Rethinking the Delivery of International Technical Assistance Projects
How can the international assistance sector adapt?
Background to International Technical Assistance Projects
Many international technical assistance (TA) projects that supply capacity building, technical assistance and other consultancy support to public (and private) sector institutions, currently require significant levels of time from international experts to be provided locally, on-site, against which “progress” is monitored and payments are made.
Often, this physical presence is important, as it offers international technical assistance staff better, daily communication opportunities that would not be available from afar. This provides a deeper appreciation of local circumstances.
Sometimes, a physical presence by international experts is also necessary to undertake specific tasks or to check or monitor the situation locally; and it can also be an effective way to transfer knowledge to local staff and decision makers.
Trends Affecting International Projects
These benefits will remain and cannot be easily replaced through remote working and Zoom calls alone. Nevertheless, even when the current Covid-19 pandemic finally comes to an end, there are a number of trends that taken together mean that it could well be time for this traditional approach in international technical assistance projects to be revised, to reflect these changing times:
1. Current Restrictions on International Travel
Whilst these have been particularly severe during the pandemic, some of them may well persist for some time afterwards. This could be from inertia, as well as long-term concerns around disease control and security. (Any growing sense of nationalism could also make travel by international personnel more difficult, discouraging local interactions with international visitors).
2. Environmental Concerns About Aviation
These will also discourage its future use. Making flying more environmentally friendly is likely to be a longer-term goal. In the meantime, its relative cost (which is often a significant component of some TA projects already), is likely to increase, to reflect these changing concerns and priorities.
3. The Cost of Providing International Staff Locally
This is a major component of the overall cost of international technical assistance projects. However, the salary costs are a minor component of these costs: travel, local accommodation, insurance and other add-on costs (including profit margins) make up most of the overall costs. Therefore, any reduction to these inputs will probably reduce overall project costs significantly.
4. Changing Technology
The pandemic has accelerated the move towards online working, supported by the ever wider availability, quality and lower costs of online access. This makes this approach an increasingly attractive alternative to face-to-face interactions, (although for the reasons described above, it is unlikely that it will ever replace it completely).
5. The Challenges for International Experts to Spend Lengthy Periods Overseas
The requirement for international staff to spend lengthy periods overseas excludes a large pool of potentially well-qualified technical assistance individuals. Travel to new or relatively underdeveloped locations is very disruptive, especially for more experienced or older experts who are less willing or able to spend lengthy times away from family or for medical reasons. This is a big loss to the international development industry and could be mitigated through a greater use of remote working in delivering technical assistance projects.
6. Opportunity for Local Staff to Take on More Responsibility in International Projects
Greater use of home-based inputs from international technical assistance experts is an opportunity to make greater and more effective use of local counterparts (both local client staff, but especially locally based counterparts), whose inputs will be more necessary. When international experts are located in-country, it is easier for local counterparts to rely too heavily them, reducing their participation and effectiveness of any knowledge transfer. This loss of responsibility can also adversely impact on their motivation and sense of involvement and ownership – all of which are usually desirable outcomes from these international technical assistance projects.
7. Greater Flexibility with Remote Working
Remote working provides far more flexibility, allowing international experts to allocate their time between different assignments and clients according to need. Multitasking is increasingly necessary and experts rarely need to devote 100% of their working time solely to a single project or client.
Changing Approaches to International TA Projects
Inputs from overseas technical assistance experts is likely to remain an important component of many international projects for the foreseeable future. However, the international donors, along with their local (in-country) clients would benefit from reviewing their positions on this issue, welcoming a more cost-effective and flexible option for technical assistance expertise on many projects. Very often, it is realistic for the proportion of remote working to be increased significantly, as much of it can be completed remotely – at significantly lower costs. Greater use could be made of online communications, with shorter in-country inputs by international experts at key stages or for specific tasks on projects.
Such arrangements could well increase time management flexibility, as well as potentially, attracting a larger pool of good quality, experienced candidates to the market, thereby improving competition and innovation to the whole international technical assistance business.
However, these changed arrangements will require clients to focus more on the delivery of specific tasks or objectives, rather than on the provision of a rather arbitrarily defined level of inputs, (i.e. bums on local seats). This is not easy, as measuring progress on many technical assistance type of projects on this basis can be difficult: unlike more traditional construction or design projects, there are seldom clear, unambiguous benchmarks or milestone events that can be used. Furthermore, a more flexible approach is often appropriate, as circumstances or new information often makes the rigid application of previously defined milestones inappropriate or unrealistic.
Changing Skills for Changing Times in International Development
However, these issues have always been a particular challenge for these types of international technical assistance projects. So applying more appropriate metrics would be a worthwhile objective anyway. There is probably no simple, on-size-fits-all answer to this issue: after all, every international technical assistance project is different. Applying a more intelligent (and less bureaucratic), informed and involved approach to overseeing technical assistance projects would certainly be beneficial – even under existing arrangements.
Individual and corporate consultants will also need to adopt a new set of skills to complement their existing expertise. This includes the ability to work remotely (without fixed hours or locations); communicate and work effectively with others online; and take responsibility for the delivery of deliverables (specific objectives), rather than serving time, (which is likely to become an increasingly outdated approach to working, even for international technical assistance projects).
The home pages to the key international multilateral partners working in this sector are given below: