RWANDA S SINGLE PIU POLICY A NEW PUSH EXPERIENCES TO DATE WITH SPIUS IN RWANDA

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1 COUNTRY LEARNING NOTES Rwanda: establishing Single Project Implementation Units Bruno Versailles April 2012 SUMMARY The establishment of Single Project Implementation Units (SPIU) allows for the grouping of all the different project implementation units within a ministry under one single umbrella. This helps to better coordinate work, retain staff expertise and reduce duplication of work. The success of an SPIU is dependant on the involvement of senior government officials, managerial expertise within the unit, and willingness of development partners to use the SPIU structure. The Ministry of Health has exemplified good practice through the management of several Global Fund projects in the SPIU structure. The ministry is now moving projects funded by other development partners under the same SPIU. Establishing of SPIUs is not a quick win. They require highly qualified project management staff to implement successfully and there is often a lengthy period of transition as individual project implementation units are phased out and new SPIUs are tested. The Paris Declaration encourages donors to avoid, to the maximum extent possible, creating dedicated structures for day to-day management and implementation of aid-financed projects and programmes. Such PIUs are considered parallel when they are created at the behest of the donor and operate outside existing country institutional and administrative structures. They often tend to undermine national capacity building efforts, distort salaries and weaken accountability for development (OECD/DAC, 2009, p45-9). Besides further reducing the total number of (parallel and non-parallel) PIUs in operation, 1 the rationale behind Single PIUs is that they will: 1. Ease coordination and oversight for the lead ministry. Hence, sector wide information flows will be better to enable the ministry to steer policy better. 2. Introduce economies of scale for shared functions. E.g. in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) or procurement. 3. Institutional memory and expertise will benefit as staff turnover will be reduced. The development of Single PIUs should be seen as part of the Government of Rwanda s (GoR) and donors efforts to improve the quality of aid. For a more general overview of Rwanda s aid management structures see the Country Learning Note Rwanda: aid Management from

2 2002 to The Country Learning Note Rwanda: mutual accountability framework discusses Rwanda s Donor Performance Assessment Framework (DPAF) which has as one of its indicators the number of parallel PIUs in existence in Rwanda. RWANDA S SINGLE PIU POLICY Rwanda initiated Single PIUs in a couple of ministries at the end of Policy related to SPIUs originated in Rwanda s Central Public Investment and External Finance Bureau (CEPEX) - back then a semi-autonomous agency under the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MINECOFIN) tutelage. In 2008 some of its core functions, notably the Public Investment Program (PIP), the preparation of the development budget and the high-level coordination of external finance, were moved to the Ministry of Finance proper, which left CEPEX to focus solely on project management. As part of this overhaul CEPEX re-thought the way it went about giving support to project management. One of the ideas was to establish an SPIU in a few pilot ministries - notably the Ministry of Infrastructure (MININFRA), the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI), the Ministry of Health (MINISANTE), the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) and the Ministry of Local Affairs (MINALOC). This was supported by consulting work on SPIUs done by HQS consulting (2007). EXPERIENCES TO DATE WITH SPIUS IN RWANDA The implementation of SPIUs in the aforementioned ministries was quite rushed. Despite the help from CEPEX ministries were ill-prepared for the transition from multiple PIUs to a single PIU and experiences varied substantially by ministry. The SPIU in MINAGRI struggled to implement the SPIU in a coherent way. MINAGRI hired four programme managers to oversee the work of the Ministry s various projects (including the ones with their own PIUs) according to the four pillars of its sector strategy (the PSTA). These managers got drawn into project implementation issues and sometimes ran projects themselves. In general, the envisaged benefits - like sharing staff across projects - were few and far between. It is hard to see, however, how this could have been done differently given the limited capacity in the ministry and the constraints imposed by development partners. In the health sector, a mini-spiu has been in place since 2006, managing projects funded by the Global Fund. This mini-spiu also managed two World Bank projects and one Department for International Development (DFID) project, treating each large scale economic project on a case-by-case basis. This SPIU grew organically with a focus on cutting overhead costs in a pragmatic way. See box 2. A NEW PUSH The 2008 pilot initiative was never extended to all ministries and petered out - even though it did manage to report some cost-cutting gains. 2 Some MINECOFIN staff even went as far as saying that SPIUs were never really implemented in the period Implementation problems were probably related to capacity constraints within line ministries and the absence of a concerted push from senior MINECOFIN and line ministry management during that period. The latter changed substantially from 2010 onwards as the SPIU initiative was revived during the 2010 Development Partners Retreat (DPR) and then again at the 2011 DPR. 3 Reading through the 2011 DPR presentation shows a more coherent thinking behind the SPIUs, helped by the previous experiences in the pilot ministries. As a result of the closing down of CEPEX responsibility for SPIUs was given to the budget department in MINECOFIN. A new unit - the Public Investment Technical Team - was created for project management of internally and externally funded projects. Within this team there is now one person dedicated full-time to SPIU.

3 FIGURE 1 : SPIU ORGANIGRAMME MINISTRY SPIU (coordinator) CHIEF BUDGET AGENCY Advisor Administrative assistant Internal auditor Administrative assistant Public procurement Legal advisor Other relevant fiduciary Procurement M & E Internal auditors IT specialist and in charge of database Unit I Unit II Unit X Finance & Administration Unit Accountant, support staff Legal Administration and Finance Unit Accountants, support staff A FLEXIBLE AND DYNAMIC MODEL STRUCTURE The model structure for the SPIU, as agreed by the Cabinet, is shown in the figure below. The green boxes indicate the normal organisational structure of the ministry and the blue boxes show the SPIU structure. Within the SPIU organigramme (Figure 1) we see that certain positions are shared, whilst other positions can still be dedicated full-time to specific projects. Decisions as to which positions are shared and which ones are not are left to individual ministries. The 2011 DPR presentation makes clear that there will be a need for a transition phase recognising the differences in capacity and PIU needs per ministry and allowing for some flexibility. In terms of the SPIU organigramme this means that for certain ministries in the coming years it may be necessary for practical and legal reasons to gradually phase-out certain parallel SPIUs for ongoing projects. 4 At the start of the transition phase ministries are expected to prepare an assessment report comprising an inventory of existing projects and a proposal for an SPIU structure - similar to the one in the figure below. For a short discussion of such an assessment report see box 1 on The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MINICOM). The next step is to develop a ministry specific manual of procedures for the daily

4 management of the SPIU, together with the development of a training manual for both ministry and Development Partner staff. Such a procedures manual has so far only been developed by MINISANTE (see box 2). One key aspect of the SPIU set-up is the harmonised salary scale for project staff agreed by the Rwandan Cabinet in February These salary scales are in general more generous than is standard for other staff in Government ministries, but lower than many staff could get from working in parallel PIUs. It will be crucial that these salary scales are adhered to for the success of SPIU implementation and that all Development Partners sign up to its principles. The SPIUs are part of a wider effort by the Rwandan Government to streamline project management. This implies that both internally and externally funded projects can fall within an SPIU structure. At the moment all staff that are formally contracted to an SPIU are Rwandan and these are all formally GoR staff. BOX 1: MINICOM SPIU ASSESSMENT REPORT (MINICOM, 2011) The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MINICOM) recently finalised its SPIU assessment report. Besides an inventory of ongoing projects the report proposes the following shared SPIU functions directly under the SPIU coordinator: Programme manager, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) specialist, IT and Database officer, Project design specialist, legal specialist, Human Resource Management specialist, Knowledge management specialist. There are two further units made up of several staff members also directly under the SPIU coordinator: procurement and admin services (DAF). Finally the organigramme maintains project-specific managers and some specialist staff that are linked to specific projects. BOX 2: SPIU IN THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH (MINISANTE) MINISANTE already had some kind of mini-spiu in place from 2006 onwards - managing Global Fund projects, plus two World Bank and one DFID funded project. In 2011 MINISANTE drew up a new SPIU organingramme and developed a procedures manual (see MINISANTE, 2011) with the aim of bringing all health-related projects under the SPIU umbrella. There is now a clear institutional set up for this to happen, with on-going negotiations with the main health development partners as to how exactly this will be implemented i.e. how the shared functions will be financed, the designation of a focal point, etc... CONCLUSION Since 2008, there has been a concerted effort by the GoR to improve the quality of the project aid modality. 5 One of the ways in which this has been implemented is through streamlining Project Implementation Units (PIUs) into one single PIU per ministry. This initiative had its teething problems between 2008 and mainly due to overambitious timeframes and not enough flexibility granted to implementing line ministries. With these lessons taken onboard, the SPIUs were relaunched in The Ministry of Health is a good example of how a gradual approach can deliver good results. Flexibility during the transition phase is key. The type and number of functions typical of project management are transferred to the SPIU depending on how comfortable the Development Partner is. This flexibility is much lower for new projects, with the GoR insisting on DPs following the Cabinet agreed salary scales. Hence the transition phase will be crucial for the GoR to build the confidence that they can handle project management. The previous analysis also shows that SPIUs are not likely to be quick wins, with good project management staff needed to make the aforementioned transitions successful. The success of MINISANTE shows that it is a good idea to start an SPIU for only a couple of projects and only build a larger SPIU portfolio gradually.

5 ENDNOTES 1. The 2008 Paris Survey shows a slight reduction in the number of parallel PIUs in existence in Rwanda since 2005 from 48 to 41. However, it is clear that a number of challenges remain in meeting the 2010 target of reducing the number of PIUs to 16 (see OECD/DAC, 2009). 2. Apart from the Global Fund / MINISANTE PIU, some economies of scale were also reported for MININFRA. 3. See CEPEX (2009a) and GoR (2011) respectively. 4. For the majority of projects that started before the SPIU agenda got properly going, it seems that the original legal and organisational set-up is allowed to proceed. 5. See the briefing note Aid Management in Rwanda for more on the general tenets of Rwanda s aid management.. BIBLIOGRAPHY MINICOM (2011) Final Report on the Study to establish an SPIU in MINICOM, Capacity Development Consultants, Kigali, June. CEPEX (2009a) Presentation on SPIU in Public Institutions, presentation made at the Development Partners Retreat, accessed at DPR%2FPresentations%2F CEPEX (2009b) The Implementation Modality of a SPIU in Public Institutions, Kigali, October. GoR (2011) Single Project Implementation Units, presentation made at the 2011 Development Partners Retreat, accessed at www. minecofin.gov.rw/webfm_send/2087 HQS Consulting (2007) The Implementation of a SPIU per Ministry, August, 41p. MINISANTE (2011) SPIU Procedures Manual. Kigali, May, 109p. OECD/DAC (2009) Chapter 45 Rwanda, in Results of the Paris Survey 2008, accessed at The Country Learning Notes series is intended as a tool for policy makers and practitioners to learn from the experiences of other countries. Each note focuses on a specific country and a particular policy area, documenting the challenges faced and decisions taken to overcome them. The series can be freely downloaded from For more information please contact bsi-research@odi.org.uk. Readers are encouraged to reproduce material from the Country Learning Notes series for their own publications, as long as they are not being sold commercially. As copyright holder, ODI requests due acknowledgement and a copy of the publication. For online use, we ask readers to link to the original resource on The views presented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of ODI. Overseas Development Institute 2012 Budget Strengthening Initiative Overseas Development Institute 111 Westminster Bridge Road London, SE1 7JD