Policy Brief: Reaching the Last Mile
Veynuus intends to publish a short policy review on the last mile of social protection delivery, the point between an entitlement being recorded and a household receiving it. This page sets out what the review would examine and how it would be produced.
What the evidence shows
Defining the last mile
A working definition of where the last mile begins, since the term is used loosely and describes several different problems.
Where the breaks occur
A line of inquiry into the specific points at which delivery fails: registration, verification, transfer, and grievance.
Options
A small set of practical, fundable options, each written with what it would cost and what it assumes.
Measurement
A section on how a system would know whether a last-mile fix had worked, and what data it would need to collect.
Review
How the draft would be tested with delivery staff before publication.
The phrase last mile does a lot of work in social protection and covers several distinct failures. A household that was never registered, a household registered but not verified, a household verified but unable to reach a payment point, and a household paid but with no way to complain when the payment stops are four different problems with four different fixes. Veynuus intends to publish a short policy review that separates them. The review has not been written. This page describes its intended scope and method.
What this publication covers
The review is planned as a short document, in the region of twenty pages, built for a reader with an hour rather than a week. It would open by defining the last mile operationally, then work through the points at which delivery breaks: registration and enrolment, verification and identity, the transfer mechanism itself, and grievance and redress. Each would be described as a process with named steps, because the failures in this area are usually failures of a specific step rather than of a system in general.
It would then set out a small number of options that are fundable within existing programme structures, since a review that requires a new institution to be created will not be acted on. A closing section would deal with measurement: how a programme would know whether a change had worked, and what it would have to collect to find out.
The review is planned to treat delivery as a sequence of named steps: registration, verification, transfer, and grievance and redress.
Method
The review would be built primarily from the operational documentation of delivery systems: targeting guidance, payment agent arrangements, verification procedures, and grievance protocols, alongside published evaluations. Documentation describes the intended process, which is the necessary baseline for identifying where practice departs from it.
The second component is interviewing at the delivery end rather than the policy end. We would speak to payment agents, community verification committees, enumerators, and the frontline staff of implementing organisations, because they know where files stall and policy staff frequently do not. Interviews would follow a common protocol and would be conducted in Somali by Somali researchers.
Each option in the review would carry an estimated cost built from stated unit assumptions, published so that a reader can recalculate with their own. Before publication the draft would be put back to a group of delivery-level staff for a practicality check, which is a different exercise from academic peer review and catches different errors. It would then go through internal review and external reading by a specialist outside the drafting team.
Who it is for
The review is intended for programme managers and operations staff running social protection delivery, ministry officials responsible for the systems, donors funding them, and the implementing partners contracted to deliver. It is written for the people who can change a procedure, as much as for those who set policy.
Status
This review is in preparation. No interviews have been conducted, no options have been costed, and no conclusion has been reached about which households current systems reach or miss. Nothing on this page is a finding. To register interest, to contribute operational documentation, or to discuss commissioning the review, write to [email protected].