Equipping National Institutions for Effective Public Service Delivery – Strengthening SEDD

In 2023, the Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs consulted Citra to identify a framework for capacity development of its Small Enterprise Development Division (SEDD) as part of UNDP’s Regional Youth Programme YEP – AP 2023-2026 (Youth Empowerment Portfolio in the Asia and the Pacific. The SEDD has a formidable entrepreneur network with over 1000 ground level-based enterprise development officers. Following the first meeting held between the officials from SEDD and Citra in September 2023, Citra designed a series of workshops to gather relevant information about SEDDs current functions and the issues/challenges faced by the SEDD staff and entrepreneurs in different areas. 

Through the process-oriented workshop series Citra team was able to identify a set of major challenges such as absence of an enabling environment for the officers to function efficiently, lack of business coaching skills, lack of communication and coordination skills among both SEDD officials and entrepreneurs, insufficient digital knowledge and less updated about the entrepreneurship ecosystem. 

In mapping out possible solutions, Citra focused on three main areas of providing services related to starting new businesses and developing existing businesses focusing on the village/division, directing entrepreneurs to produce goods that can be produced in the country instead of imported goods and directing them to produce goods based on the export market and providing related services for the same. 

In mapping out these identified pain points and finding practical solutions, Citra convened a set of relevant and experienced ecosystem partners such as Curve Up (Pvt) Ltd, Square Hub (Pvt) Ltd, Hatch Works, Dialog Ideamart, Information Communication Technology Agency (ICTA), Ceylon Chamber of Commers and the International Labor Organization (ILO) to ensure all required aspects are covered.

As part of these workshop series Citra and SEDD managed to further identify the following areas to be focused and addressed in order to add muscle to the SEDD to provide best support to the existing and new enterprises in the country:

1. Capacity building support to SEDD officials on identified areas where they need further knowledge to become ‘incubation managers’.
2. Review and recommend necessary upgrades to SEDD MIS to create generating better data for decision making. A few ecosystem players were brought together to provide necessary feedback on SEDD’s MIS and relevant connections were made for further engagements.  
3. Provide technical support to improve the ‘New Enterprise Creation Pathway’ for SEDD, building on UNDP Sri Lanka’s tested and proven fully-fledged innovation challenge to fuel new innovative enterprise creation targets. As part of this, a few rounds of working sessions were conducted to craft the new enterprise creation pathway for SEDD where required technical expertise and resources were provided.  
4. Ecosystem linkage building for collaborations for better mentorship and coaching of enterprises.
5. Curation of existing knowledge products related to enterprise development.

These interventions envisage to leverage Sri Lankan entrepreneurship and take it to the next level by forging contemporary best entrepreneurial practices and furthering the inherent Sri Lankan skill.