Project Management Discussion
Managing Management Costs: the issue raised was how to reconcile high administration demand while keeping management costs low. Including high management costs was not politically feasible but beneficiaries and donors have high administrative demands on projects. A participant provided an example of a coastal tourism project between Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Seychelles, Madagascar and France implemented by WB where the solution was to appoint one country (Kenya) to supervise the regional management unit thereby reducing management costs. National components are managed by government servants. The project estimates only 10% as management costs. Regional Management Unit disburses to NMU but the NMU is accountable to the Donor through project agreement. On the technical each country leads a thematic (tech) area and coordinated that tech area.
Maintaining motivation: How do you get all the partners interested and motivated to work together? So that everybody shows the same level of commitment and motivation? They have to be convinced. At the regional level you need to appeal to the priorities of the state. Within the national level you have to appeal to the stakeholder. You need to indicate the relevance if the sector is not considered to be relevant then may be an issue in securing buy-in. There should be no arm-twisting.
Is there a problem when some countries are not pilling their weight, how do you get the other countries to push the non-performers? Example from the East African coastal tourism project: We create a mechanism where the money is not divided up to the different countries. The money is one central location and the disbursed on an activity and performance basis.
Project design: When designing projects we hired a consultant who was imminently familiar with the UNDP GEF process. This expedited the process. When deciding on implementing agencies you have to look at the requirements of the project and choose accordingly.
CATCH 22: Lack of a project manager to manage funds, lack of funds to hire a project manager. Solved in innovative ways
Product delivery: How do you ensure timely delivery of products? If you have a project directly executed by the country then you might experience higher delays. The executing agency can act as a barrier on conflicts between nations. I.e. the executing agency can refer to internal legislation. Also you have to consider the reasons for the delay. Could be personal or could be capacity. Then you need to address the problem, change personnel or develop capacity. Peer pressure works, if the problem is highlighted in a regional setting then the issue may be resolved.
You need to cultivate high-level buy-in and a champion. Need to brief and inform ministers.
Co-finance: How do you get co-finance, and how do you account for it? It is usually in-kind. GEF disburses 100%
Reporting on co-financing especially using a template, using a per-capita fee on peoples times etc. how they do that
Need a model on co-financing reporting. We have issues since both UNDP and UNEP require reporting on co-financing but there is no format to do so. There was no resolution nobody had a template per se but we did share experience.
In some cases we can directly estimate
In some cases we can infer from the departmental budgets.
Or we can estimate and be creative.
But generally the instructions and requirements on reporting to GEF are confusing and conflicts with the requirements of other partners including the implementing organizations.