 I have here with me Toril Irem Pedersen, who is the policy director for the tax for development program at NORAT, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, and just wanted to give a short introduction on Toril. So in addition to working at for NORAT, CS worked for as long as 13 years inside the United Nations system in various positions and organizations including the UNDP, UN Population Fund and UNICEF. She has focused on a wide variety of governance and public management issues including support to local governance, governments expenditure and revenue management, land governance and also gender in public administration. She has also worked on issues related to many specific developing countries including Uganda, Kenya, Somalia and Rwanda in addition to work in different global and regional programs. Okay, so in terms of how the fireside chat works, I'll have some conversation topics and questions for Toril myself, but I would also welcome anyone in the audience to ask questions as well. You can write your questions in the Q&A area in the platform, or if possible you can also press the button at the top of the screen to ask to share your audience video and ask your question from Toril out loud as well. So I'd like to start with a few questions of my own. So Toril, could you first give a short introduction to your employer, NORAT? And can you tell us a little bit about the organization and what is it in a nutshell that you do? Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the invitation. This is a rare opportunity for a fireside chat. So that's interesting. So NORAT, like you mentioned, is the Norwegian Directorate for Development Corporation, and we are organized under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but with our own mandate when it comes to managing the largest part of the development aid budget. And also we have a mandate in terms of public discourse and information to people in Norway. So not so much the external, but within Norway. That's in a nutshell what NORAT does. Thanks. Good to have a brief introduction. I'd also like to hear more about your tax for development program, which focuses on increased domestic revenue mobilization among other things. So could you talk a little bit about why domestic research mobilization is important, and also what types of insight do you think can be gained from related research, such as the research we do here at WIDER. So I'm kind of interested why the research angle is so important for this specific program. Yeah, tax for development has gone through different phases in NORAT. The first phase was very much a purely bilateral capacity development program, and now it's transformed into more of a portfolio approach where we have very many different components, and I can come back to the research component, but the way we've organized the program is that we have two outcomes areas that are important and that should be balanced in any intervention that we support. One side is the revenue mobilization, like you said, but on the other side is the social contract. So in that sense, we've formed it as very much as a governance program. And with that kind of a broad entry point to tackling tax and development, there are a lot of unknowns in terms of what are the right approaches and what are the right kind of policy directions that one should be promoting for different kinds of countries, low income, middle income, etc. And that's part of the reason why we have quite a substantial part on research that we've found, including the work at UNU wider. And we think it's important that our research partners of the portfolio has that double purpose, like what we see at UNU wider, of both working on the capacity, making it relevant, so directly impacting developments in partner countries, but also making a global knowledge that can help us shape our interventions from the development partner side. So that's also kind of a dual focus of the research component. Right, maybe somewhat related. I'd also like to know more about Norat's new strategy 2030 that came out last March. Basically, what's your overarching vision going forward and also the related priorities. And I'd also like to know a little bit more about if there are any differences between the priorities you've adopted at Norat and other development agencies in other countries have adopted. Yeah, so we've gone through a bit of a strategy process over the last year and a half, I guess, before it was launched. And the idea is it came out of a bigger reorganization in terms of the responsibilities divided between the ministry and then Norat as the directorate. So with more responsibility for the development aid budget, it was also a need to look at how can we work more effectively and efficiently to manage the resources. So the strategy has a few different focus areas in terms of being more strategic in the way that we manage the development aid budget. It also has a strong focus on being more knowledge-based and using research and evidence more directly into the combined development aid budget but also on the subsets and also a much stronger focus on being a climate and environment actor. So not only in the programs that we support but also the way that we run the organization and organizers. So increasingly we have also organized the whole structure around the sustainable development goals. So from a more thematic organization previously, we're now organized quite firmly around the sustainable development goals and we have three bigger departments on partnership and prosperity, human development and climate and environment. So that it should be easier for also our partners to recognize themselves in the organization from that angle. Thanks. I've asked a lot of questions about the organization and the programs and so on but maybe I'd like to know more about specific topics that we've also talked about here at the conference. So I think in the recent days here we've learned a lot about the negative impacts of COVID-19 on livelihoods, poverty and also public revenues. So I'd like to ask, based on your experience, if you think there are any new opportunities that have emerged from the pandemic, especially concerning development, basically has the pandemic taught us something that might be helpful in addressing development challenges in the future including in your strategy at NORAD. Yeah, it's hard to attribute anything positive to the pandemic but I think the fact that the crisis has been so far reaching has kind of pushed the development community and the international community to be a bit more bold in terms of finding solutions and I think we see that there are processes at the international level, at the global level in terms of developing tools, some changes in the normative and standards. We see that in the tax world development definitely but also when it comes to digital public goods. So if we're able to connect these and adapt them to support countries to adapt them to their needs and capacities so low and middle income countries could be a possibility to maybe leapfrog some of these obstacles and I think on the other side I think we've seen the importance of resilient governance structures and what having legitimate governments and governance that are built on transparency and what it means in terms of crisis. So I'm hopeful or maybe optimistic that this also can give us a bit of a push for a much more future focused governance structures and bridging that gap between this ideal of developing new standards tools and methodologies at the global level and really making it relevant at the country level. I think there's an opportunity. We've seen how connected we all are and kind of unearthed a lot of the very big challenges both at the global and at the national level. Thanks. I kind of have a related question about kind of similar lessons maybe based on what you've learned while working in the UN system and also at NORAD. So as most of us in this conference work in issues around international development one way or another we keep hearing about different policy recommendations and strategies coming from different directions that meet people think might be effective for development in a general sense or in a more specific sense. So I'd like to ask based on your experience is there something that you think would be effective for development that may be undervalued or underrated by say the average development professional or researcher. So in a nutshell what do you think that works that may be not appreciated in the community enough. Yeah, it's a very big question but I think what can kind of take a different approach to it is that some things we know work. We know that and we don't need to kind of over test and research the things that we know really works and we know that getting services to people there are some mechanisms in which are more efficient in that sense. So I really think that we need to be bolder and doing more of things that we know work without being too concerned with always being able to measure the direct impact of our interventions in the short to medium term because these systems need to mature over time and I think one area here that I hope that we can be a bit more bold going forward is also on for instance on cash transfers, even on conditional cash transfers and we know that it's difficult when we're trying to target the vulnerable groups and I'm not saying that that's not important but this is something that I think we need to come together and our own systems from the Scandinavian countries we know that these universal strategies in terms of whether it's cash transfers or universal access to services that are publicly funded predominantly is going to be important and so in that sense linking the tax and revenue work to more of these universal public good strategies I think it's something that we should definitely come together and do more of we're not going to be able to manage the setbacks by having a very project by project approach I think it's something on the systems is where we need to put our focus You mentioned unconditional cash transfers which basic income solutions might be one of those alternatives have you seen examples in parts of the world especially developing countries that have some promising solutions that are akin to unconditional cash transfers that might be adopted elsewhere Yeah, I think we've seen in some parts of the world but very often tied to projects and development projects and I had a talk with a colleague earlier today also who very rightly also commented that for the lowest income countries even when you do a full equal redistribution the population is still going to be under the poverty line so I think that we might need to have a more diversified strategy looking at what works in a very low income country might not work on the way around middle income country might not work in a very low income country and in terms of where unconditional cash transfers have worked I wouldn't be hesitant to say but I do think there's a lot of potential in building the systems and then even when there might not be 100% successful and we can say that for sure in most of this kind of naming approaches it was also not 100% successful from the beginning Right I do have a few questions of my own still but I'm wondering if anybody in the audience wants to ask something or share their screen and audio to ask questions or write in the Q&A feel free to do so as well at the moment I don't see anything so maybe I can go on so looking at your background seeing you have worked in the UN system for so many years and then coming to Norat to work in your home country how would you compare these two experiences both internationally in the UN system and now home at Norat I mean the main difference is how close you work with the beneficiaries and the target of your target population of your work and that's quite a transition moving to the donor side and moving home to Norway but I think what's important is also that there's a lot of people in Norat with similar backgrounds to mine so at least we have that shared experience and bringing that perspective I think it's very important so it's a different way of working for sure the very protective system for workers in Norway it's not something you find everywhere and also there's a sense of urgency you know when you work at the country level the sense of urgency feels different even if you're working on the same cases and I think that's also important when we work with partners now to remember that our partner countries often work with very few resources and it's an insurmountable task often so if a revenue administration in Rwanda works with the fraction of the staff and money of the revenue administration in Norway but are expected to deliver the same results so that's the awareness or you become very aware of that constantly when you're working more on the country level with the UN but luckily we have very vocal and good partnerships so we're also reminded of that even when we work here I'm still looking at the Q&A section not many questions here so maybe I can close this with an even more personal question about your typical work day for instance today before this fireside chat what did you do at Norat if you were working today? Yes I was working today from morning like we said we've just gone through last week reorganization so we've all been moving boxes both literally and physically figuratively in the new organization so today we've had mostly meetings meetings related to both on the operational side the recruitments and filling the new structures but then we also had a lot of we had interesting discussions on a lot of program management issues so it's quite diverse but I have to say you have to really prioritize the substantive parts because otherwise the operational side can swallow your life so today I've put aside a lot of time to work on some proposals for governance and equality so that's interesting because then I get to talk to a lot of colleagues get their perspectives and see what could be new priorities for Norat going forward Good lessons for everyone in terms of keeping the bureaucracy side down and operational side down and actually focusing on the substantive part of the work but I think 20 minutes is up and I didn't see any questions from the audience so I think we can close this here thanks so much Toril for coming to the file side chat and sharing all these insights Thank you, it was a very nice conversation Alright, and thanks everyone in the audience and Anna from widercoms as well for helping out and I think we can close it here