launch of the #GreenAralSea crowdfunding campaign for afforestation in the dry seabed of the Aral Sea. Currently, we observe that crowdfunding is being applied in many parts of the world to purchase urgent medical supplies, to support the vulnerable with necessities, to help the entrepreneurs to stay afloat, and as part of other solutions during the crisis. We were glad to share our experience with colleagues in several UNDP offices around the world as they were launching their crowdfunding campaigns. 

We don’t want to generalize these reflections for the whole network. They represent our subjective perspective. However, we would like to see this discussion to continue within the global Accelerator Labs network, so that we can also learn more about the experiences and reflections of other labs.

Pandemics and epidemics are a time of great grief. Human tolls, sufferings, social and economic sacrifices are enormous. But as it has been many times throughout history, such an experience can also be an opportunity to build strength. In words of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “Out of life’s school of war—what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”