Vietnam

Ratings for the Community Based Rural Infrastructure Project for Vietnam were as follows: outcomes were satisfactory, the risk to development outcome was moderate, the... Show More + Bank performance was satisfactory, and the Borrower performance was also satisfactory. Some lessons learned included: the manual processing of data has influenced the project throughout implementation. The absence of an automated Management Information System (MIS) led to enormous staff time undertakings to track project progress. Lack of a verifying mechanism to confirm data accuracy also created confusion at all levels. The data source is not organized in a way to measure project impacts and makes it difficult to extract useful data. The counterpart agency should be more active in establishing a good MIS at the early stage of project implementation. The project should be provided with more technical assistance on Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) throughout project implementation. The project design clearly recognized the long-standing top-down planning and management approach at the counterpart agencies. The design includes an alternative mechanism to foster decentralization, but it did not demonstrate a road map to scale up the project outcomes into the government's system. The project's decentralized approach faced a lot of criticism during project preparation and it was already difficult for the project preparation team to lay out a design to mainstream the decentralized approach into national policy. The Project's decentralized approach was accepted by the government because it was a project to first demonstrate success and then scale up on the basis of the results. Lack of a design to scale up project outcomes at the national level inhibits the counterpart agency from further integration of project achievements into the government system. When preparing a pilot project as this one, it is important to conduct a careful analysis and design concerning political circumstances, and include when and how project outcomes will be integrated into national policy. Show Less -

Institutions are not buildings or organizations, they are the rules by which citizens, firms, and the state interact. The photographs that grace the cover of this Vietnam... Show More + Development Report (VDR) 2010 epitomize modern institutions. The settings may not appear modern, but the activities they represent are cutting edge, and are transforming Vietnam. Local level planning with the active engagement of citizens. Monitoring of public works by citizens groups. Efficient administrative services with the citizen as the client. Legal advice being provided to citizens. Professional media coverage of important events. These are the roots which feed the growth of a modern, open, and high-performing society. This VDR focuses on devolution and accountability, two aspects of modern institutions that are the essence of Vietnam's experience in the past two decades. At the risk of over-simplifying, this VDR distinguishes between two types of accountability, upward accountability focusing on compliance with rules, dictates, and instructions coming from within the hierarchy, and downward accountability focusing on the results that the person or body is entrusted to deliver. A person or body concerned with upward accountability emphasizes adherence to rules. Those concerned with downward accountability serve their clients. Both forms of accountability are needed. Vietnam's devolution has shown many positive results. Competition among the provinces is driving them to improve their business environments. Eased entry for non-state providers of services and greater autonomy for the management of state facilities are supporting innovation and increasing the variety of services. Show Less -