Transition Strategies in the Context of Development Cooperation

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1 Institut für Projektplanung GmbH Stuttgarter Str. 48 D Stuttgart Internet: Issue March 2009 Transition Strategies in the Context of Development Cooperation International Development Cooperation tackles the challenge of sustainability. A process increasingly mentioned in international development cooperation literature is the transition strategy or exit strategy. According to Sida, the Swedish International Development Agency, a transition strategy is a: ( ) strategy for designing, implementing, and ending external support in a manner consistent with the objective of producing sustainable development outcomes. 1 Following this understanding, the process is not an emergency plan the project closure does not have a value in itself. It is rather the guarantee for the realisation of better project or programme results and the commitment to their sustainability. An answer to the question of HOW to monitor, adjust and optimise the project progress towards sustainability is required. 1 Sida, Department for Evaluation and Internal Audit: Exit Strategies - A Concept Note for a Joint Evaluation. Stockholm, AusAID: Promoting Practical Sustainability. Canberra, Gardner, Alison, et al.: What We Know About Exit Strategies Practical Guidance for Developing Exit Strategies in the Field. Gauteng, 2005 The achievement of sustainable outcomes and eventually also impacts is one of the main objectives of development cooperation. Therefore, sustainability is the focus of at least the following three different strategies: Sustainability strategies determine the impact which shall be secured along the impact chain in the project/programme design. Thus, AusAID, the Australian Agency for International Development, states that sustainability strategies: ( ) define the benefits to be sustained and specify how each of the main constraints to sustainability will be addressed in implementation. 2 The focus of sustainability strategies is thus the ISSUE, which shall be secured. The second kind of strategies dealing with the aspect of sustainability is the Risk Management used for identifying, monitoring and coping with RISKS opposing the project/programme objective during the implementation. The Transition Strategy, however, focuses on the sustainability of project/programme results and answers the question on HOW these can be sustained or - to cite Alison Gardner, working for the USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, - ( ) how the program intends to withdraw its resources while ensuring that achievement of the program goals (relief or development) is not jeopardized ( ) 3. By analysing the process of handing over project/programme activities and results, the exit strategy also traces risks which might or will appear after the project/programme closure only. 1

2 All three processes transition strategy, sustainability strategy and risk management feature a similarity besides their aim to guarantee sustainability, which is the systematic and iterative process of appraisal, monitoring and adjustment. These parallels and interdependences suggest their simultaneous and complementary development and implementation to ensure sustainable outcomes. According to the exit objective, the concept of transition strategies ranges from Phase Down and Phase Over to Phase Out. 6 Key Elements 1) Planning from Project Design on 2) Network Developing 3) Capacity Building 4) Mobilisation of Resources 5) Exit Staggering 6) Continuing Beyond 4 Levinger & McLeod: Hello, I Must Be Going: Ensuring Quality Services and Sustainable Benefits through Well- Designed Exit Strategies. Newton, 2002 As mentioned above, the focus of the transition strategy lies on the HOW to phase from external support to internal continuation while embedding the impact. Thus, it is mainly about how to conduct the process of Phasing Down, i.e. reducing the project activities, Phasing Over, i.e. handing over the project activities to the local partner, institutions or communities or Phasing Out, i.e. stopping the external support. The exit objective defines which of these three transition strategies applies in the specific project or programme. Phasing Down - often being a precursor of the other two approaches - is mainly applied for the optimum use of project or donor resources. Phasing Over directs the focus to the activities or services, i.e. it is used where (institutional) capacity building is a main component of the intervention. Phasing Out emphasises the benefits or the sustainable use of project results and is often caused externally by political pressure, unexpected decrease in (donor) resources or, at best, when sufficient local capacities are developed and the support is no longer needed. Additional data regarding these exit scenarios can be found in Levinger & McLeod (4). At best, according to literature, e.g. Gardner (3) transition strategies shall already be discussed by the partner and the donor in a participative manner while designing the project. Hereby, the counterpart starts early to create a sense of ownership and responsibility for the project, and thus, early planning is considered to be the most import of the six key elements. Clearly, at this early planning stage, the approach draft will be very flexible and thus rough, but the important point is to imbed the idea of sustainability into the project implementation, e.g. when drafting project papers like operational plans, job descriptions, contracts etc. Thus, the concept of early planning includes the necessity to define the outcomes, which shall be sustained. Consequently, this also leads to the early set-up of a rough monitoring- and evaluation system with quantifiable indicators and milestones for sustainable aspects. 2

3 Some features of the transition strategy like network developing, capacity building and mobilisation of resources are well-known strategy elements, which have been forming the international and German development cooperation since years, whereas the aspects of exit staggering and continuing beyond are fairly new. The first of these two processes, also named staggering of phase-out describes the procedure to define which project activities can be phased out of the project at what time - according to their targets and interdependencies and in a way that their phase-out does not influence the project progress or the sustainability of the outcomes. The latter term of continuing beyond is used for the intended continuation of relationships between the involved parties in new or at least changed roles even beyond project closure. For instance, if an external expert can still be asked for consulting or mentoring services, while the activities are now implemented by the local partner only. Success of transition strategies can be deduced from sustained impacts, continued activities and/or use of developed systems. The first IP Consult project to design and implement a transition strategy was a Thai-German cooperation called Management Information Systems for industrial pollution prevention and control (MIS). IP Consult carried out the MIS project on improving the competitiveness of Thai industries from 2005 to 2007 for 2.5 years as part of the technical German cooperation. The overall project goal was to set up comprehensive policies and measures of governmental agencies and all stakeholders for the improvement of ecoefficiency of SMEs. The proposals developed by the project team together with the gtz expert Alfred Eberhardt for achievement optimisation led to the constant, sustainable embedding of our results in Thailand. This was verified by the governmental decree of September 2007 on the regular report of major industries to the responsible Thai Ministry of Industry, DIW (Department of Industrial Works), using the tools elaborated by our project. Custom-tailored information systems for enterprises, ministries and the public increase the international competitiveness of the Thai market. The MIS project - as part of the Eco-Efficiency Component of the Thai-German technical cooperation programme - aimed to increase the eco-efficiency and thus the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) of selected agro-industrial sectors. SMEs, which are generating more than half of Thailand s GNP, were facing a new challenge in the international markets. Having forfeited their previous competitiveness in the world market due to globalisation, they and in particular the growing agro-industry were negatively affected by environmental problems. 3

4 In order to support the decision-makers in the enterprises regarding the introduction of processes for sustainable environmental management and to demonstrate development perspectives for the future, our project team elaborated a suitable Management Information System (MIS). Furthermore, an Environmental Information System (EIS), including databases and indicators, was designed to assist the state control authorities, especially the Ministry of Industry, Industrial Works Department in Bangkok, in the efficient discharging of responsibilities. In addition, the communications media of our project, the Public Information Centre (PIC) make up-to-date, environmentally relevant information easily accessible for people to increase the quantitative and qualitative participation of the public in decision-making processes. A governmental decree sustains the project tools elaborated and enhances the eco-efficiency of Thai SMEs. The use of the above named tools was certified by news from Thailand in September On September 18, a decree came into effect, regulating that, from now on, all major industrial enterprises have to use the interactive and digital sheets developed by our team on a regular basis to report the measurements of the emission pollutants of their factories to the responsible Thai ministry, DIW (Department of Industrial Works). At the same time, the entered data are fed into the EIS at the DIW and are evaluated afterwards. Hence, we have achieved the legal and administrative securing of the environmental monitoring in Thailand and thereby the sustainability of the project impacts by pursuing the transition strategy developed by the gtz expert Alfred Eberhardt. He confirms that with the idea of an exit/transition strategy ( ) not an exit of the result achievement under the project is envisaged, but, quite to the contrary, a well organized progress ( ). (5) Partner and project team develop and implement the transition strategy in a joint manner. 5 Alfred Eberhardt: Exit/Transition strategy developing a concept for the MIS Project. Bangkok, 2007 From the point of view of the German Technical Cooperation, the following principles form the transition strategy: - Proceed jointly as partner and project team, - Ownership and responsibility rests with the partner as far as possible, - Concentrate on the sustainable use of tools elaborated, - Precisely define goals, results and tasks of the transition strategy, - Take into account the time frame and geographical focus, - Align with partner policies, - Mobilise synergisms of other donors and stakeholders. 4

5 Given the newness of the subject, the transition strategy was not planned from the very beginning of the MIS project (design) on, like in theory, but introduced in a running project, which was highly appreciated by all parties involved. Thus, the approach was adapted to the situation and focused on the strengths and the challenges of the existing project. Consequently, the objective of the transition strategy was to make the outcomes obtained sustainable. Thus, the new aspects of this last project phase were only a greater set of measures and a larger number of stakeholders to increase the number of users of the information systems and anchor the use of the outcomes into the Thai context; no new items like objectives and activities shall be entered at this crucial stage. Though the objective and outcomes are therefore given in such a context, it is nevertheless essential to precisely and jointly define the objective and the outcomes by both sides to ensure transparency, commitment and ownership. A coordinated and efficient process was guaranteed by specifying the particular actions and the responsibilities on both sides, the project team and the partner. Due to the novelty of the transition strategy, it is currently often realised in later stages of running projects. As the idea of transition or exit strategies is still a novelty to many working in the field of International Development Cooperation, this subject often leads to opposing or simply ignoring reactions of both sides, the partner s and the donor s or respectively of the project/programme team. Therefore, the introduction of a transition strategy is a challenge for all parties and requires communicative competence and transparency. Moreover, the effective and efficient development of the strategy depends on the participative proceeding and a lot of good will on both sides, given the lack of lessons learned and better practices. Furthermore, the implementation and monitoring of transition strategies demands organisational skills, as shown above. Nevertheless, given the nature of project or programme work in Development Cooperation, which comprises the end of the external support, this challenge needs to be tackled. Hence, good planning takes the exit into consideration and thus also the transition strategy to ensure sustainable outcomes. This paper draws on IP Consult s experiences regarding transition strategies in project work. The views expressed are entirely those of the author, Kathrin Zimmermann. She is a consulting staff member of IP Consult, Stuttgart. 5