Managing for Development Results at ADB

Results Matter December 2007

Observations from the CoP-MfDR 2007 Annual Meeting: Making Progress in MfDR Capacity Building in Developing Member Countries
By Bruce Purdue, Head, Results Management Unit

Members of the CoP-MfDR enjoy the Huangpu River Cruise in Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

On 1 November 2007, the annual meeting of the ADB-sponsored Community of Practice on Managing for Development Results (CoP-MfDR) was held at the Asia-Pacific Finance and Development Centre in Shanghai, People’s Republic of China.

ADB has financed the establishment and operation of the CoP-MfDR. However, the most important aspect of the CoP is that it is “owned,” managed, driven, and animated by the CoP members themselves. CoP-MfDR is proving to be an important contributor in ADB’s efforts to promote partner country ownership under the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.

Member Activities and Presentations
The CoP has grown over the last year or so. From an initial core group of around 25 members, the CoP has attracted nearly 100 active members, with the Shanghai meeting comprising over 50 participants. This has been an heartening evolution and a tribute to the hard work of the Results Management Unit team in supporting the fledgling CoP-MfDR.

CoP-MfDR members gave excellent presentations in Shanghai, and these are all available on the CoP website. In particular, the representative from Sri Lanka presented a great “story” on how his country has embraced MfDR, and credited ADB for being instrumental and pivotal in bringing this about. Representatives from Afghanistan offered an encouraging testimonial that the CoP-MfDR has assisted them in finding technical help from friends on the CoP virtual network (Malaysia, in this case). A Philippine CoP member described our important new initiative in the Philippines (with excellent support from the Philippines Country Office) to sponsor a country-level subgroup of the CoP-MfDR, which convened a major inaugural meeting at ADB Headquarters on 5 October 2007. This included over 60 representatives from all over the Philippines. In many ways, this type of piloting of the CoP concept at the country level may hold the best hope to add value through the community. Indeed, Mongolia has specifically requested our further help to conduct a similar pilot in Mongolia early next year.

Partnerships and Outreach
At the meeting, the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) and the Singapore Civil Service College (CSC) described their proposed training program in performance budgeting for developing member countries (DMCs), to be convened in March at the CSC and cofinanced by the Singapore MoFA. The key here is that the participants must be selected based on their ability and authority to take concrete steps toward appropriate performance-based budgeting when returning to their home countries. The concept is based on follow-up with participants after they return home. Again, CoP-MfDR members are very keen to apply for a place in this program. Two such programs are being contemplated per annum from 2008 to 2009.

The Asian CoP-MfDR innovation has triggered the establishment of an African CoP-MfDR, sponsored by the World Bank and supported by the African Development Bank. A representative of African colleagues (from Tanzania) and delegates from the World Bank also participated in the Shanghai meeting to observe and gain lessons from the experience of Asian CoP.

Challenges
While all these aspects were positive developments, the CoP-MfDR is still fragile and has yet to reach its full potential. This is not surprising, as it has only been 1 year since the successful completion of the pilot phase! The real measure of success will be the role of the CoP network in delivering sustainable help, on a peer-to-peer basis, to each other in the evolution of MfDR at the country level.

The challenges and threats to the CoP-MfDR are simple, but real. Even with a good system such as the CoP, each DMC still needs results champions to value the MfDR techniques available through the CoP-MfDR. Two very practical issues also need to be solved for the CoP to be even more valuable: we need to help translate the CoP and its various tools into the local language of our DMCs; and, importantly, we need to solve the problem of key users and champions having the time to devote to logging on and actually using the CoP-MfDR.

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