Project Management Quality in Rural Mongolia

This case study examines a project focused on providing telephony and internet services in rural Mongolia, along with strengthening the sector regulator and implementing Public Private Partnerships (PPP) for E-Government. The project achieved substantial success in expanding telephony services, although it fell short of its initial targets due to the unexpected expansion of mobile networks. The PPP for E-Government faced delays and cancellations after elections. The project also saw continued private investment in the ICT sector due to improvements in the regulatory environment. The project faced challenges such as the disparity in ICT infrastructure between urban and rural areas, high infrastructure costs, and limited implementation capacity. The case study highlights lessons learned, including the need for adequate upfront preparation, stakeholder consultation, and a conservative approach to PPPs. Recommendations include establishing an effective ICT development council and investing in human resource development for ICT.

Project Management Quality
The Project Development Objectives were providing provision of telephony and internet
services in rural Mongolia, strengthening of the sector regulator, Public Private
Partnerships (PPP) for E-Government and finally managing the project effectively.
1. Providing provision of telephony and internet services in rural Mongolia: The
achievement was substantial as the number of telephony minutes were seen to
increase from zero to 530,000 but failed to achieve the target of 1,200,000 annual
minutes as the PM was not expecting the superior mobile network for expanding
to cover the herders. But the mobile networks were seen to expand quickly than it
was expected originally.
2. Public Private Partnerships (PPP) for E-Government: The achievement was only
modest owning to the fact that the implementation of the e-government
application was seen to delay as the PPP approach took time for finalizing the
model and developing the bidding documents. This led to the extension of the
project by one year, and the two e-government applications Certification
Authority and Portal System, and Public Key Infrastructure were eventually
canceled after elections.
3. Continued additional annual investment in the ICT sector: This objective was
seen to be fully achieved owing to the continued strong private investments. The
achievement of this objective was done due to improvement in the regulatory and
policy environment and promotion of the investments in rural areas.
The PM quality was not highly satisfactory owing to the various challenges being faced
in the achievement of the objectives. Some of the challenges were the huge disparity in
ICT infrastructure and services availability between the urban and rural areas. Virtually,
no services were seen to exist at the bagh level or outside the soum centers and the
residents were found to be seasonally nomadic. Further challenges were encountered in
attracting the private investments owing to high infrastructure cost in rural Mongolia due
to the vast geography of the country. Therefore the resources and capacity for
implementation of the rollout of rural services were limited efficiently. Additionally,
some of the challenges identified were the inadequate capacity to promote and regulate
the development and implementation of the ICT sector agenda proactively and limitation
in the implementation capacity, limited ICT policy leadership, etc.
The e-Government applications had less than 10 percent of the total funding and
therefore failure the implementation of the e-Government applications was outweighed
by the overwhelming success of the other objectives. The country with the highly
dispersed population and challenging geography was seen to have corresponding largest
component focused DOs, especially on the smaller population centers. Overall the
objective of providing ICT services towards the rural population was overachieved.
Overall the project helped in developing the information security framework along with
financing a related awareness raising program and capacity building.

Lessons Learned
The following are the lessons learned during the implementation and designing of the
project:
1. An adequate upfront preparation should be performed before the approval of the
project for allowing a timely and successful completion of the rural access
component.
2. The credible stakeholder consultation has to be ensured in the projects where the
private sector participation is important.
3. The OBA subsidy auction should work towards reaching beyond the market by
attracting private sector investments for internet and telephony services.
4. The requirement of a conservative approach while accessing the speed and
capacity for adopting PPP approach.
5. For prioritizing the e-Government PPPs, the adaptation of standard bidding
documents must be produced along with bidding approach and identification of
design and work on the contractual aspects of bidding documents.
Recommendations
The following recommendations have been provided for the project design and
implementation:
1. An effective ICT development council must be constituted.
2. The Human Resource Development must be present for ICT.
3. The requirement of Training facilities and Vocation Education.