Sector Program Management

At present, the national development plan of the Lao PDR is named National Socio Economic Development Plan 2006-2010 (NSEDP 2006-2010). It consists of development plans in the lower administrative structures nationwide from the village, district, province levels, and to the national level through a participatory approach. A Public investment Program (PIP) is justified as means to accomplish goals in the development plans in each administrative level. PCAP1 had introduced policy management tools such as the Program Objective Tree, the Chronology Chart and the PIP Map for easily organizing and monitoring objective-oriented policy documents.

Program Objective Tree of Oudomxay province

PIP Map of Saravane province

PCAP2’s program management aims to introduce methodologies on how to prepare the policy management tools through a series of case studies with current development plans in the monitor provinces and the Model Sector. However, we found some implications that can make the training course more practical and provide directions for administrative officers on active service. The present policy documents of socio-economic development plans in Laos are not necessarily logically structured and need improvement in a few areas such as follows.

1. Means to achieve goals of cross-cutting issues such as environmental conservation and poverty reduction are not always shown clearly, because the development plans were structured by sector.
2. Area priority of public investment is sometimes not indicated among districts in the province. The districts should pay more attention to gaps between aimed indicators and the actual situation.
3. The development scenario in the plans is sometimes not logical due to inconsistency in the use of technical terms such as project, activity, target and objective.
4. Many target indicators in the plans are shown only in qualitative and narrative terms. Thus it is often difficult to monitor the progress of the plan by quantitative means.
5. Sometimes the Provincial Socio-Economic Development Plan and the Provincial Sector Development Plan of the same province contradict each other by stating different development goals while describing the same sector and the same province.
6. Each development goal should have PIP projects to help achieve it. However, sometimes no PIP projects are listed under a development goal.

Based on the lessons learned from the case studies, PCAP2 plans to conduct training sessions in a workshop style by sector in every province and line ministry. The training sessions will provide an opportunity for participants to practice preparing program management tools, extracting problems from the present development plans, and providing recommendations for the next development plans for the sectors. This training aims to help improve logically and structurally the contents of the next Five-Year NSEDP 2011 to 2015, which is now being formulated. In addition, the training is expected to enhance the capacity of administrative officers in the field of policy analysis.