Igor Izotov

Background

About Igor Izotov

The UNDP Strategic Plan embraces the complexity of development and commits the organization to helping countries to find faster more durable solutions to achieve Agenda 2030. Important development trends like urbanization climate change and rising inequalities pose significant challenges on our path to achieve the 2030 agenda of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UNDP has begun incubating a number of strategic initiatives aimed at ensuring UNDP is ‘fit for purpose’ to deliver a new generation of solutions in line with the challenges the world faces. One such key strategic initiatives are the UNDP Accelerator Lab Network which operates as part of UNDP’s sustainable development offering. At the moment UNDP is building the largest and fastest learning global network on development challenges. We have already set up 60 labs in 78 countries) embedded within UNDP’s global architecture and country platforms. We use the power of the crowd machine learning and distributed decision-making to support partners to understand problems develop new solutions promote more inclusive decision making and provide better oversight of what is done. We identify grassroots solutions and stretch their potential to accelerate development. We apply experimentation closely with government partners to grow this as a mode of operating to reduce costs of large-scale public sector reforms. Experimentation helps us learn whether particular assumptions are accurate before deploying solutions at scale especially in the rapidly evolving contexts that often dominate development progress.