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Lesson
It will be essential to find a balance in future TA projects between continuing support for the whole region and having activities and outputs focus on a subset of countries to allow for more granularity in analyses and deeper engagements. This was the first TA for the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) in the field of disaster risk financing (DRF), and as such, was designed to cover all 11 CAREC countries.

Project Number: 53198-001
Project Name: Developing a Disaster Risk Transfer Facility in the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Region
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
Ownership of the reform process is critical and, given the experience of this, it will remain so. The reform agenda was fully in line with government and ADB strategies and priorities. This allowed for timely and quick support that resulted in comprehensive products. Detailed discussion on outcome indicators at the design stage is critical to finding the best possible indicators for measuring outcome.

Project Number: 51066-001, 51066-003
Project Name: Finance Sector and Fiscal Management Improvement Program (Subprograms 1 and 2)
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
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
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
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
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:
Lesson
The indicators for measuring the accomplishment of the program can be further improved by identifying more precise indicators. For instance, in addition to approval dates of policy-based actions, the inclusion of simplified monitoring and reporting arrangements under the indicative program monitoring framework should be considered as appropriate.

Project Number: 52018-001
Project Name: Disaster Resilience Program
Report Date:
Lesson
The inclusion of expected losses from health-related national emergencies must be considered in the program design of contingency disaster financing given the experience in COVID-19. Because health is now a part overall hazard, this will somewhat provide a quick guide in fund disbursements in case of such occurrences.

Project Number: 52018-001
Project Name: Disaster Resilience Program
Report Date: