Comments

Excellent points on this important issue. As a further comment, I understand that reasons for the failure to maintain roads in PNG and other developing countries also include financial and institutional. At the national level, the PNG DOW relies on its annual budget submission and allocation to fund routine and periodic road maintenance. In practice, the DOW’s budget request is cut back and even the agreed amount is only partly received. Why? Does this reflect a more substantive issue related to the politics of budgeting and the management of public finances? Is there also an underlying problem in the PNG Government’s tendering system for infrastructure projects? While the public procurement environment in PNG has improved in recent years a recent Central Supply and Tender Board (CSTB) PNG Procurement Assessment stated that ‘whilst steps have contributed to improving PNGs procurement system, many challenges still remain …. The report paints a picture of a procurement system in dire need for a strong push towards reform, in order to bridge the inherent weaknesses in the system’. The assessment identified a number measures that could be taken to strengthen procurement, which included the following: • Strengthening existing procurement laws • Extending the legal framework to cover all procurement using public funds • Increasing compliance with existing laws • Improving the quality of technical specifications • Improving transparency on bid award decisions • Improving the complaints process • Ensuring completeness of procurement records • Providing better support the development of competitive procurement markets • Improving the procurement control mechanism • Increasing independence of CSTB • Improving legal provisions for targeting corruption. E. John Blunt is an Institutional and Public Procurement Expert. Much of his recent work has focused on increasing the use of partner government procurement systems. He has worked on infrastructure projects in Asia and the Pacific. He is currently on assignment with the Southern African Development Community Secretariat in Botswana.

Ami, your point is a good one and of course, this information is crucial form a technical point of view but what I think Matthew's blog highlights is that in this arena (as in so many others), no amount of technical savvy will assist with pro-development outcomes if the political environment is disregarded. In fact not only does it need to be regarded, it needs to be well understood and engaged with in a nuanced way

The discussion of this important issue would be much better informed by contributions from the many professional engineers advising governments and donors or who are working on government or donor funded infrastructure projects. Comment by the various engineering professional associations including the Institution of Engineers and FIDC would also be useful as would comment from various donors. Are engineers and their representative bodies advising governments and donors to combine future maintenance contracts with construction/reconstruction activities? If not, why not? If such advice is being proffered, whay are governments and donors not accepting that advice?

Excellent post Matt. In Timor-Leste, there are certainly significant infrastructure maintenance issues (district roads in particular). But driving around Dili, it is also clear to see maintenance nightmares in the making as large government offices and other facilities are being built (many funded/donated by China) using methods that are non-traditional and materials that may be hard to replace or source locally. A number of these buildings seem to be aiming for grandeur rather than practicality, which will only create a bigger maintenance burden for the national government down the track -- just like that Samoa swimming pool. I've heard a number of stories around Dili about how these new buildings are already suffering from problems. There's also the challenges of the climate and weather. For example, in the wet season in Timor, many roads are washed away or damaged by landslides. Some materials are more prone to rust and wear in humid climates. Donors need to consider this at the beginning of projects as well to make sure that they minimise the maintenance burden in the medium to long term by choosing appropriate materials and methods for construction. For example, why build a sparkling new road alongside a steep area prone to landslides without some kind of barrier or protection from falling rocks, or drainage for the water flowing downhill to run underneath the road? Without addressing these considerations, the road is clearly going to be badly damaged and need significant repair every wet season, reducing its usefulness.

I agree with Robert Cannon that this is an important contribution to an area of focus in donor aid programs. A number of interesting points are made by both Cannon and ManRuz and are worthy of further discussion, perhaps in a wider forum. The importance of maintenance has been often forgotten when designing aid funded infrastructure projects. I remember being on Nauru when AusAID was again contemplating further work on the power station which in 2006 was falling into disrepair. Why? As I understand, the AusAID funded project was for the purchase, installation and commissioning of the power station. Maintainence? In a culture that was essentially ‘non-maintenance’, it should have been expected that the maintenance of the facility was going to be a problem. In PNG as well as in many other developing countries, the problem is not only obtaining funds for road maintenance, but of more significance, obtaining funds for more complex infrastructure activities including the maintenance of bridges. I wonder how many of the current donor funded bridges construction/reconstruction activities either underway or planned for PNG have a maintenance component. If not, should they? I note and agree ManRuz’s suggestion that combining future maintenance contracts with construction/reconstruction activities for infrastructure is perhaps a start in the right direction. E. John Blunt is an Institutional and Public Procurement Expert. Much of his recent work has focused on increasing the use of partner government procurement systems. he has worked on infrastructure projects in Asia and the pacific. He is currently on assignment with the Southern African Development Community Secretariat in Botswana.

This excellent article highlights what David refers to as a 'wicked problem' very nicely - a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognise, and, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of the problem may reveal or create other problems. Addressing education in development, I am appreciating more and more, can be a wicked problem. Any network proposal needs to have a very clear purpose and that purpose could be more clearly articulated in the blog. I think that any new network must be clearly linked to the purposes and goals of the Development Policy Centre and not unnecessarily duplicate existing networks. We need to have a discussion about what exists (e.g., GLDN, Eldis and the Australian Development Gateway are just three that come to mind) and how they might be strengthened or supplemented by another network -- if any. One way of strengthening these networks might be to work hard to give developing country stakeholders a clearer role in them (as seems to be the case in GLDN) and this is why a tripartite model developed here could be enhanced by their involvement. It also suggests a top-down and supply-driven model of knowledge sharing; a development model that in Indonesia, for example, rarely works well in contrast to bottom-up and sideways-out models. However, it may be different in other countries. In addition, we need to have clear idea of where knowledge flows we facilitate might be directed - to policy makers (AusAID and governments in our region)? program designers? program implementers? The idea of institutional partnerships is very sound but this is one that is already pursued by universities, especially. And, I am sure, AusAID would claim an institutional 'partnership' with governments and NGOs in our region. In the end, however, I think it comes down to the fundamentals of good interpersonal relationships among those who represent their institutions in such partnerships. The idea is nevertheless sound and it draws attention, indirectly, to one of the very poor features of development projects where one institutional partner (the donor) simply abandons local stakeholders and institutions (their so-called 'partners') at project conclusion to self-help or to the most unlikely continuing support of government. It is like one partner in a marriage going off into the never-never and leaving the other to care for all the children alone. The blog yesterday on infrastructure is excellent example of this challenge in development. I am not sure that development solutions in Australia, or anywhere else, necessarily have relevance for development in specific countries, unless there is a convincing body of experience or perhaps theoretical and empirical evidence to support them. I think people like Guthrie in PNG, "The Progressive Education Fallacy in Developing Countries", 2011, and Christopher Bjork, "Indonesian Education: Teachers Schools and Central Bureaucracy" 2005, are on the right track in pointing to the salience of culture and local values in educational change. Finally, I am not sure if David's use of "TEPID" is serious, or is he pulling our collective legs with this acronym? It certainly made me smile and does make a point!

Thanks for the interesting comments. I wasn't aware of the Indonesian school maintenance example. Ostrom et al.'s argument is clearly a simplification/abstraction of a much more complex reality. I'm of the opinion that culture and government systems will tend to reflect underlying political economy incentives. At the very least, cultural norms/govt systems cannot be against the material interests of those in power; if they are, these norms/systems will not be followed and will be changed. I see the cultural norm of maintenance neglect in the Pacific as occuring precisely because there are limited incentives for infrastructure maintenance. Were incentives to provide maintenance established, I strongly suspect "cultural" factors would quickly change. The same applies for govt systems - if leaders and senior bureaucrats had incentives to establish systems of the kind that Robert describes, I think this would occur - although I agree it isn't a simple process, and does warrant donor focus. I recently read a discussion paper on these sorts of issues, which also explores the link between material incentives and culture. I don't agree with all the arguments in the paper, but the link is here if you are interested: http://ips.cap.anu.edu.au/ssgm/papers/discussion_papers/2012_03_tobias_a_haque.pdf

While not suggesting that aid dependence is not an issue the suggested primary link to "the normal disciplines of valuing the asset and providing for its replacement in the future ..." is I think invalid. While it is aid dependence is linked I suggest the underlying drivers of decision making need to be explored in more detail and the cultural component (outside normal political posturing) needs to be developed. The position was best summarised for me by the national of a developing country when asked about the issue - his response was that it is fundamentally cultural. In a day-to-day living environment where the standard practice has never included the need to put away for the future notions such as preventative maintenance and replacement provisions have no place. Personal property in the form of homes are built and not worked on until they fail - why should the attitude to public infrastructure be any different. I would suggest that this is further exacerbated when examining a subsistence environment at the national level of a developing country. It is pretty hard to focus on setting aside funds for the future when you are preoccupied with finding enough money for school fees. How to address it? I suggest that some of the strategies being employed in PNG of combining future maintenance contracts with construction/reconstruction activities for road infrastructure is a start in the right direction. However, there are a host of associated issues to be addressed and the only certain thing is that if the answer was easy it would have been done a long time ago.

This is an important contribution to an area of focus in donor aid programs. The image Matthew creates of the white elephant in Samoa will stay with me for ever! A similar story with maintenance exists in Indonesia with school infrastructure projects. As part of an aid effectiveness review in basic education I led for the World Bank in 2008, we visited schools that had received ADB project funds and technical support for substantial school refurbishment in both Lombok and in Bali. In both locations we observed frequent examples of schools that had been refurbished in the period 2003 - 2005. Yet by late 2008, the condition of many school buildings showed heavy wear-and-tear including broken tiles, filthy windows, damaged furniture, worn paintwork and decaying ceilings. Children’s toilets were in poor condition and in some cases totally unusable. In one primary school in Bali the building rehabilitated in 2004 was being torn down and replaced by an entirely new structure to provide more suitable accommodation for children. To be fair, there were other schools that were, on the whole, neat, clean and pleasant places in which learning could occur but there was almost no visible evidence in classrooms of changes in learning and teaching practices, mainly because this was not a part of the project design at all - astonishingly, a school education project with no attention to teaching in the design, but that is another story! During an evaluation for the USAID Decentralized Basic Education Project, Package 1 (DBE1), in late 2011, some of the reasons for lack of school maintenance emerged which seem more fundamental and solvable than simply blaming such outcomes on lack of funds or on laziness, which of course can be important reasons as well. One reason is lack of technical knowledge of how to judge the condition of schools and to plan for maintenance at the level of schools and District governments. In many cases, local governments simply do not have accurate data on the stock of schools in the District nor do they know their physical condition. Accordingly, planning for school maintenance, when done at all, has been at best haphazard. This helps explain the depressing frequency with which one still reads in the Indonesian press of school roofs and walls collapsing on children leading to death and injury. However, when DBE1 developed appropriate school data gathering tools, and analytical strategies, in consultation with schools and Districts, accurate numbers, distribution, size and condition of all schools in participating District were known for the first time. Planning for maintenance could therefore be based on increasingly accurate data as data collectors and data users began to realise the importance of accurate data and its use in planning. Further, some Districts that were planning to build new schools realised their stock of schools indicated further construction was completely unnecessary. If Districts lack accurate school and school-age population data (as many and possibly most do), this raises the very real possibility that school construction projects may be adding unnecessary stock when the immediate need is for school mergers, re-locations or even closures, and for resources and technical skill in school and equipment maintenance. By way of conclusion, and to answer Matthew's question "How can such problems be addressed?", one step in addition to those he describes is to help local stakeholders collect and to use accurate data about the condition of their physical assets, to help in planning maintenance programs, and to provide access to reliable technical support for maintenance. I hope Matthew's excellent article will attract further contributions on this important theme.

I note the authors finding that Africa’s transportation costs are no higher than in other developing countries, but transport prices are much higher. The difference is the set of informal payments and profits earned by trucking companies. The authors identify the source of these high profit margins as being the set of regulations in many African countries that restrict entry of new companies, enabling incumbents to earn large profits. Reforms in the policy and regulatory arenas are required. However, such reforms will be deeply political and vested interests will resist them. The Authors are correct that the only way reform will occur is if the public is informed about the benefits - so politicians will see that it is in their interest to promote such reform. The paper is a significant step in that direction. But what about other countries in Southern Africa i.e. Namibia and Botswana? As the paper was released in 2009, a follow-up study would be most useful in informing stakeholders, especially in Southern Africa, who are about to make significant transport infrastructure investment decisions. E. John Blunt is an Institutional and Public Procurement Expert. Much of his recent work has focused on increasing the use of partner government procurement systems. He is currently on assignment with the Southern African Development Community Secretariat in Botswana. He is also a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport.

It is not surprising that domestic drivers within Australia and New Zealand have proved the key drivers for SPARTECA (including derogations) and they will be equally if not more significant within the context of PACER plus. I agree that the rules of origin are an impediment to Pacific island manufacturers looking to export but perhaps more significant (in terms of affecting more countries) are rules relating to quarantine and it is to be hoped that this issue will also be revisited during the PACER Plus negotiations with a more beneficial outcome for Pacific island countries arising.

Richard, thanks for your comments. As far as publication is concerned, I have just been to the website and in the section on publications under Annual Performance Reports you will see almost the entire selection of reports for 2010. Any reports not there were unavailable for publication when the final vetting process was done, but the publication numbers have improved each year and the Operations section should be commended for lifting the number of reports published. I am not sure if you were looking at the country sites and this is probably a limitation of the website that cross posting is inadequate. There has also been labelling issues in the past regarding dates as the data differs from one country to the next based on when country reporting is done. Where reports are missing, I would suggest highlighting this as an inadeqaute response from the given program as external pressure will ensure country programs take reporting seriously. This has been a major problem with certain sections in the agency and thus external pressure such as this blog is very helpful. I also agree that ODE needs to be more explicit in its criticisms of the system. This is provided in feedback provided to the operations group, but more hands on analysis by ODE would make constructive improvement more immediate and realistic. In essence, I think your points are well made and helpful. Where I would like the debate to go is to the crux of how best to report on 'results'. There is a real danger that simplistic external pressure will drive programs to look for easy things to measure, rather than adequately dealing with the efficacy of our aid program. Encouraging programs to simply focus on outputs and numbers because they are easy to track will not lead to lasting impact which is a much more nuanced challange. Having a realistic debate on emergent issues in tracking development aid would be a good place to start.