Learning Within and Across International Development Projects: A Case Study in the Health Sector of the Lao PDR

Abstract

Having realized its limited capacity, the Lao PDR relies heavily on foreign assistance and concessional loans from multilateral and bilateral development agencies to support public development programs. To ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of grant fund management, the development partners impose several requirements and conditions for compliance. To satisfy the donors’ requirements and achieve project goals on time, project learning is highly needed and important. The purpose of this study is to explore how the project team learns to improve the effectiveness of project implementation in response to such competing demands. To address the question, the Health Services Improvement Project supported by the World Bank was used as a case study. Findings show that the project team attempted to take lessons learned over time from the problems faced such as by creating monitoring forms and ICT tools, organizing the weekly meeting and the annual review meeting. Further, there was cross-project learning through the portfolio meeting for all projects funded by the World Bank and ADB to draw lessons learned from each other. In addition, project team members exchanged project information and lessons learned with members of other projects.