The principal findings regarding the purpose and results of individual projects are set out in this section of the report. In addition to the detailed examination of topics across projects, project case studies that have been selected to illustrate best practices are presented in boxed form.
Most of the projects in the sample may be considered relevant to primary development needs and may thus be related, directly or indirectly, to the UNDP SHD mandate. Very few, however, may be viewed as direct responses to specific requests for support made to UNDP by country-based or regional and/or global partners. Other initiatives are linked to the outcomes and recommendations produced by major UN and other international conferences and intergovernmental meetings. A third group may be defined as initiatives led by UNDP or other multilateral donors.
Questions are sometimes raised about whether projects are supply-driven or demand-led. The largest grouping of projects considered here appears to fall into the loose category of those that are supply-driven in that they originate with the donor. Yet, as will be seen later, many of the initiatives in this category represent significant efforts to identify and address a major capacity gap.
Several of the projects have used effective strategies to build support at the global and/or regional and national levels and are categorized by a high degree of ownership. The Sustainable Development Networking Programme and the External Resources Management project are the most obvious examples. Others, including the Project to Support the Development and Enhancement of Democracy, Governance and Participation (Regional Bureau for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (RBEC)), Assistance to the Centre for Environment and Development in the Arab States and Europe (Regional Bureau for Arab States (RBAS)) and Regional Strategies for the Conservation and Sustainable Management of Natural Resources in the Amazon (Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean (RBLAC)) are important initiatives through which UNDP has sought to address a development issue at a level or in a way that other donors have not been willing or able to do. The Urban Management Programme and the Assistance to the Africa Capacity-building Foundation project are also high-level responses to address important development gaps.
Entrepreneurship of this kind by UNDP is a positive contribution that the organization can make in offering a timely response to difficult problems that are not always readily addressed initially by country programmes and not always initially identified as immediate priorities by national governments or regional organizations. Nevertheless, a broad assessment - however sophisticated - of the development situation, allied with entrepreneurship, is an insufficient foundation for good programmes.
For example, one of the objectives of the HIV project Strengthening Multisectoral and Community Responses to the HIV Epidemic in Asia and the Pacific (Asia regional) in India was capacity development at both the national and community levels to respond to the causes and consequences of the epidemic. However, there was no clear strategy for capacity development or an identification of the capacity gap so as to be able to focus the attention, resources and energies of the project in a meaningful, productive manner. Specifically, the project lacked adequate linkages with the National Aids Control Programme of the Government of India.
In addition, the project did not have proper governance, review and monitoring mechanisms. Breakdown of communication between the project and the HIV unit of the former Division for Global and Interregional Programmes (DGIP) further complicated the problem, leading to inadequate technical backstopping, support and oversight from UNDP headquarters. Furthermore, the principal project resident representative (PPRR) system failed to make appropriate and timely interventions to prevent the project from drifting to the point where it could not be salvaged.
The evaluation has revealed major deficiencies in project design, as exemplified in the PRODOCs. The lack of clarity in focus at the outset is associated, in many cases, with a general vagueness and incompleteness in overall design. There is no apparent consistency across projects in approach or standards, even within a bureau or division, and no evidence of the imposition of quality control.
It appears that the production of the PRODOCs is often an exercise quite apart from the life of the project once it is implemented. Following approval, documents appear to be seldom used. Files in headquarters often contain several versions of a PRODOC and it is not always clear, even to the principals, which version is definitive. Financial information is often incomplete. In few cases have PRODOCs been updated as a result of changes in design or budgets or because of updating of implementation plans.
The poor definition of projects also extends to a lack of fit, first, between objectives and activities, and second, between the activities and the budget. Often the pattern of distribution of expenditures proposed makes little sense in terms of the objectives stated. For example, the Poverty Alleviation and Social Development project in Latin America takes policy dialogue as a key objective while providing no funds to support or stimulate dialogue activities or even to allow for consultations. This is an extreme case, but with many other projects, too, the pattern of proposed expenditures is inappropriate if the objectives are to be taken seriously.
At the outset of project design, there seems to have been a failure to ask the questions:
For the most part, PRODOCS do not show any evidence of an effort to specify clearly who the beneficiaries and the stakeholders are. This often results in products with weakly defined management plans and vague implementation strategies. One example is provided by the Urban Management Programme, which articulates immediate objectives clearly but is very weak in linking those objectives to a strategy for their achievement through the activities described. This deficiency appears to be associated with a lack of clarity regarding stakeholders and beneficiaries in the design of the second phase of the project as it moved from a research to an application focus.
There is also a problematic lack of clarity across projects in specifying roles and responsibilities, which makes it difficult for accountability to be exercised as it should be. This issue and others raised in the previous paragraph are taken up in more detail in the relevant sections of the report below. However, at this stage, it is important to note that many subsequent difficulties experienced during implementation have their roots in the design and preparatory stages. This is particularly important to bear in mind, given the regular turnover and mobility of staff. If the writing of a PRODOC is treated merely as an administrative task, it will provide a poor set of guidelines for management and an inadequate foundation for practical cooperation among project partners.
PRODOCs should not be mere blueprints; circumstances change, project partners learn. These developments should result in modifications to the initial design. The initial document should not be simply a historic relic or curiosity.
Paradoxically, one or two of the better projects among those considered here have been launched on the basis of weak and unsatisfactory PRODOCs. These cases are exceptional. They have succeeded despite weak initial design on paper because of a powerful concept (however poorly stated in writing), involvement of stakeholders and partners and the consistent presence of key personnel well qualified for the tasks involved and dedicated to achieving them. Had there been major shifts in personnel, the story might very well have been different. In summary, there is no justification for the deficiencies in basic project design and project documents. In the vast majority of cases, weaknesses in this area are associated with negative results and a less-than-optimal use of limited resources.
A well-structured PRODOC might be expected to articulate objectives, activities and expected results properly. It should also indicate how the required human and financial resources are to be used in achieving those results. It might also include strategies to promote the participation of stakeholders (including beneficiaries, where feasible), to facilitate capacity development, and to promote information-sharing and cost-sharing. The initial design should also include a list of milestones and a set of performance indicators for use in monitoring, progress reports and formal evaluation.
A PRODOC should include an implementation strategy, accompanied by a detailed work plan, which may be adjusted and revised following inception and annually thereafter. Accordingly, there should also be a staffing plan to indicate the human resources required to fit with the needs of the project as set out in the work plan. There should be a management plan, with a clear statement and assignment of roles and responsibilities along with a governance structure for the project. To meet these requirements, a project must be based on careful preparatory work, involving consultations with stakeholders, including UNDP country offices.
PRODOCS should also specify the strategy to be followed for systematic monitoring and evaluation. Separate budget lines, with adequate financial allocations, should be set aside for both monitoring and evaluation.
Intercountry programmes seem to face a particular difficulty in the planning and preparation of projects. There appears to be a sense of urgency in getting projects on line and this, combined with the virtual absence of quality control where project documents are concerned, undermines any incentive to undertake thorough preparatory work. This seems to be less of an issue where global projects are concerned, but the quality of many of the regional and interregional projects examined here suffers as a result of inadequate preparatory work.
A number of strategies have been followed by project planners as a basis for design and for setting objectives. Examination and classification of these strategies will assist in identifying best practices. An examination of such strategies is particularly important, given that the vast majority of projects must seek to go beyond an understanding of the basic development problem or capacity gap to build a set of mechanisms through which to fit the project to circumstances varying from one country to another. Thus a broad-based approach to project planning will seldom suffice. The various strategies pursued in the preparation of the projects in the sample include the following general types (in fact, many actual projects have used a combination of two or more of these strategies):
Building projects on the basis of lessons learned from earlier endeavours is more common among regional projects than elsewhere, with the exception of multi-phase projects started several years ago, which are found in all three project categories.
The most notable cases of projects of this kind are:
Both the Local Initiative Facility for the Urban Environment (LIFE) project and the Urban Management Programme (UMP) began as a result of consultations at the global level. However, LIFE made concerted efforts to involve a broad-based group of stakeholders, with a view to designing a project to be implemented at the community level, while UMP's focused on mobilizing and involving international experts in the urban management field. Given that UMP's initial objectives were to support and encourage research to facilitate a better understanding and conceptualization of urban management as a multi-disciplinary field, the difference in approach between the two projects is quite understandable. Both the LIFE project and UMP (in their first phases) made effective use of such consultations in developing a project concept and focus and in linking objectives and activities through a relevant implementation strategy.
As an interregional project, LIFE has been extremely successful in refining its basic strategy and devising, from the outset, a practical implementation framework to fit the context of countries differing greatly in their political, sociocultural and economic circumstances. Thus the evaluation has been able to confirm the general effectiveness of the project design through assessment of operations in Brazil, Egypt, the Kyrgyz Republic and Pakistan.
A number of projects in Latin America have also begun through consultations of this kind. In the Human DeVelopment and Governance project, the entire design focuses on policy dialogue among countries at different levels, from head of state to municipal government. Initial consultations were used effectively in determining a design to facilitate dialogue and to deal with governmental sensitivities on discussing and sharing ideas and experience in areas such as the reform of the courts and the independence of the judiciary, free and fair elections and the organization of the local government.
In a second case, the consultative approach appears to have been less successful as a basis for project design. The project in question, Regional Strategies for the Conservation and Sustainable Management of Natural Resources in the Amazon, seeks to build up regional and subregional capacities for the purposes noted in its title. It includes three subcategories: (a) ecological zoning and geographical monitoring of the Amazon Basin; (b) capacity-building for sustainable use of biodiversity; and (c) natural resource management on indigenous [peoples'] land.
The project represented a pioneering effort to bring together the countries of the Amazon Basin to address issues concerning the management and conservation of a common resource. Although there apparently were pre-project consultations with government authorities and in-region experts as well as NGOs and research institutes, this process was not carried out thoroughly or satisfactorily. As a result, the key Amazon Basin country, Brazil, declined to participate and Colombia also rejected the project.
Furthermore, it appears that little was done to ensure that the project design fitted with the national context of the remaining participating countries. Activities, as implemented in Bolivia, have varied considerably from the design set out in the PRODOC since the initial design was regarded by the national implementing agency as unworkable. However, redesign was undertaken without consultation with national NGOs or other civil society groups.
There is one outstanding example of a learn-by-doing approach whereby an initial concept is developed, piloted, modified on the basis of experience, and then implemented on a broader scale.
The Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) (see box 1) seeks to provide participating countries with a practical mechanism for accessing and using information as a means of empowerment in support of sustainable development. The project is thus focused on the strengthening of civil society engaged in SHD activities, in building networks, and in linking those networks with the broader international community and critical sources of information.
In its initial, formative phase (from l989 to l992), the project received less than $50,000. From l992 to l993, it was the recipient of more substantial financial support to develop a pilot programme in 10 to 12 countries. Since l993, having proven its own approach and having developed a national prototype strategy, the project has expanded and become a core component of Capacity 21. Some of the country programmes initially supported by the project are now fully self-sufficient but remain part of the SDNP network. Even today, SNDP might be viewed as underfunded, short staffed and lacking in an assured long-term basis of support. Nevertheless, the project made some remarkable achievements on the basis of very modest beginnings in 1989. By late l996, it has reached the stage where it is fully operational in 21 countries.
The interregional UNDP/World Bank Water and Sanitation Programme is a very different and much larger-scale operation compared with SDNP. Nevertheless, there is some common ground between the two projects. In both Africa and Latin America, the project has demonstrated its capacity to learn and to modify implementation approaches and strategies on the basis of experience. The evidence of a learning approach is particularly striking in the Latin America region, most notably in Bolivia, where project operations were examined in detail.
The in-region activities of the broader interregional project have been interlinked with pilot projects funded as country-level UNDP programmes. The interregional project facilitated the learning of lessons and their incorporation into a large-scale World Bank project. The experience of pilot projects in Bolivia has also informed the preparation of larger World Bank investment programmes in Ecuador and Peru as well as in the Andean region more generally.
Like SDNP, the Alternatives to Slash-and burn Agriculture (ASB) project (see box 2) is a model initiative, exemplifying in its success the utility of a learning approach, information-sharing and dissemination as core components of project design. Once again, the project has proceeded through an approach beginning with pilot operations and then adjusting approaches and building more substantial initiatives on the basis of lessons learned.
In substantive terms, this variant could be subsumed under the previous category. However, an administrative alternative to the pilot approach is to fund a preparatory phase to ensure that
the programme proper is optimally focused as well as to build support and interest among stakeholders, including participating country governments and other international donor partners. The Asia poverty alleviation project (Institutional Development at the Grass Roots for Poverty Alleviation (South Asia subregional) and the Project to Support the Development and Enhancement of Democracy, Governance and Participation (Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States) have both followed this route, with the first phase leading to a more ambitious and more tightly specified medium-term project.
Such an approach may well be advisable where there are good grounds for moving forward with an initiative but where there is not yet an adequate basis in terms of information, financial support or partnership to justify proceeding with a major undertaking. Much of the initial preparatory work associated with a successful project can be undertaken through a preparatory phase that is properly conceived, implemented and monitored.
As noted earlier, it is not always possible, nor is it always desirable, to avoid what is - technically - a supply-driven initiative. A number of projects in the evaluation sample represent efforts by UNDP or its agents to: (a) identify a capacity gap; (b) develop a project concept and approach to respond to the gap; and (c) hold consultations to ensure broad-based support and ownership for the project.
Among the best-practice cases of this kind are the Urban Management Programme/Arab States Regional (UMP/ASR) project; the "Beijing Express" and External Resources Management (ERM), both projects of the Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States region; and the and Sanitation for the Poor in Africa project. The Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) discussed earlier in this report could also be considered under this category.
There are some other cases of supply-driven initiatives where no real effort was made to build support or to ensure a fit between the project concept and the requirements and the target countries to which the project was addressed. The quality of the results that have been achieved in such cases speaks for itself.