Learning within and across international development projects : Case studies in the health sector of Lao pdr

Abstract

Having realized its limited capacity, Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) relies on foreign assistance and concessional loans from multilateral and bilateral development agencies to support social development programs. To ensure effectiveness and efficiency of grant fund management, the development partners impose several requirements and conditions for compliance. To satisfy the donor requirements and achieve project goals on time, project learning is highly important and needed. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore firstly the main requirements and conditions imposed by donors for project implementation. Secondly, the study examined the factors which enabled and hindered the learning process of project teams in their attempt to achieve project goals on time and on budget, while satisfying donor requirements. Finally, the study discovered how the project information was shared and used by the project teams within and across the projects.

To answer the research questions, detailed exploration was conducted of three projects specifically selected from a range of international development projects within the health sector of the Lao PDR. These included the World Bank funded project called the Health Services Improvement Project-Additional Financing, and the Global Fund projects for the HIV/AIDS and Malaria components. Multiple methods were used to collect the data from different sources for purposes of triangulation. These included reviews of project documents and records, in-depth interviews, and participant-observations. The data was analyzed in terms of individual cases and cross-cases in order to understand the themes which emerged from individual cases.

The findings of the study showed that the main requirements and conditions for project implementation were imposed for procurement, finance, monitoring, and reporting of project progress. Firstly, the Global Fund projects were required to develop a project procurement manual, while the World Bank project applied the World Bank procurement guidelines for international procurement and the procurement manual of the Ministry of Finance for the national procurement. Secondly, both the Global Fund and World Bank projects were required to develop a project financial management manual to ensure the accountability and transparency of grant fund management. Also, both projects were required to submit financial reports quarterly and annually, and conduct an audit internally and externally. Finally, all projects were required to conduct regular monitoring and reporting of project progress.

To meet the requirements and implement the project work-plan in a timely manner, all project teams had taken lessons learnt within and across the projects. Within the projects, the project teams had attempted to learn from the donor experts, technical advisors, audits, and annual review meetings. Also, the project teams had learned from other projects or organizations. The cross-project learning occurred through documents of the past and other projects, past project experience, past project team members and the meetings.

Although there were several sources of learning within and across the projects, there were some considerable constraints to project-based learning. These included project uniqueness, time pressure, reluctance to share project information, and a lack of opportunity to learn. Nevertheless, the project information had been shared and used within and across the project at three levels; individual, project and organizational. At individual level, there had been sharing and use of project guidelines and forms with colleagues for application to other projects of the organization as well as the organizational routine. At project level, the project information had been fundamentally shared and used within the project team through the meetings of the project team; ICT tools; regular supervisions, and provision of trainings. At the organizational level, project information had been shared formally during the weekly meetings of the organization, the annual review meetings, and the meetings held by donors such as the meetings for particular technical problems, the meetings to draw lessons learnt from the audits. Additionally, there was sharing of project information across the project within the organization through the arrangement of the supervision teams to follow up the progress of implementing agencies.