About
We make public services work better for people
We partner with governments and development agencies across the Asia-Pacific to strengthen public services and the systems behind them — across health, education and skills, governance, and social protection. From strategy and service design through to implementation, capability building, and ongoing improvement.
We bring together practical development expertise with digital, data, and policy capability. Our teams are based in Australia, Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Fiji — embedded in the regions where we work, not remote from them.
What sets us apart is our focus on what actually gets adopted. We combine program delivery discipline with human-centred design and technical rigour, so reforms are usable in practice, owned by the institutions that deliver them, and sustained beyond the life of a project.
Trust, Technology, and 200,000 Mothers
In Timor-Leste, gaps in information and trust left mothers and midwives disconnected — missed appointments and silence when it mattered most. Liga Inan used SMS and voice calls to build that connection, guiding women through pregnancy and prompting midwives to reach out at critical moments.
The result: skilled birth deliveries doubled, over 200,000 mothers registered, and the program became a national initiative led by the Ministry of Health. It's the kind of change that defines our work — purposeful technology, designed with people, adopted by government.
A scooter, a $5,000 grant, and a big idea
Catalpa began in the mountains of Timor-Leste, where a tiny team spent two years designing and implementing programs to strengthen rural health and emergency services. With a single scooter and limited resources, we set out to explore how human-centred digital tools and co-design could improve access to frontline services.
We learned early that transformation doesn't come from the top down — it happens when you work alongside the people closest to the problem. That creating value for the person at the end of the service isn't just a design principle — it's a necessity in fragile systems. And that small things — a working printer, a consistent data report — can make or break national reform.
Those lessons still guide how we work. Nearly two decades and 20 countries later, our approach hasn't changed: practical, collaborative, and grounded in the realities of the frontline.
We are not the owners of the problems we seek to solve. We succeed by listening and supporting others.
Nearly two decades of working alongside governments in the Asia-Pacific has taught us that lasting change depends on a few things:
Start with the problem, not the solution.
We listen before we design. The people closest to the problem understand it best — our job is to support them, not replace them.
Design for adoption, not just delivery.
A system that isn't used isn't working. We co-design with the people who will deliver and use services, so what we build is practical, trusted, and owned.
Work through national systems, not around them.
When our partners succeed, we succeed. We embed within government structures and invest in the relationships and capability that outlast our involvement.
Stay for the hard part.
Societies and systems don't change overnight. We persist through the complexity of implementation, because that's where impact is made or lost.
We value ideas over hierarchy.
Great ideas come from everywhere — a district health worker, a software engineer, a ministry director. We listen and build together.
Be kind, share openly.
Nice people work here. We believe inclusivity and collaboration begin with sharing — knowledge, credit, and the honest lessons from what didn't work.
Multidisciplinary by design
We're a team of development practitioners, sector specialists, designers, data analysts, software engineers, and researchers — embedded across the Asia-Pacific — means we bring the right capability to each context.
Meet our teamDiscover our work
Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Samoa, and Cook Islands
