Managing project-related technical assistance : the lessons of success

Abstract

World Bank experience and that of other donor agencies suggests that institutional assistance is less successful than engineering assistance because it deals with problems that are difficult to define and resolve. Also, these services require a thorough understanding of the society, culture, and institutions involved; and the outputs lack the precision of engineering solutions, are difficult to assess, and usually require behavioral changes in the recipient. The success of technical assistance for nonengineering activities appears to depend on three factors: (i) the commitment of all parties concerned; (ii) careful design of the technical assistance; and (iii) the handling of technical assistance as a process and not as a blueprint. This paper presents the conclusions from a review of several successful projects and offers a number of practical suggestions for technical assistance designers and appraisers.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 13 citations exist upstream.