Regional : Unlocking Innovation for Development

Education / Pre-primary and primary

Finance / Inclusive finance

Health / Health care finance

Transport / Road transport (non-urban)

Water and other urban infrastructure and services / Other urban services - Urban sanitation

The midterm review of the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) long-term strategic framework acknowledges that to maintain and sustain growth in Asia and the Pacific, regional economies need greater innovation and inclusiveness. In ADB's context, innovation is finding new ways for ADB to serve and address development challenges in its developng member countries. ADB has undertaken innovations in several areas including climate proofing for transport, bus rapid transport system, inclusive financial solutions, unified multi-purpose identification system for government, community eCenters, and building greener cities among others. In various instances, innovations tended to be one-off interventions and very few have attempted to replicate these on a broader scale. In this context, the proposed cluster regional research and development technical assistance (RDTA) with an implementation period of 5 years, will catalyze and establish a bank-wide mechanism for ADB's regional departments and private sector operations department to implement grant and loan financed pilot initiatives more flexibly. Through selected proposals the RDTA will demonstrate mechanisms for piloting, replicating, and scaling up innovation, and ways to measure how these deliver results.

The RDTA draws on ADB's previous experience and that of its development partners such as Australia, Canada, USAID, and World Bank, to develop a robust mechanism for providing small grants that demonstrate path breaking solutions to development challenges. It also attempts to respond to the demand from development partners, using ADB-supported projects to catalyze the ability of ADB to replicate, scale up, and mainstream innovation. These efforts align further with ADB's midterm strategic focus to unlock innovation in project, process and human resource practices. The RDTA will support cross cross-sector knowledge activities in the work programs of the ABD's Sector and Thematic groups that would stimulate innovative knowledge solutions that could deliver smarter outcomes through ADB operations departments in the DMCs.

The TA is aligned with capacity of DMCs to solve development problems using innovative solutions strengthened.

ADB loans and grants supporting scaled-up innovative solutions in DMCs increased.

1.Cross-sector innovative solutions to address DMC development problems implemented

2.Crowdsourcing platform for pilot-testing development solutions and business models implemented

Status of Implementation:

Output 1

Implementation of the five activities towards achievement of the outputs are ongoing with issues related to securing government buy-in for scaling up poverty graduation programs in PHI (Activity 4).

Activity 1 Scaling up Innovative Road Safety Operations. Support in terms of road safety rapid assessment, report, and recommendations on safety treatments in designing agricultural roads has been completed for projects in VIE, MON, PAK, Georgia and LAO. Work on supporting a road safety enhancement project in MLD is ongoing. Mainstreaming road assessment for Pakistan is in progress.

Activity 2 Scaling up Urban Transport Operations. Supported the MYN Loan Rural Roads and Access Project, prepared the scoping and comprehensive transport study for Dili in January 2017 that will feed in the proposed TIM Dili Urban Transport Project, the Sustainable Transport Action Plan for FIJ and an urban transport system assessment network as a proof of concept for MAL.

Activity 3 Consolidating and Replicating Innovative Service Delivery Practices in Districts in INO. Significant progress made with the creation of a complaint handling system in INO. Local governments have committed counterpart funding to replicate the innovation at selected districts and provinces. A $500,000 follow-up subproject under TA 9288/output 2 of the Innovation TA is under preparation in 2 out of the 4 Kinerja districts. The TA will strengthen data management, evidence-based decision making and civil society engagement on issues such as teenage marriage and is expected to feed into an investment loan in the 2019 pipeline.

Activity 4 Applying Graduation Programs to End Extreme Poverty in PHI and PAK. Applying Graduation Programs to End Extreme Poverty in Pakistan and the Philippines. The Philippine government as approved through the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to implement the graduation program. DOLE replaces as counterpart agency the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). For the Pakistan component, the team (i) has secured in November 2017 the commitment from the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) management to implement a component of the graduation program; (ii) has processed a minor change in implementation of Loan 3049-PAK: Social Protection Development Project, that will include the BISP graduation activity; and (iii) has drafted a terms of reference for preparing impact assessments for poverty reduction programs under the BISP graduation framework.

Activity 5 Scaling-up Financial Inclusion through Digital Financial Service Systems. Significant progress made with an implementation agreement signed with Cantilan bank (rural bank based in Mindanao) last June 2017, with Oradian company to supply the technology for cloud-based banking. In addition, the team has designed a roadmap to test innovative digital solutions and support a holistic approach in addressing development challenges across several sectors in GEO, MON and SRI

Output 2

Toilet Board Coalition. The mechanism for engaging an external partner to help pilot an innovation on a small-scale basis was tested by partnering with the Toilet Board Coalition (TBC) through a letter of agreement. The pilot strengthened business solutions for universal access to sanitation. It introduced the toilet accelerator program to develop partnerships between large and small businesses with joint goals to deliver sanitation through the market, focusing on the businesses in the PHI, IND and BAN.

Crowd-sourced Innovative Solutions. Sector and thematic groups were consulted on development challenges in DMCs. Eight challenges have been prioritized in the sectors/themes of urban development, gender, energy, agriculture, governance, social development and health. Based on these development challenges, innovative pilot solutions were crowdsourced through an online platform. The team reviewed a total of 22 proposals and recommended six projects to be funded under this TA. The innovation pilots are to prepare (a) dashboard to visualize data on child marriage to aid in decision making at the municipal level in East Java; (b) edutainment to disseminate information about best practices in coffee production in East Timor; (c) reforms in human resources for health that are implemented from the bottom up, from medical education reforms to the introduction of continuous medical education focused on non-communicable diseases and health care integration in Armenia; (d) piloting the solar-powered source technology to provide clean drinking water in Vanuatu; (e) in-depth assessment through ICT of required data management and service delivery processes for the immunization and basic health care delivery programs in Vanuatu and (f) crowdsourcing safety-related data for mobile applications that can inform urban stakeholders to take important urban planning and monitoring decisions in Viet Nam.

Output 1. Five activity team meetings have been held to date (Oct 2016; Jan 2017; Mar 2017 July 2017 and Sep 2017). Meetings with individual teams handling the activities under each output were held between Nov 2017 and Feb 2018. Stakeholder communication and consultations have been held for all activities under Output 1, and for all pilot activities under Output 2.

Output 2. Consultations have been conducted with SGs/TGs Technical Advisors; DG SDCC; OPR; and Youth for Asia. Several meetings have been held with the Output 2 innovation team. Discussions were held with proponents of the winning proposals.