[Vnbiz] FW: Project evaluation

Mon Jan 8 19:55:35 PST 2007

Dear chi Thu, chi Anh and CACC, 

The following message is sent by chi Thu by mistake to my account only,
instead of vnbiz. So just forward it here for sharing it with everyone as
intentionally by the author. 

On the issue that GOV needs to do project evaluation and impact evaluation,
I could not agree more with both of you. Evaluation gives us the feedbacks
that we would need to guide future interventions. The GOV at present,
however, as I observe, is struggling with a number of challenges to move
this agenda forward including capacity constraints (of both the system and
human resources to do the job properly) and finance (proper evaluations are
normally quite costly). In addition, there is also some fundamental
principle of governance to start with, which in its turn implies certain
uneasy changes. Yet, efforts are on the way. A M&E strategy for ODA-funded
projects is being developed by MPI in collaboration with stakeholders. Some
of my colleagues are working on this issue. So if any of you is interested
in this, I would be happy to put you in touch with the relevant person. 

Have a nice day, all.

Best, An 

P/S: To chi Anh: please just tell your colleague to come and pick it up! And
don't worry about cost, come on, my sister dear! :-)

___________________________________

Pham Thi Thanh An
 <mailto:Email:thanhan2505 at gmail.com> Email:thanhan2505 at gmail.com 

  _____  

From: Tran nguyen Anh Thu [mailto:anhthu592002 at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2007 3:10 PM
To: Pham Thi Thanh An
Subject: RE: [Vnbiz] Project evaluation

Hi Thanh An and CACC,

Thank you for your useful information. 

Re. project post evaluation, donors make post evaluations because they want
to know how money of taxpayers have been spent. Why we, receipters don't
care much about how this money has been used?  I think that the GOV should
also discuss with donors and set aside funds for post evaluation of
programmes/projects if during the their implementation interesting
issues/concerns emerged. Evaluation reports should be posted in a website of
the ODA management agency ( FERD/MPI, for example?) so that project
designers could access for reference. I am sure there are a lot of lessons
useful for designing future programs/projects. 

Each project should also have fund for information sharing and by the end of
the project, contents of project materials like the Tan Hoa-Lo Gom CD/DVD
should be posted in the ODA website. Or at least in the ODA website, links
to program/project websites should be there for easy reference. Otherwise,
many excellent experiences are hidden and that is waste of ODA money. We are
very proud after each CG of how much money donors committed for VN but it
seems that how such money has been used has not been discussed/revealed so
much.

Have a nice weekend.

Anh Thu

Pham Thi Thanh An <thanhan2505 at gmail.com> wrote:

Dear chi Anh, chi Thu and CACC,
You are right, chi Anh, that post or ex-post evaluation of development
projects is still rare and new in Vietnam (it is the most difficult out of
all types of project evaluation, which include, among others, ex-ante,
mid-term, and ex-post evaluation). For a simple fact that it is also new
even in the public sector of the developed and industrialized world. What I
have learnt from a friend of mine, who was once the President of the
International Evaluation Association (I am not 100% sure if I remember the
name correctly, but must be around it), which by his words, the first of its
type in the world that links together evaluators - the notion of evaluation
only started to emerge during mid to late 90s or early years of this decade.
One of the demands for evaluation clearly comes from need to see to what
extent (and originally justify) that donor money (which are also taxpayers'
money) are spent widely and effectively. Also, it starts to evolve with the
increasing result-based management agenda in a number of developed nations.

In Vietnam, there are not many development projects that have been subject
to ex-post evaluation, and if yes, all of them are done by donors. One of
those very few that I know is the evaluation done for My Thuan bridge by
AusAID. You could find the report at
http://www.ausaid.gov.au/publications/pdf/my_thuan_monitoring_report.pdf in
2003, about 3 years after the project completion. Japan later in the year
also did another similar exercise for the National Highway No.1 project, the
report of which I have only available in hardcopy. This is part of a broader
assessment of the impacts of selected large-scale infrastructure projects on
economic growth and poverty reduction in Vietnam. So if any of you
interested in it, let me know so that I can share it with you.
Hope this helps. 
Best, 
Thanh An 

___________________________________
Pham Thi Thanh An
Email:thanhan2505 at gmail.com 

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