Investments with innovative design elements should include monitoring systems that can capture how these innovations have performed for wider dissemination and upscaling. Tackling nonpoint source (NPS) pollution through wetland construction and eco-compensation represents real innovation; however, the project completion report could have better outlined how these approaches worked in practice.
A well-designed project performance management system is useful in facilitating the identification, quantification, and valuation of economic benefits.
In designing the design and monitoring frameworks (DMFs) for the COVID-19 Pandemic Response Option (CPRO), the approach was to extract aspects of the government's response plan that reflected ADB priorities and offered points of engagement with the government, and to restrict the number of indicators and targets so as not to burden the government. However, an unintended consequence is that this can weaken the logic and evidence base of the DMF, making it difficult to satisfactorily demonstrate the achievement of the program outcome.
Administration by a single team of future regional projects will enable better assessment of their regional impacts. The sector division in ADB headquarters delegated the administration of this project to respective resident missions after the midterm review in 2016. Country review missions were conducted separately after the delegation, causing discrepancies in loan financial management, safeguard compliance, and benefits and results monitoring. This led to difficulties in assessing the project's regional impacts.
A clear design and monitoring framework (DMF) allows procurement and implementation documentation to be linked to performance monitoring, and for all the monitoring requirement to be reflected in a comprehensive project administration manual. This was one facet of the project DMF that made it effective in tracking progress and facilitating timely and success project implementation.
Setting output indicators in the design and monitoring framework (DMF) that are the same or identical to policy actions confuses inputs with intended changes generated by policy actions. IED notes that this has been a standard practice for policy-based loans (PBLs) approved under previous ADB guidelines for preparing DMFs. However, going forward, specifying indicators that clearly measure the intended changes of policy actions would facilitate a better assessment of results.
It is important to reassess Indicators at midterm. In addition to project review, a reassessment of the performance Indicators at midterm should have led to adjustments in the project design, including targets and implementation timeframes. These would have bolstered the project’s potential for success.
Projections about the impact of road projects should be realistic and adequately consider the accessibility of the roads to be built to communities. The impact statement in the design and monitoring framework about increased access to markets, jobs, and social services in the 4 project provinces should have been restricted to the 10 districts along the project roads, as the project roads could not generate impacts in farther areas. Performance Indicators and targets should also consider data availability and baselines that proved to be limited in at least one of the project provinces.
Projections about the impact of road projects should be realistic and adequately consider the accessibility of the roads to be built to communities. The impact statement in the design and monitoring framework about increased access to markets, jobs, and social services in the 4 project provinces should have been restricted to the 10 districts along the project roads, as the project roads could not generate impacts in farther areas. Performance Indicators and targets should also consider data availability and baselines that proved to be limited in at least one of the project provinces.
Projections about the impact of road projects should be realistic and adequately consider the accessibility of the roads to be built to communities. The impact statement in the design and monitoring framework about increased access to markets, jobs, and social services in the 4 project provinces should have been restricted to the 10 districts along the project roads, as the project roads could not generate impacts in farther areas. Performance Indicators and targets should also consider data availability and baselines that proved to be limited in at least one of the project provinces.