Project description

Title: Performance Improvement Project for Development Actors in the North East Province
Commissioned by: Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ)
Country: Sri Lanka
Lead executing agency: Ministry of Nation Buidling and Development
Overall term: September 2003 to December 2007

Context

20 years of civil war and the tsunami of December 2004 have caused enormous damage to the social, productive and physical infrastructure in the affected areas of the North and East of Sri Lanka. The opportunities for social and economic recovery are limited. Although the international community has provided considerable funds for reconstruction, the provincial administration, the private sector and non-governmental organisations lack the capacity to utilise these funds efficiently. The success of these interventions and especially the envisaged sustainability are thus highly endangered.

Objective

The public administration of the North Eastern Province and representatives of civil society will plan, organise and steer the reconstruction and development activities in a sustainable manner. Civil society and its organisations will benefit from reliable service provision by key public service providers. The needs and concerns of various social groups will be made transparent, considered and communicated. The project will operate in a conflict preventive manner.

In the long term, considerable impact on the income and social security of the people is expected.

Approach

The main contribution of the project is increased efficiency in the planning, implementation and monitoring of the rehabilitation and development measures in the North Eastern Province.

Technical assistance is provided to the Provincial Chief Secretary, the Provincial Planning Secretariat, the Management Development and Training Department and the Centre for Information Resources Management. These are the key government intermediaries responsible for coordinating the rehabilitation and development measures.
The project activities consist of advisory inputs, training, and coaching for human resource development, organisational development, planning, information management, and governance.

Since the end of 2005, the British Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) has also been participating through the provision of financial and advisory inputs.

Results achieved so far

• Through the institutional and organisational analyses and subsequent discussion of the results, the participating intermediaries have become more aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the present institutional landscape.
• A number of programmes of international donors are successfully applying innovative approaches developed and tested by the GTZ project in planning and implementing their own activities. These include the use of thematic maps and village lists for optimising the selection of target areas and villages according to poverty criteria.
• Projects of international donors and government institutions in the region are increasingly requesting training courses, training handbooks, village profiles and cartographic materials which have been promoted through the project.
• The joint financing by the German and the British governments is a good example of donor coordination. It combines the financial contributions and development approaches of the two donors, thus simplifying the coordination for the Sri Lankan administration and increasing the overall effectiveness of the project.