Originally Posted by
Steve the Planner
More than once, when I investigated a "Budget Execution" problem for a US-inspired school project, there was a local technocrat sitting on it for sound reasons, and mostly because they understood that it was either a dumb or unnecessary project, one that would never survive, or one that they understandably saw as a "sheik" or "goodfella" project that made no public or organizational sense.
In June 2008, there was a big Iraqi budget conference where the ministries were going to develop and promulgate standards and procedures for capital project reviews for the 2009 budget. US folks were greatly worried about how this might interfere with their projects.
There were actually only about five US folks there, since it was an Iraqi conference. I listened to the bad US translations on my ear piece, but also was updated by my partner, a transportation engineer from California who also was fluent in Arabic. So, I got both sides.
When the conference turned to the standards, they whipped out the old standards book from 1968, that, to both of us, looked the same as every other project evaluation/EIS process we had used throughout our career. Identify the project and its justification. Identify costs, risks, uncertainties, and secondary impacts, compare alternatives to accomplish the same objectives.... All the required reports funnel to the Planning Ministry who creates a score card for the legislature (COR).
This is the DNA of their world---the 1968 standards book. Every technocrat in the room, whether from Basra or Mosul, immediately knew what it was, and started debating the fine points (as bureaucrats always do). The only ones who didn't know were the new officials, so the old-timers set up a system to bring them up to speed and get them copies of the old books.
It's absolutely true that we could have easily gotten a USAID contractor in No Va to create a project evaluation book for them, and try to force it out into their systems. But, why?
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