Design and/or planning

Identifying critical risks and assumptions are an important element of design. However, design could also usefully identify mechanisms to mitigate these risks.

Drawing on lessons from similar previous TA projects can help in robust design that is responsive to DMC needs, isrealistic, and adopts best practice. This could help to get greater stakeholder engagement in complex processes such as regional capital market integration.

The analysis of results of the TA were constrained by clear evidence concerning the original outcome statement and the revised output indicators. A clear and consistent DMF can help guide the project during implementation, communicate with stakeholders, and facilitate reporting at the end of the project. Validation is facilitated when the approved DMF is clear and reported against in the TCR.

This is more of a description of what happened than a lesson. (The first sentence can be read as a lesson, but it is weak (these risks exist in almost any project).

As envisaged in the TA’s risk analysis, changes in government and weak government support for the project can create risks in the implementation of the TA. Fortunately, team efforts at the resident mission and the increase of government support created consistency of the TA with the ADB country partnership strategy for Kazakhstan for 2017–2021 that commits extensive support to water and agriculture sectors, indicating IWRM as a key area for intervention. The TA was designed to highlight an existing knowledge gap using the best technical applications.

This validation also offers these lessons: 2. IIn DMF design, it is also best practice if indicator targets are made specific and defined based on the full extent of results expected under an output, rather than a partial result. For this TA, the indicator 1c was defined as "at least 3 market centers for upgrading identified," and the TA did identify 3 market centers for upgrading. However, the TCR considers the output as only partly achieved, because the TA did not provide a summary of the detailed upgrading needs of the markets, which was foreseen in the TA activities.

This validation also offers these lessons: 1. In DMF design, it is most favorable if quantitative indicator targets are described with sufficient context to clearly rationalize the target values. This provides a transparent and logical basis and facilitates the assessment of the validity of the targets. Lack of information on how targets were set and then revised hinders validation.

No TCR lessons. In finalizing this validation report, NRM added a new lesson: Continued engagement and dialogue with the government on changes in priorities is crucial in determining the most appropriate type of assistance, financing modality and project design. Scope changes in the TA have financial implications, which may require original output targets to be adjusted. In this case, the numbers of corridors and commodities to be mapped were reduced as resources had to be diverted to undertake policy review for the program loan.

As the TCR stated, other factors (often political) play an important role and are beyond the control of a TA project. Therefore, a broader lesson learned could be: Clearly aligning the intended outcome with its indicators and TA project’s outputs is critical for avoiding any attribution issues. In this TA project, the intended outcome was dependent on many other external factors over which the TA project had no control.

The TA showed the importance of formulating an outcome that is the direct and immediate result of the project outputs. Government acceptance at a fairly distant date of the project’s policy recommendations as an indicator of outcome achievement was over ambitious, and the outcome itself of actual improvement of the public sector compensation system was dependent on many (often political) factors far beyond the control of an ADB TA.