Continuing the global dialogue on the various components of the capacity-building ecosystem, the Global Digital Capacity Building Alliance (GDCBA) under Capacity Building Commission (CBC), convened an expert panel consultation on: “Capacity by Design: Building Institutional Readiness of Training Institutions for Public Sector Capacity Building.”
Dr Alka Mittal, Member (Administration), CBC, set the tone by framing institutional readiness not as a compliance exercise, but as a governance imperative.
Dr Vashima Shubha, Principal Advisor, DPI & Partnerships, GDCBA, CBC, moderated a rich discussion among the panellists. Each panellist brought a distinct perspective on capacity building:
The panellists included:
🔹 Ashok Kumar Seetharaman — Director, Digital Government Executive Education, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
🔹 Annela Kiirats — Program Director, e-Governance Academy, Estonia
🔹 Sonitha Aniruth — Government Transformation Leader, Australia
🔹 Amit Srivastava — HR Transformation Expert and Author, United Kingdom
🔹 Chandralekha Mukherjee — Principal Advisor, Training Institutions, CBC, India
A clear message emerged from the discussion: we need to rethink the role of training institutions through the lenses of demand, design, and delivery across the public official’s learning journey.
Two key messages stood out:
● Training institutions remain the bedrock of public-sector capacity building. Since governments deal with rapid advances in AI, rising citizen expectations and a multigenerational workforce with different learning needs, institutions that support this workforce must therefore become more agile, outward-looking and closely connected to the transformation they seek to enable.
● The Capacity by Design (CbD) framework would address the challenge of moving training institutes beyond their role as mere, fragmented course providers, towards becoming central nerve systems and orchestrators of the capacity-building ecosystem.
Global dialogues and consultations like these are grounded in the lived experiences of the experts working on different aspects of capacity building. Through the GDCBA, under the leadership of Ms. S Radha Chauhan, Chairperson, CBC is committed to sustaining and deepening these global dialogues towards building resilient and deliberate public sector capacity building.
Continuing the global dialogue on the various components of the capacity-building ecosystem, the Global Digital Capacity Building Alliance (GDCBA) under Capacity Building Commission (CBC)
