Kiravian Development Executive

The Kiravian Development Executive, currently operating as the Executive for Development & Regional Balance ( Vekturora Lékréstordh u Rymnivilrēdh ) is the Collegial executive responsible for economic development and human development policy in the Federation, South Kirav, and the Melian Isles. Its counterpart serving Sarolasta and the Overseas Regions is the Overseas Development Executive. The Development Executive's work focuses on supporting economic development and social protection in Second and Third Kirav with the goal of maintaining national economic cohesion and decentralisation. In Valtanen's typology of Collegiate executives, the Development Executive is a classic "grantmaking" or "management" executive (rather than a "service" or "regulatory" executive), and its primary function is to administer the Structural Adjustment Fund.

History
The Development Executive was established in 1989 AD by the Reconstruction & Development Act as part of the larger diffusion of the Territorial Executive. Most of the programmes and agencies assigned to the new Development Executive had been absorbed from the Kiravian Union after reunification, and most of these would be abolished, privatised, or devolved to provincial control over the course of the decade as the federal government downsized and its rôle in inland development became more indirect with the establishment of the Structural Adjustment Fund.

Structural Adjustment Fund
The Structural Adjustment Fund is a Kiravian federal expenditure program that provides grants to support economic development, maintain nationwide social stability and cohesion, and reduce regional disparities in growth and standards of living. The SAF primarily benefits the poorer inland provinces of the Kiravian Mainland and depressed or transitional regions in more highly developed provinces; however, all regions of the Kiravian Federacy have access to structural funds subject to varying conditions. The SAF accounts for a majority of federal spending on domestic development aid.

The Structural Adjustment Fund was established in 1993 to mitigate the negative economic and social consequences of Kiravian reunification and economic liberalisation of the Kiravian mainland. Some regions were better-positioned to benefit from the return of capitalism than others, and life in many parts of Kiravia was seriously disrupted by the industrial restructuring, foreign competition, and privatisation of state-owned enterprises. Much of the former Kiravian Remnant also experienced a pronounced economic downturn after reunification as the economic centre of gravity shifted back to the Mainland, drawing away investment and major employers. In this context, the Structural Adjustment Fund was designed with a “stronger whole from stronger parts” mindset as a way to provide a coördinated nationwide structural adjustment strategy capable of meeting varying needs across the Federacy’s diverse regions. At the time, it was touted as a more flexible, efficient and decentralised replacement for various Kiravian Union public works agencies and service corps.

The SAF is governed by several Acts of the Stanora and Collegial Orders, as well as a host of administrative regulations. The Manual of Structural Adjustment Disbursement compends all laws, standards, and procedures relevant to the SAF in an accessible and well-indexed volume for easy reference by applicants and government staff. It is customarily referred to as the “Blue Book” by those in the field, though the cover of recent editions is actually.

All provinces in the Inner Federation and South Kirav are eligible for Structural Adjustment funds. So too are the Melian Isles. Since the Pluricontinental Cohesion Act of 2010, provinces in the Overseas Regions which are integral territorial components of the Federacy are also eligible, but have smaller allocations and narrower project criteria. The SAF is funded out of the federal budget and (to a much lesser extent) returns on investments in for-profit ventures. Every year, each eligible province is allotted a share of SA funds using a formula based mainly on GDP per capita and Civil Development Index. This formula is meant to direct more funding toward the provinces where it is most needed.

SAF grants are administered by the federal Development Executive together with select provincial and subprovincial agencies known as Designated Management Authorities. A DMA is usually a province’s existing development ministry, a cantonal agency, or an intermunicipal body. In the standard process for first-instance applications, Designated Management Authorities receive grant applications and screen out ineligible or informal proposals. They then evaluate proposals on the merits and select which to send on to Kartika for further consideration by the Development Executive. DMAs have discretion in selecting which allowable applications are transmitted for federal review, though rejections at this level are audited and can be appealed to a federal Board of Interferences if impropriety is alleged. At the federal level, the Structural Adjustment Fund Administration’s Boards of Review further evaluate proposals and the concomitant reports from the DMAs. Boards of Review forward approved applications to region-specific Boards of Allowance, which may approve as many applications as a province’s fund allocation for new projects can accommodate. Boards of Review and Allowance make their selections based on the Blue Book, supplemented by memoranda issued by the Chief Development Executive expressing the current administration’s development strategy and priorities. The latter are particularly influential over the Boards of Allowance, which must choose how to distribute funds across competing functional areas. Accepted proposals result in a grant agreement which allows for the delivery of funds. Post-grant, both the DMA and the SAFA’s Office of Supervision receive reports from receiving organisations on the use of grant money and monitor the implementation of projects to ensure compliance with federal regulations and the grant agreement.

Long-term projects seeking recurring funding must be declared as such in the initial proposal, and are governed by grant agreements fixing dates for periodic review by dedicated Boards of Review and setting parameters for any future funding adjustments.

Recipients
A diverse array of organisations receive grants from the Structural Adjustment Fund, ranging from humanitarian NGOs to research institutions to private businesses, local governments, museums, civic associations, rural coöperatives, fraternal organisations, startup incubators, provincial government agencies, and public-private partnerships. Funds cannot be granted to churches or equivalent institutions, but autonomous religiously-affiliated organisations are still eligible.

Criticism, Lobbying, and Corruption
The SAF and its practices have been criticised from numerous angles. The Bérasar-based Institute for Social Entrepreneurship says that the lengthy and involved approval process limits access to SAF grants to larger organisations able to afford lobbyists and consultants to shepard their applications through the process, shutting out smaller, more grassroots organisations. Most in the development field do indeed regard the application process as labour-intensive and difficult to navigate without specialist knowledge, but as Kiravian federal bureaucracies go it is more efficient and forgiving than the immigrant visa approval process or the Kiravian Intellectual Property Office, which are quick to reject applications for minor informalities and demand heavy fines to keep them pending.

The susceptibility of Implementation Management Authorities to partisan political influence has also been a source of complaints. Officially, even though IMAs are most often agencies of provincial or subprovincial governments led by political appointees, they are obligated to carry out their functions in the SAF evaluation process in accordance with federally-established program objectives and guidelines rather than the policy priorities of their regional government. In practice, this provision is routinely violated and has proven difficult to enforce.

Since the Fund was established in 1993, 28 officials have been indicted for public corruption related to the SAF, of which six have been convicted.

Sanitation Improvement Agency
The Sanitation Improvement Agency assists inland Kiravians in transitioning from or  to  methods.

Inclusive Development Office
The Inclusive Development Office, previously the Internal Development and Living Standards Directorate and the Interior Development Office attends to the ethnic, caste, and communal dimension of development, with the aim of promoting and  by addressing the special needs of marginalised populations. Its main activity is producing the quinquennial Communal Development Rating Index, which assesses the socio-economic situation of identifiable population groups according to various metrics, evaluates the extent of discrimination and other social barriers to improvement, and assigns groups numerical ratings and class designations based on these findings. The ratings and designations in the report are used by other federal and provincial agencies to allocate state aid and other benefits. Coscivian subgroups and Kiravite Minorities, off-reservation Urom populations, and National Minority populations living in the Federation and South Kirav fall within the scope of the CDRI. Beginning in 2030 AD, the IDO will also monitor the development of Deaf communities pending Collegial approval of a subclassification scheme for this population. The IDO is most acutely concerned with the welfare of Coscivian harsitem (outcastes) and yakavem ("village menial castes"), landless Urom tribes such as the Hotmail, urbanised Urom, midget colonies, describing these groups as "the absolute bottom rung of the Kiravian social ladder, except for Hosyars and Kikparis." Other economically precarious and historically discriminated communities, including occupational castes (e.g. Hop clans, Euluśians, Sea Coscivians), small and insular Coscivian minorities (e.g. Pine Swamp Coscivians), and certain Sectarian groups (e.g. Enochites, Abrigalasts) are also high priorities, and it was historically these peoples, along with the lower strata of the regional majority ethnicities in the poor inland provinces, upon whom the IDO was most focused in the past. Over time, however, the office has increased its attention to other populations in need, such as urban Kolakoskem "returnees" in coastal cities.

Beyond its CDRI reports, the IDO also administers a small (relative to the SAF) amount of grant money to benefit marginalised communities.

Inherited from the Kiravian Union as the Interior Development Office, the IDO has been a political (if mostly rhetorical) lightning rod in the larger public debate about the policy significance of ethnic/caste/communal groups under liberalism. The Shaftonist-Republican Alliance, grounded in the dhianbrikorisēn of the Renaissance Party and increasingly perceived in recent decades as representing higher caste interests, has often railed against the agency but has not moved to abolish the IDO despite its long-term political dominance. The Coscivian National Congress, which has a strong voter base among the lower castes, has defended the IDO and its budget from SRA cuts even as a coalition partner. Customary leaders, Urom activists, traditionalist commentators, and some socialists have criticised the IDO's development philosophy and rating criteria as reflective of urban, bourgeois, and upper-caste biases and denigrating towards manual labour and traditional economies.