Comments

the above chart indicates proposed economic activity been showecased around economic activies (mining- gold,copper,oil &gas, agricultural sector and the fishing industries). It's quite a resemblence in the chart but it is more or less likely on the ground. Sure enough, challenges will be faced on this prediction.

I have never met Nik Soni but I think I would like him very much, judging by the sensible and honest views he presents here. It is perfectly understandable why so few voices are raised publicly on the issues Nik discusses as this is a sure way to ruin one's career. People who challenge policy directions and decisions or deign to question a donor's or project management company's competence are not welcome. Perhaps the loss of focus of much development activity is not only because of fads but also because development assistance is drowning in a sea of confusing goals relating to aid effectiveness and to implementation activities on the ground - the Millennium Development Goals, Education For All Goals, Thematic Strategies, the Paris Declaration, the Jakarta Commitment, project goals and objectives - to name only six. Time and energy are required to address these, as well as the fads Nik refers to. Let me add to his short list by including sector-wide approaches and donor harmonization. Both of these are great topics for a retreat in an expensive hotel rather than getting out into the field to understand where practical help is needed. One thing puzzles me, however, and perhaps Nik can provide an answer. In my heart I know that more aid funds might help more people. And I have no intention of standing in the way of that help. But what puzzles me is why we continue to plan to 'supply' ever larger sums of money for aid generally and to certain countries in particular, when we are not really at all clear about what the actual 'demand' is on the ground, apart from the assurances of 'government officials' than more and more of X and Y is certainly needed. Is not the supply creating the demand, or am I missing something? Help! The only matter on which I disagree with Nik is his reference to 'soured' and grumpy old men and women from the field. I suggest that what makes people really grumpy is the years in the field of seeing what works and how it works, and then to watch this valuable local knowledge buried by the arrival of Nik's highly qualified dreamers who have no interest in understanding or in building on that experience. This, I suspect, is especially prevalent in the field of education where everyone is an expert. After all, a higher degree in politics or chemistry or any field other than education is OK as clearly the holder has been in the education system a long time and knows a lot about education. Or do they?

Mr Wood's question on child sponsorship and its effectiveness seems founded on a very limited source of information (2 evaluations of child sponsorship), by his own admission. I have worked in the development field for more than 30 years, in a variety of organizations and countries, two of which operated child sponsorship. My experience is that child sponsorship is an invaluable way of helping children and their families and communities lift themselves out of poverty because the sponsor usually commits for a longer period of time (substantially more than an institutional donor - the more traditional form of NGO funding). This ensures the time to empower families and communities, and make sure interventions are sustainable and sustained. All my experience shows that long term interventions which empower people and take the time to learn and adapt interventions to be most effective, are an important factor in successful development. To see a six year old child enter school and then graduate years later is quite amazing. So while child sponsorship may be "uncool", the fact is it works, and I would suggest works better than most other forms of NGO funding. Perhaps approaches have to be "uncool" to be a success? Lastly, back to My Wood's complaint about the lack of evaluations. There are many evaluations of sponsorship programs out there - Mr Wood seems to have missed the trees for the wood (sic) and needs to get in the field and find them.

Excellent points on this important issue. As a further comment, I understand that reasons for the failure to maintain roads in PNG and other developing countries also include financial and institutional. At the national level, the PNG DOW relies on its annual budget submission and allocation to fund routine and periodic road maintenance. In practice, the DOW’s budget request is cut back and even the agreed amount is only partly received. Why? Does this reflect a more substantive issue related to the politics of budgeting and the management of public finances? Is there also an underlying problem in the PNG Government’s tendering system for infrastructure projects? While the public procurement environment in PNG has improved in recent years a recent Central Supply and Tender Board (CSTB) PNG Procurement Assessment stated that ‘whilst steps have contributed to improving PNGs procurement system, many challenges still remain …. The report paints a picture of a procurement system in dire need for a strong push towards reform, in order to bridge the inherent weaknesses in the system’. The assessment identified a number measures that could be taken to strengthen procurement, which included the following: • Strengthening existing procurement laws • Extending the legal framework to cover all procurement using public funds • Increasing compliance with existing laws • Improving the quality of technical specifications • Improving transparency on bid award decisions • Improving the complaints process • Ensuring completeness of procurement records • Providing better support the development of competitive procurement markets • Improving the procurement control mechanism • Increasing independence of CSTB • Improving legal provisions for targeting corruption. E. John Blunt is an Institutional and Public Procurement Expert. Much of his recent work has focused on increasing the use of partner government procurement systems. He has worked on infrastructure projects in Asia and the Pacific. He is currently on assignment with the Southern African Development Community Secretariat in Botswana.

Ami, your point is a good one and of course, this information is crucial form a technical point of view but what I think Matthew's blog highlights is that in this arena (as in so many others), no amount of technical savvy will assist with pro-development outcomes if the political environment is disregarded. In fact not only does it need to be regarded, it needs to be well understood and engaged with in a nuanced way

The discussion of this important issue would be much better informed by contributions from the many professional engineers advising governments and donors or who are working on government or donor funded infrastructure projects. Comment by the various engineering professional associations including the Institution of Engineers and FIDC would also be useful as would comment from various donors. Are engineers and their representative bodies advising governments and donors to combine future maintenance contracts with construction/reconstruction activities? If not, why not? If such advice is being proffered, whay are governments and donors not accepting that advice?

Excellent post Matt. In Timor-Leste, there are certainly significant infrastructure maintenance issues (district roads in particular). But driving around Dili, it is also clear to see maintenance nightmares in the making as large government offices and other facilities are being built (many funded/donated by China) using methods that are non-traditional and materials that may be hard to replace or source locally. A number of these buildings seem to be aiming for grandeur rather than practicality, which will only create a bigger maintenance burden for the national government down the track -- just like that Samoa swimming pool. I've heard a number of stories around Dili about how these new buildings are already suffering from problems. There's also the challenges of the climate and weather. For example, in the wet season in Timor, many roads are washed away or damaged by landslides. Some materials are more prone to rust and wear in humid climates. Donors need to consider this at the beginning of projects as well to make sure that they minimise the maintenance burden in the medium to long term by choosing appropriate materials and methods for construction. For example, why build a sparkling new road alongside a steep area prone to landslides without some kind of barrier or protection from falling rocks, or drainage for the water flowing downhill to run underneath the road? Without addressing these considerations, the road is clearly going to be badly damaged and need significant repair every wet season, reducing its usefulness.

I agree with Robert Cannon that this is an important contribution to an area of focus in donor aid programs. A number of interesting points are made by both Cannon and ManRuz and are worthy of further discussion, perhaps in a wider forum. The importance of maintenance has been often forgotten when designing aid funded infrastructure projects. I remember being on Nauru when AusAID was again contemplating further work on the power station which in 2006 was falling into disrepair. Why? As I understand, the AusAID funded project was for the purchase, installation and commissioning of the power station. Maintainence? In a culture that was essentially ‘non-maintenance’, it should have been expected that the maintenance of the facility was going to be a problem. In PNG as well as in many other developing countries, the problem is not only obtaining funds for road maintenance, but of more significance, obtaining funds for more complex infrastructure activities including the maintenance of bridges. I wonder how many of the current donor funded bridges construction/reconstruction activities either underway or planned for PNG have a maintenance component. If not, should they? I note and agree ManRuz’s suggestion that combining future maintenance contracts with construction/reconstruction activities for infrastructure is perhaps a start in the right direction. E. John Blunt is an Institutional and Public Procurement Expert. Much of his recent work has focused on increasing the use of partner government procurement systems. he has worked on infrastructure projects in Asia and the pacific. He is currently on assignment with the Southern African Development Community Secretariat in Botswana.

This excellent article highlights what David refers to as a 'wicked problem' very nicely - a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognise, and, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of the problem may reveal or create other problems. Addressing education in development, I am appreciating more and more, can be a wicked problem. Any network proposal needs to have a very clear purpose and that purpose could be more clearly articulated in the blog. I think that any new network must be clearly linked to the purposes and goals of the Development Policy Centre and not unnecessarily duplicate existing networks. We need to have a discussion about what exists (e.g., GLDN, Eldis and the Australian Development Gateway are just three that come to mind) and how they might be strengthened or supplemented by another network -- if any. One way of strengthening these networks might be to work hard to give developing country stakeholders a clearer role in them (as seems to be the case in GLDN) and this is why a tripartite model developed here could be enhanced by their involvement. It also suggests a top-down and supply-driven model of knowledge sharing; a development model that in Indonesia, for example, rarely works well in contrast to bottom-up and sideways-out models. However, it may be different in other countries. In addition, we need to have clear idea of where knowledge flows we facilitate might be directed - to policy makers (AusAID and governments in our region)? program designers? program implementers? The idea of institutional partnerships is very sound but this is one that is already pursued by universities, especially. And, I am sure, AusAID would claim an institutional 'partnership' with governments and NGOs in our region. In the end, however, I think it comes down to the fundamentals of good interpersonal relationships among those who represent their institutions in such partnerships. The idea is nevertheless sound and it draws attention, indirectly, to one of the very poor features of development projects where one institutional partner (the donor) simply abandons local stakeholders and institutions (their so-called 'partners') at project conclusion to self-help or to the most unlikely continuing support of government. It is like one partner in a marriage going off into the never-never and leaving the other to care for all the children alone. The blog yesterday on infrastructure is excellent example of this challenge in development. I am not sure that development solutions in Australia, or anywhere else, necessarily have relevance for development in specific countries, unless there is a convincing body of experience or perhaps theoretical and empirical evidence to support them. I think people like Guthrie in PNG, "The Progressive Education Fallacy in Developing Countries", 2011, and Christopher Bjork, "Indonesian Education: Teachers Schools and Central Bureaucracy" 2005, are on the right track in pointing to the salience of culture and local values in educational change. Finally, I am not sure if David's use of "TEPID" is serious, or is he pulling our collective legs with this acronym? It certainly made me smile and does make a point!

Thanks for the interesting comments. I wasn't aware of the Indonesian school maintenance example. Ostrom et al.'s argument is clearly a simplification/abstraction of a much more complex reality. I'm of the opinion that culture and government systems will tend to reflect underlying political economy incentives. At the very least, cultural norms/govt systems cannot be against the material interests of those in power; if they are, these norms/systems will not be followed and will be changed. I see the cultural norm of maintenance neglect in the Pacific as occuring precisely because there are limited incentives for infrastructure maintenance. Were incentives to provide maintenance established, I strongly suspect "cultural" factors would quickly change. The same applies for govt systems - if leaders and senior bureaucrats had incentives to establish systems of the kind that Robert describes, I think this would occur - although I agree it isn't a simple process, and does warrant donor focus. I recently read a discussion paper on these sorts of issues, which also explores the link between material incentives and culture. I don't agree with all the arguments in the paper, but the link is here if you are interested: http://ips.cap.anu.edu.au/ssgm/papers/discussion_papers/2012_03_tobias_a_haque.pdf

While not suggesting that aid dependence is not an issue the suggested primary link to "the normal disciplines of valuing the asset and providing for its replacement in the future ..." is I think invalid. While it is aid dependence is linked I suggest the underlying drivers of decision making need to be explored in more detail and the cultural component (outside normal political posturing) needs to be developed. The position was best summarised for me by the national of a developing country when asked about the issue - his response was that it is fundamentally cultural. In a day-to-day living environment where the standard practice has never included the need to put away for the future notions such as preventative maintenance and replacement provisions have no place. Personal property in the form of homes are built and not worked on until they fail - why should the attitude to public infrastructure be any different. I would suggest that this is further exacerbated when examining a subsistence environment at the national level of a developing country. It is pretty hard to focus on setting aside funds for the future when you are preoccupied with finding enough money for school fees. How to address it? I suggest that some of the strategies being employed in PNG of combining future maintenance contracts with construction/reconstruction activities for road infrastructure is a start in the right direction. However, there are a host of associated issues to be addressed and the only certain thing is that if the answer was easy it would have been done a long time ago.

This is an important contribution to an area of focus in donor aid programs. The image Matthew creates of the white elephant in Samoa will stay with me for ever! A similar story with maintenance exists in Indonesia with school infrastructure projects. As part of an aid effectiveness review in basic education I led for the World Bank in 2008, we visited schools that had received ADB project funds and technical support for substantial school refurbishment in both Lombok and in Bali. In both locations we observed frequent examples of schools that had been refurbished in the period 2003 - 2005. Yet by late 2008, the condition of many school buildings showed heavy wear-and-tear including broken tiles, filthy windows, damaged furniture, worn paintwork and decaying ceilings. Children’s toilets were in poor condition and in some cases totally unusable. In one primary school in Bali the building rehabilitated in 2004 was being torn down and replaced by an entirely new structure to provide more suitable accommodation for children. To be fair, there were other schools that were, on the whole, neat, clean and pleasant places in which learning could occur but there was almost no visible evidence in classrooms of changes in learning and teaching practices, mainly because this was not a part of the project design at all - astonishingly, a school education project with no attention to teaching in the design, but that is another story! During an evaluation for the USAID Decentralized Basic Education Project, Package 1 (DBE1), in late 2011, some of the reasons for lack of school maintenance emerged which seem more fundamental and solvable than simply blaming such outcomes on lack of funds or on laziness, which of course can be important reasons as well. One reason is lack of technical knowledge of how to judge the condition of schools and to plan for maintenance at the level of schools and District governments. In many cases, local governments simply do not have accurate data on the stock of schools in the District nor do they know their physical condition. Accordingly, planning for school maintenance, when done at all, has been at best haphazard. This helps explain the depressing frequency with which one still reads in the Indonesian press of school roofs and walls collapsing on children leading to death and injury. However, when DBE1 developed appropriate school data gathering tools, and analytical strategies, in consultation with schools and Districts, accurate numbers, distribution, size and condition of all schools in participating District were known for the first time. Planning for maintenance could therefore be based on increasingly accurate data as data collectors and data users began to realise the importance of accurate data and its use in planning. Further, some Districts that were planning to build new schools realised their stock of schools indicated further construction was completely unnecessary. If Districts lack accurate school and school-age population data (as many and possibly most do), this raises the very real possibility that school construction projects may be adding unnecessary stock when the immediate need is for school mergers, re-locations or even closures, and for resources and technical skill in school and equipment maintenance. By way of conclusion, and to answer Matthew's question "How can such problems be addressed?", one step in addition to those he describes is to help local stakeholders collect and to use accurate data about the condition of their physical assets, to help in planning maintenance programs, and to provide access to reliable technical support for maintenance. I hope Matthew's excellent article will attract further contributions on this important theme.