Strategic Review of the EDUCO Program - EQUIP123.net

Strategic Review of the EDUCO ProgramJuly 2010the transition. These are totally separable, and the Ministry has already done a lot of work to attain anestimate of the opportunity costs. In the case of costs of the already changed system, almost all relevantcosts are accounting costs or expenses. Opportunity costs, in this case, refer primarily to the socialimpact—already explained in the section on options.In the case of the transition costs, these are opportunity costs, although there will also be accountingcosts. This means that the change is going to demand an enormous amount of work from many technicalmanagerial staff members and from lower level staff members that are already working in the Ministry,and whose accounting costs, therefore, will not increase. However, undoubtedly, they are going tohave to stop doing, during the entire process of design and transition, things they otherwise would havebeen doing. Those other programs inevitably will have to be implemented more slowly or less intensively.Along these lines, it is important that if the Ministry takes on this change, that it compile a listof the time for all the staff members who would have to work on the change, and make decisions aboutwhat other functions to put off or to carry out less intensively during the changeover period.To summarize, this can be thought of as a simple matrix. In the columns, we see the distinction betweenaccounting and opportunity costs, and in the rows we see the distinction between the costs of the systemin transition and those with the change already in place.Accounting CostsTypes of CostsOpportunity CostsCosts of the unifiedsystem, once thetransition is completeApplicable. Relatively easy toestimate; it is very probable thatthey would be less than the baselinecosts in the current system. (Butnot less than the cost of the currentsystem if this were to improve as itshould in any case.)Not applicable. It is better tothink of these in terms of socialimpacts.Factors thatproduce thecostsCosts of the process ofimplementation itselfApplicable (costs of training by thirdparties, consultations, etc.).Applicable and high. This is thework of staff members, and thecost in terms of other programsthat would possibly have tobe implemented more slowly.These opportunity costs could beeconomized on by using moreaccounting costs, by outsourcingsome of the costs to nonpermanentpersonnel employedtemporarily under contract orusing international cooperationresources.56