This loan program ($20 million) was officially closed on June 30, 2003. OMSAR finalized disbursing the allotted amount of $13.95 million before that date, while the remaining $6.05 million was disbursed by the Ministry of Finance for projects executed at the Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Economy and Trade, Presidency of the Council of Ministers and the Ministry of Finance. The funds were utilized in line with the objectives of the loan agreement and as per the chart below:
In November 2003 OMSAR and an official delegation from the World Bank jointly prepared an “Implementation Completion Report” to evaluate the project and its achievements. The report incorporated a comprehensive assessment by OMSAR where all aspects related to the design and implementation of the project were evaluated in an objective manner leading to a list of lessons learned that were shared with the World Bank. OMSAR summarized the impact of the loan implementation by the following:
-
Increased civil service productivity in intra-government work and in delivering services to the citizen. This was facilitated in large by ICT productivity tools and solutions and related specialized training.
-
Higher level of efficiency and effectiveness in obtaining required government information made possible by the ICT solutions. Loan projects on infrastructure, databases and information systems facilitated this.
-
Enhanced civil service capacity through diverse training programs and workshops. Over 3,000 end-users were trained on ICT, some 150 advanced users were trained on ICT administration and some 5 thematic workshops were provided to a large group of civil servants (350 attendees on average per event).
-
Modernizing the organizational structures for a number of government ministries and agencies.
-
Modern institutional recommendations for the core agencies, namely the Civil Service Council, the Central Inspection Board and the Court of Accounts.
-
Realization of multi-disciplined PIUs at OMSAR, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economy and Trade with national domain experts to assist in and advance the administrative reform program.
The World Bank evaluation for the project was satisfactory.