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Lesson
The relevance of a TA could attract interest from other resident missions and lead to changes in scope and implementation arrangements to accommodate requests for support. Initially, this TA was designed to provide quick response to developing member countries' (DMCs) need to improve development planning.

Project Number: 52299-001
Project Name: Demonstrating Future Thinking and Foresight in Developing Member Countries
Report Date:
Lesson
Regular involvement of country teams from resident missions and with external partner experts in the field are crucial in ensuring the continued relevance and significance of TA support. For this TA, the design and planning were also informed by discussion with relevant department leading country programming work.

Project Number: 52299-001
Project Name: Demonstrating Future Thinking and Foresight in Developing Member Countries
Report Date:
Lesson
Careful political economy analysis can help identify potential legal or regulatory changes on the horizon that could impact planned interventions. In this case, changes in the regulatory framework related to hazardous waste management resulted in the cancelation of one output.

Project Number: 45009-002
Project Name: Fifth Health Sector Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The design and monitoring frameworks (DMFs) of the COVID-19 Pandemic Response Option (CPRO) extracted aspects of the government’s response plan that were important to ADB and restricted the number of indicators and targets in order not to burden the government. However, this made demonstrating outcome-level achievement difficult because it relies too much on one or two indicators and targets (weak horizontal logic) and is narrowly and inadequately supported by a minimal number of outputs (weak vertical logic).

Project Number: 54178-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Rapid Response Program
Report Date:
Lesson
It is critical for project design to include key activities and budget for the executing agency and implementing agency to be accountable for realizing the targets indicated in the design and monitoring framework (DMF). In this case, the DMF indicator for “report identifying and addressing constraints on achieving gender balance in senior hospital management” was canceled due to the absence of activities and resources planned at the project design stage to identify and address the gender parity issues in senior hospital management.

Project Number: 41243-012
Project Name: Fourth Health Sector Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Support cannot be directed to the most vulnerable in a crisis in the absence of a social protection system that can be utilized or adapted for this purpose—which provides an additional reason for working with developing member countries to establish and strengthen such systems.

Project Number: 54346-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Rapid Response Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Specificity of intended outcome is essential to enable programming, innovation, and cycles of project improvement. The project’s outcomes were broadly defined and lacked clear pathways detailing how the outputs would interact with each other and achieve the outcomes. The vagueness is likely part of the reason that the design had significant gaps and flawed assumptions on how the activities would lead to the intended outcomes.

Project Number: 41509-013
Project Name: Rural Primary Health Services Delivery Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Use of data and planning to target delivery strategies improve performance. Staffing and access to medical supplies were common challenges and well recognized during project design and documented during the project, including through the formative evaluations, the DFAT-funded independent evaluation, and the project midterm review. The chief executive officers (CEOs) of the provincial health authorities in high-performing provinces identified the use of data and planning to target delivery strategies as a factor in improved performance.

Project Number: 41509-013
Project Name: Rural Primary Health Services Delivery Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Establishing a comprehensive coordination unit for rural health transformation is a gargantuan and complex task requiring dedicated programming and targeted resources. A feature of the intended design, where the project support unit would be integrated into the Department of Health (DOH) to establish a comprehensive coordination unit for rural health transformation, was not realized. The ambition was relevant, and the government’s capability to manage projects to improve primary health care and coordinate partner programs should be strengthened.

Project Number: 41509-013
Project Name: Rural Primary Health Services Delivery Project
Report Date:
Lesson
Determining and improving the effectiveness of large and complex projects are far more complicated than measuring progress against the indicators in the design and monitoring framewrok (DMF). The emphasis on quantitative measures, even if well considered, could result in displacing goals and/or inaccurately representing project success or failure. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Implementation timelines, some DMF targets were unrealistic. The project provided for formative evaluations but they were not closely coordinated with the DMF.

Project Number: 41509-013
Project Name: Rural Primary Health Services Delivery Project
Report Date:
Lesson
An appropriate Implementation arrangement is key to delivering a successful project. The project could have had greater impact if it had the Nanning Education Bureau as implementing agency (IA). Project deliverables could have been more institutionalized and led to the deepening of the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) reform in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The Nanning Development and Reform Commission played an overall coordination role but lacked direct supervision authority over the two TVET schools.

Project Number: 46047-002
Project Name: Guangxi Nanning Vocational Education Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The green campus policy could align more closely with climate change mitigation and adaptation practices with measurable and quantifiable indicators so that the amount of energy saved and emissions reduced could be reportable and verifiable. Since the green campus concept was already incorporated at an output level in the design and monitoring framework, more specifications could have been provided at the project design stage, rather than just the formulation of campus policy.

Project Number: 46047-002
Project Name: Guangxi Nanning Vocational Education Development Project
Report Date:
Lesson
The program design benefited from interaction with ADB staff preparing similar Comprehensive Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic (CPRO) programs in other Pacific countries. ADB’s CPRO policy and guidelines were still being refined while the program was under Preparation. Managing the changing internal guidelines and expectations while also coordinating virtually (due to COVID-19 restrictions) with Vanuatu, ADB’s Pacific Liaison and Coordination Office, and ADB headquarters added significant pressure.

Project Number: 54179-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Fiscal Response Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Basing the reporting requirements on the monitoring systems of the government’s own response plan and providing dedicated assistance for monitoring and evaluation will help reduce the burden of the government in meeting the reporting requirements of massive budget support, pandemic response programs such as the CPRO. Budget support mechanisms are relatively new for the borrower, as most development assistance is delivered as project funding or through technical assistance.

Project Number: 54179-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Fiscal Response Program
Report Date:
Lesson
Focusing on existing social protection programs and systems and making in-depth policy discussions on reforming them contribute to avoiding the creation of ad hoc programs and arrangements or introducing reforms without having in place a solid institutional setup for its implementation. Alignment with the relevant national strategies ensures the government's strong ownership of prior actions and outcomes. Consideration of these two key lessons will strengthen the design and implementation of future similar programs.

Project Number: 55041-001, 55041-003
Project Name: Strengthening Social Resilience Program (Subprograms 1 and 2)
Report Date: