From pilot to permanent: a scaling simulation
Many integrated-services pilots produce strong results that end with their funding. A few become permanent national services. In this simulation you lead one pilot through eight years of decisions and see what each decision brings.
"The most sustainable ICS models (Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Slovenia) share a deliberate legal or policy decision that converted them from projects into permanent statutory services."
Your pilot
You are the National Coordinator. A three-year integrated-services pilot, co-financed by an external partner, has run in 40 communities in two regions. Community teams of a social worker, a nurse and a school mediator work with families; monitoring data show improvements in school attendance and health indicators, but there has been no independent evaluation. Half of the pilot has run and external funding ends in 18 months. Your task: turn the pilot into a permanent national service.
Four conditions are tracked through the simulation. Each is not yet, partly in place, or in place.
Four decisions over eight years. The pilot and the country are illustrative; the consequences name documented practices.
Ministers are interested in the pilot. The external partner is ending its support. You have 18 months and a small team.
What do you do first?
Extend the pilot to 40 more communities while the funding lasts, to build political momentum.
Commission an independent evaluation and secure the pilot's data system as national property; take the evidence to ministries and Parliament.
Negotiate a second funding phase with the external partner, to keep the teams in place.
The government is ready to give the service a formal basis. Ministries of health and education are cautious about new obligations.
Which instrument do you pursue?
A ministerial order in the social protection ministry, defining the service and its standards.
Primary legislation, with cross-party support, defining minimum standards for workforce, governance and reporting.
A government resolution embedding the service in an existing local partnership structure in every municipality.
The service is to reach communities across the country. The external funding has ended. Finance ministry officials ask how the rollout will be paid for.
How do you finance the national rollout?
EU co-financing for the rollout, with a planned transition to national and municipal budgets.
A dedicated line in the national budget from the start.
A statutory obligation on municipalities to fund the service from their own budgets.
The service now runs in several hundred communities. Reports show uneven quality: some municipalities perform strongly, others cannot recruit staff, and a few teams exist only on paper. The national coordination team has six people.
What do you prioritise for the rest of the plan period?
Keep expanding, to reach national coverage within the plan period.
Pause expansion and deepen support: size the coordination team to the number of local units, build a national training system and peer learning between regions.
Adapt the model to local conditions: team size based on workload, and specialist services added where they are missing.
Where your path has taken the service
Your four decisions
"Every practice that has achieved meaningful scale and impact has done so over a timeline of at least six years, typically much longer."
Whatever the path, the documented countries agree on one point: replication means adapting the governance logic to your own institutions, not copying another country's model.
Three things the evidence shows
Scaling is a policy decision.
Legal embedding is the single most powerful predictor of long-term sustainability, regardless of the quality of the model itself.
Evidence comes before the law, and financing must accompany it.
Independent evaluation built the case for legislation in Romania; a mandate without fiscal capacity leaves the poorest municipalities behind.
Scale at the pace of coordination capacity, and expect the model to change.
None of the documented case-study practices reached national scale within a single government term, and each adapted its model on the way.
Apply this to your context
If you work at national level
- Where does your most advanced integrated-services pilot stand on the four conditions today?
- What would happen to it if its funding ended in 18 months?
- Is the transition to national financing written into your National Action Plan as an objective, with milestones?
If you work at regional or municipal level
- If the service became a statutory obligation for your municipality tomorrow, could you recruit, pay and retain the staff it requires?
- What support would you need from the national level first?
- Which parts of the pilot model would need adapting to your communities?
Take this to your team: from pilot to permanent
Many integrated-services pilots produce strong results that end with their funding. The practices that became permanent national services secured four conditions: independent evidence, a legal anchor, sustainable financing, and the capacity to deliver at scale. None did so within a single government term.
Three things the evidence shows
- Scaling is a policy decision. Legal embedding is the single most powerful predictor of long-term viability.
- Evidence comes before the law, and financing must accompany it. A mandate without fiscal capacity leaves the poorest municipalities behind.
- Scale at the pace of coordination capacity, and expect the model to change on the way.
Questions to use with your team
- Which of our integrated-services initiatives depend on time-limited funding, and when does that funding end?
- What independent evidence do we have, and is it strong enough to support legislation?
- Which legal or policy instrument would make the service a permanent obligation, and who must agree to it?
- How will financing move from project funds to national or municipal budgets, and by which milestones?
- Is our coordination capacity sized to the number of local units we plan to support?
The point of this card is to open a cross-sectoral conversation, at national or municipal level. Bring it to a working group or a team meeting and start with the first question.