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Lesson
The development of specialized expertise requires careful selection and the engagement of qualified consultants and proper management of expectations from all parties. Future thinking and foresight is a specialized expertise. It is crucial to identify and engage consultants with proven experience to ensure they can provide the necessary guidance and insights. It is also a new approach for ADB and thus, clear onboarding, communication, and setting expectations for both Staff and consultants who were critiical to the success of the TA.

Project Number: 52299-001
Project Name: Demonstrating Future Thinking and Foresight in Developing Member Countries
Report Date:
Lesson
Engaging an international firm with extensive experience proved to be the best option for this TA which focused on a complex and highly specialized topic. Nevertheless,there will always be an indispensable need for national perspectives and experiences, best provided by national consultants, to inform and be considered in TA analyses and recommendations. Future TA could benefit from increased engagement with local experts, either as individual consultants or as subcontracted members of international consulting firms or TA implementation teams.

Project Number: 53198-001
Project Name: Developing a Disaster Risk Transfer Facility in the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Region
Report Date:
Lesson
The knowledge team (formerly Knowledge Advisory Services Center) from the former Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department administered the TA and supervised consultants until the TA was transferred to the Partner Funds Division. Managing consultants through external resources should be based on a clear understanding of ADB procedures and guidelines and should be adopted only if necessary.

Project Number: 52299-001
Project Name: Demonstrating Future Thinking and Foresight in Developing Member Countries
Report Date:
Lesson
Guidance for completing CPRO DMFs underscored the dynamic nature of a crisis operation and the need to be prepared to strengthen, amend or add DMF indicators during implementation. The fact that this was not followed reflects a built-in lack of flexibility with DMFs (and perhaps the difficulty of making changes in accordance with existing Project Administration Instructions).

Project Number: 54178-001
Project Name: COVID-19 Rapid Response Program
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
The framework for a program’s data management system should be put in place before its start to measure the achievement of targets and beneficiaries and (the ambitiousness of goals should be balanced against the availability of data and capacity to quickly augment granular data collection. Although the government has increased its focus on gender equality and has made efforts to strengthen gender data tracking, data disaggregated by sex and age of end recipients were often not available at the time of program preparation and monitoring.

Project Number: 56149-001
Project Name: Building Resilience with Active Countercyclical Expenditures Program
Report Date:
Lesson
When designing future programs, ADB needs to encourage the government to implement long-term reforms that expand sex-disaggregated data collection and strengthen the capacity of line ministries and statistical agencies. With ADB dedicated technical assistance (TA) support, the government should promote the establishment of a monitoring and evaluation system, interagency exchange of data, and systemic links between planning, budgeting, and execution.

Project Number: 56149-001
Project Name: Building Resilience with Active Countercyclical Expenditures Program
Report Date:
Lesson
TA relevance increased during implementation because of ADB’s responsiveness to real-time requests from the government. Regular country programming missions, consultation meetings, and tripartite portfolio review meetings provided effective avenues for ADB to be more responsive to clients. Responses to government requests should be matched by a scrutiny of the accompanying necessary changes in the results chain and the DMF overall, including performance indicators, targets, data source, and reporting mechanism.

Project Number: 52006-001
Project Name: Capacity Building for Country Programming and Portfolio Management
Report Date:
Lesson
The DMF indicators and results chain, to effectively serve as a monitoring and evaluation tool, need to reflect the changes in TA scope and focus during implementation. Output performance indicators and targets were changed to align with the government’s requests for support to emerging priorities. The outcome statement and targets should also have been updated to reflect the changed focus of the TA which has evolved and become broader.

Project Number: 52006-001
Project Name: Capacity Building for Country Programming and Portfolio Management
Report Date:
Lesson
The design and monitoring framework (DMF) and monitoring and reporting mechanism need to be carefully developed at the planning stage. The outcome statement of the TA was not appropriate as it is too narrow and should be more focused on the TA benefits to Maldives. Outcome targets were too ambitious since there were several contributing factors outside the scope of the TA that affected their achievements. With a small country portfolio, unexpected delays in one or two projects will make the target unachievable. Having an outcome indicator at the broader level could help avoid that.

Project Number: 52006-001
Project Name: Capacity Building for Country Programming and Portfolio Management
Report Date:
Lesson
Using individual consultants and resource persons provides flexibility in contract implementation. A summary recording of pertinent contract data must be kept updated to support efficient consultant management.

Project Number: 54423-001
Project Name: A New Operational Economic Corridor Development Framework for Central Asia and Beyond
Report Date:
Lesson
While customized, survey-based performance targets can be useful, they should not account for the bulk of the targets such that the overall outcome of the program depends simply on one’s ability to replicate the survey. In this case, 4 of 6 outcome targets were generated by custom surveys which, for reasons unknown, could not be replicated. Also, proxy data could not be located for three of the targets. Thus, the program’s effectiveness, despite evidence to the contrary, was compromised simply by a lack of data and an inability to confirm progress.

Project Number: 49117-002, 49117-003, 49117-004
Project Name: Facilitating Youth School-to-Work Transition Program (Subprograms 1, 2, and 3)
Report Date:
Lesson
More formal and comprehensive systems, supported by the TA, are needed to track and validate compliance with gender-based performance targets. The first two subprograms were classified effective gender mainstreaming, and subprogram 3 was classified gender equity as a theme. Explicit targets were set to prioritize women in multiple areas, including entry into labor activation programs and training, and covering both job seekers and government staff. Yet, tracking was less than robust and required significant follow-up to evaluate program performance.

Project Number: 49117-002, 49117-003, 49117-004
Project Name: Facilitating Youth School-to-Work Transition Program (Subprograms 1, 2, and 3)
Report Date:
Lesson
It is crucial to systemize the collection and dissemination of gender-disaggregated data to facilitate the conduct of gender analysis and mitigate women’s vulnerability through more effective targeting of state resource allocation. A substantial number of performance indicators under this program had specific gender targets, which ensured that the government delivered on its commitment to gender equity and gender action plans. This is important because women are usually disproportionately affected by the impacts of crises.

Project Number: 56150-001
Project Name: Building Resilience with Active Countercyclical Expenditures Program
Report Date:
Lesson
It is important for output performance indicators to be strengthened to address project changes during implementation and measure overall achievements beyond the revised project-benefit levels. Specific to this project, the design and monitoring framework could have provided additional measures to assess what those child-targeted income support have intended to achieve.

Project Number: 54214-001
Project Name: Shock-Responsive Social Protection Project
Report Date: