Final evaluation of the provincial area development project

The project's TA, training, and commodity inputs succeeded in increasing the capacities of the BANGDA (Directorate General of Regional Development), BAPPEDA's (Regional Development Planning Boards), and service agencies for regional development. Moreover, the entire planning implementation system was energized and employed successfully in a set of experimental SP's designed to reach the low income populations in the 8 participating provinces. Implementation has been flexible, pragmatic, and responsive; the project has adapted to different sociocultural environments, various administrative arrangements, and diverse general approaches in the 44 districts in which it was introduced. Initially, the project concentrated on operating a vast array of SP's. However, it became apparent that the individual SP's were not being conducted within a coherent development framework; early results in terms of central and local development goals were neither focused nor systematic. Thus, the project's priorities were shifted -- not changed -- early in the 10-year period from direct SP's to the introduction of planning and implementing systems and the development of institutional capability. The touchstone of the project became the evolution of a comprehensive and very successful provincial planning and implementing system that incorporated various analytical and evaluative steps. Many of the project's local successes were readily transferred to other regions and districts. For example, a credit program based in Central Java was adopted in all of the project provinces; in fact, the favorable outcome of this activity led to additional support for the credit agencies under a new USAID-sponsored project, the Financial Institutions Development project (4970341). A striking feature of the project was the large number of persons who benefitted directly, including not only the participants from governmental agencies who received formal and informal training, but the tens of thousands of villagers who were reached through innovative subprojects ranging from skills training in ceramics and tile production to the provision of special credit programs for small market vendors and entrepreneurs. To sustain and build on the project's success, future efforts should focus on: (1) promoting decentralization to even lower levels of government (subdistrict, village); (2) mobilizing local financing; (3) encouraging participation in development activities by PVO's and village planning boards; (4) providing training to service agency and subdistrict-level personnel; and (5) improving provincial and lower level management systems.