4.7  DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT

332.    Effective development management requires not only providing leadership in the processes of development planning, programming, and the implementation of development programs but also the ability to lead agencies and to facilitate the processes to arrive at a consensus on the most effective use of available resources for development. It entails building partnerships among the various national participants – the government entities at various jurisdictional levels, NGOs, the civil society, and the private sector; as well as building effective partnerships with our external development partners.

333.    The RGC’s overall objective of building development cooperation partnerships is to facilitate Cambodia’s continuing transition to a growth-oriented market economy with equity by effectively promoting and supporting the emerging partnership model of development cooperation, based on Cambodian leadership, ownership, and accountability, thus contributing to increased effectiveness of development resources, to increased resource mobilization, and to a sharper focus of development cooperation on human development, poverty reduction, and participatory development.

334.    The principles for building these development cooperation partnerships, that have been outlined in the RGC’s position paper on ”A New Development Cooperation Partnership Paradigm for Cambodia” would continue to guide Government’s actions. These principles are:

• A Common Vision and Shared Objectives - firmly rooted and based on national and sectoral development objectives, with consensus reached on a mutually agreed set of policy directions, implementation strategies, results and expected outcomes.

• Agreed Governance and Accountability Structures - well-articulated roles and responsibilities forming a “shared accountability” where partners would be collectively accountable for the success and operation of the arrangement, operating within well-defined decision making processes and rules where transparency in decision making, operations and access to information are particularly critical.

• Harmonized Strategic Management and Operational Capacities - the simplification, streamlining and harmonization of operational policies and capacity development practices particularly in the areas of financial management, program/project planning, procurement, audit and evaluation, staffing, information and communications systems, with credible reporting and monitoring that should lead to the development of common or joint program/project evaluation and audit reviews.

• Learning and Adaptation Capacities – Partnerships will be built cautiously and with sufficient flexibility in the arrangements to ensure that each can generate learning and innovation, experiences that can be adapted and replicated across sectors.

• Building and Maintaining Trust - Each partner must value the reliability and worth of the arrangement. Having trust means having confidence in one another that each partner will do what they say they will do, and mean what they say. Agreed mechanisms to support accountability, transparency of decision making, information and reporting, audit and evaluation are essential to sustain trust. There must be certain agreed codes of conduct and specific partnership rules of engagement where mutual decisions can be made openly, with clear mechanisms for problem identification and dispute resolution.

335.    At the CG Meeting in June 2001, in a paper that provided an update on the progress that had been made, the Royal Government also identified the following strategic implementation considerations in developing effective cooperation partnerships with our development partners.

• Ownership, Commitment and Shared Resources.  Development partnerships are seen as  governing modalities of managed relationships that facilitate the achievement of sectoral and thematic outcomes through coordinated and more formally integrated activities involving multiple projects, sub-programs and supporting activities. It is recognized that within Government there are gaps in the management capacities and that efforts to build capacities for national execution need to be dealt with openly and in a transparent manner.

• Flexible Partnership Modalities. The choice of development partnerships models or approaches would depend on what can best serve the interests of Cambodia. At present, two distinct type of partnerships are envisaged: national partnerships, such as between the State, civil society and private sector; and those partnerships that involve donor countries, international agencies, private sector investors and NGOs

• Starting Gradually, Getting Priorities Right and Using Pilots.  The priority and sequencing for pilots that are linked to national development goals and priorities has already been established. The pilot initiatives need to be managed strategically to ensure that lessons learned can be captured and disseminated, and that national capacities are developed and sustained.

• Identifying and Differentiating Partner Roles. It is envisaged that the composition of partners will depend on the purpose of the partnership. In development partnerships involving external donors and NGOs, the Lead Partner should, in all instances, be a national organization (this could be a central or local level of government, possibly a national NGO or private sector organization). The role of the External Lead Partner would also vary, depending on comparative advantages and strengths of the partners and the requirements of the partnership. The External Lead Partners should act as a catalyst, facilitator, technical and resource advisor. The role and responsibilities of the External Lead Partner or facilitator are more than just providing resources, it requires building trust, having expertise on the ground to interact with and build the confidence of the sectoral ministry(ies) and other donors, and a willingness to be flexible in both the timing and use of whatever resources are available. It is therefore critical and crucial that donors organize and mobilize themselves to optimize the comparative advantages of individual donors. In particular, the major lending agencies should forge stronger relationships with UN agencies and some bilateral agencies.

• Developing National (in-country) Coordination Capacities.  The Strategic Management Framework for development partnership must have capacity development as the centerpiece and should focus on national execution of all technical interventions in order to boost national capacity and competencies at local and central levels of the Government as well as the civil society and the private sector.

• Strengthening External Donor Capacities for Aid Management & Coordination. There is room for strengthening external donor coordination at the country level. Internal donor policies, practices and procedures also need to be closely examined to ensure that they are supportive of Government’s policy thrusts for national ownership, leadership and overall coordination, specifically in the context of developing collaborative partnerships.

• Implications for Good Governance and Administration Reform. Reforms in governance and public administration are a major part of the solution to a number of existing aid management/coordination problems and issues. Performance and existing capacity constraints within the civil service need be addressed by both civil service reforms and reforms in services delivery.  This will require enlightened management on the part of both the Royal Government and its external partners on how very limited public sector human resources can best be managed in the short-term, and realistically developed over the longer term.

336.    Significant progress has been made since the May 2000 Informal Working Session on Partnerships at the 2000 CG Meeting. The Prime Minister has appointed CDC/CRDB as the RGC’s Partnership Focal Point. As the Partnerships Focal Point, CDC/CRDB's main role is to provide technical support to ministries/agencies in effectively managing the process of establishing partnership arrangements and coordination of resource mobilization activities. It is also responsible for expanding the development management information networks within Government,  and for coordinating technical issues with sectoral ministries related to resource mobilization. However, the Lead Responsibility for sectoral partnerships will remain firmly in the hands of each sectoral ministry/agency. These consensus building tasks have required and will continue to require a lot of work and discussions. Under this institutional framework, the central agencies such as the Ministry of Planning (MoP) and the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) would act as functional service providers in their areas of specialization.  The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MFAIC) will facilitate diplomatic channels for ODA funds from bilateral donors. The role of the Council for State Reform in these Partnership arrangements is to lead and manage the various policy reform efforts of the Government.

337.    An Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee to Strengthen Development Cooperation Partnerships was formally established in 2001. Key central agencies and those sectoral ministries that were at an advanced stage of discussions on sectoral development partnerships, (such as Health, Education, Rural Development, Agriculture, Women’s Affairs, and others) are represented on the Steering Committee. The membership of the Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee,  chaired by the 1^st Vice-chairman of CDC, consists of key officials in-charge of Partnership arrangements (either Minister or Secretary/Under-Secretary of State). The Secretary General of the CDC/CRDB also serves as the Secretary General of the Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee. The objective is to ensure that key officials are seriously involved in policy decisions and operational actions for capacity development, integration/enhancement of information and monitoring systems, and for assessing progress and identifying issues during the transition to fully functioning development partnerships, covering dimensions such as procedural harmonization, ownership, and capacity indicators.  

338.    The Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee to Strengthen Development Partnerships is supported by a Secretariat, located in CDC/CRDB. In addition, Partnership Working Groups in four ministries, Health, education, Agriculture, and Women and Veteran Affairs have been established. The process of building national partnerships has begun and RGC is determined to move ahead in forging relationships with all of its national development partners.

339.    Forging effective partnerships with our external development partners is the other challenge that the RGC would now like to seriously embark upon and we would need the support of all our external partners to face this challenge. For the RGC, the starting point for building these mutually beneficial partnerships are the OECD/DAC guidelines and criteria for building partnerships and capacity development activities that were agreed to by all donor agencies and countries at the OECD/DAC Conference in 1999. A systematic implementation of these guidelines and criteria, with established benchmarks, will help the Government not only in effectively managing its development programs but also taking ownership of its development process. The Government and our external development partners need to develop mechanisms that provide for a systematic assessment of the capabilities of the lead agencies, facilitators and proponents as well as for checks and balances between donors who participate in Partnership arrangements under the SWAP and those who intend to continue on with the traditional project-based assistance. The Government would also welcome progress by our external development partners in simplifying and harmonizing their internal rules and procedures to minimize the extra-ordinary burden on the limited capacities within our implementing agencies, and equally importantly, the harmonization of the varied capacity building practices of our external partners. The RGC would like to propose that a donor Working Group, under the CG mechanism, be established as soon as possible to lead the implementation of this very important task. Such a group should function along the line of other donor working groups dealing with the reform issues.

340.    To conclude, the RGC would like to note that although much progress has been made in building partnerships for development since 1997, and we have a few examples of successes, a situation remains in which a significant proportion of ODA still bypasses the national budgeting process because of direct funding by donor agencies to project implementers. This situation has resulted in inadequate Government ownership of many development projects, in insufficient coordination by donor agencies regarding sectoral issues and capacity building; and in a proliferation of different procurement, disbursement, auditing, and progress monitoring procedures among agencies. It has also resulted in capacity depletion and has adversely affected Government’s institution building efforts. The RGC intends to show its political will to assume ownership of its development agenda and provide leadership of the process to achieve this goal. The Government and the external partners need to engage in an open consultation process to agree on a national development agenda for their support, particularly, in the area of poverty reduction. Once common objectives have been established, donors will need to adjust their own strategies and activities to the Royal Government’s priorities. Capacity building must be dealt with through an integrated approach that also involves civil society and the private sector. This is an area where true partnerships could lead to major efficiency gains.

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