This trip report is for a mission to UNESCO in Sarajevo, leaving Pittsburgh for Sarajevo on October 8 and returning to Pittsburgh from Sarajevo on October 21, 1997.

The purpose of the mission was to provide technical assistance in education finance and planning /management of information systems. The project, "Support to the Improvement of Management Capacities in the Education Sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina," is funded by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). It is being implemented in partnership with UNESCO, the Federation Ministry of Education and the Middle Bosnia cantonal Ministry of Education. Six educators from the Federation MOE and six (the entire staff) of the Middle Bosnian cantonal MOE are participating as a planning and training effort in two areas: a) professional development in finance, staff development, curriculum, administration and the planning and management of information systems (MIS); and b) technical development of functional, expandable, and sustainable information systems for transactions, management and decision support.

Colin Kaiser is the head of the UNESCO mission in Sarajevo. Lynn Cohen and Nedim Jaganjac are consultants to UNESCO implementing the project. Edina Dmitroviæ provided translation and educational support services.

The education situation in Middle Bosnia is extremely complex in terms of financial, legal and curricula issues. It is also politically visible, both domestically and internationally. Stories about recent moves to promote cultural segregation in classes and curricula are breaking news in BiH and have been widely reported in the US. This project is the only major one in education that is not directly related to school reconstruction. This is unfortunate, given the political sensitivity of education in decentralized states. Not far from where I stayed in Sarajevo, a local Catholic school that was offering multi-cultural educational opportunities for children was bombed. The bomb was set to go off at night in a classroom where multi-ethnic activities occurred. UNESCO has since generously offered to help repair the damage, but it does raise about future internationally-funded school construction projects which are not tied to complex and sensitive educational planning.

The security issues in BiH are now so complex and sensitive that education can no longer either be planned centrally or be abandoned to laissez-faire competition based on the interests of local institutions or cousins. Once the commitment to decentralization in BiH was mandated by the US, education became a major security issue. Families make important choices about where they will live and pay taxes based on the accessibility, safety and quality of local schools. Credible education systems are necessary to justify decentralized, cantonal tax collection systems, and local schools are a major investment in local economic development.

One educator, commenting on the need for very experienced internationals to work on the terrifying complexities facing education in Middle Bosnia quipped, "We like the boys in business suits, but please don't put them in charge." While it is important for government-oriented agencies to promote their nations' goods and services, such efforts cannot drive complex foreign policy. UNESCO's concerted efforts to provide customized education responses in sensitive conditions needs to be applauded.

The UNESCO project is currently the only major effort to coordinate decentralization in basic education through the federal and cantonal MOEs in BiH. UNESCO/UNDP is working with the federation and all of the cantonal MOEs, with a special emphasis in Middle Bosnia. It is managing great complexity with remarkable heart on a shoestring. The federal and cantonal MOEs deserve more international attention and funding.

There is no funded education program officer at UNICEF, USAID, UNHCR , UNESCO or the World Bank. The BiH ministries need a highly experienced education program officer (and a real budget) at least one of these agencies (a coordinated effort?), hopefully with some technological understanding, and who can support the governments' stabilization efforts under complex and sensitive political and economic conditions.

These conditions challenge not only the experience of Bosnian professionals but the international community as well.

The importance of the development of credible and reliable education systems in Middle Bosnia cannot be underestimated. Middle Bosnia is a center of strategic importance to the international community for the following reasons:

• Its mixed cantons are central to the political stability of the nation.

• It is at the intersection of the three areas of responsibility for international military troops.

• International repatriation efforts are mostly likely to succeed there.

• Publicly shared concepts of local communities remain weak and need time to develop.

• The lack of political dominance in the mixed cantons means they have greater incentives to build and sustain political and economic coalitions.

The education of children is a powerful emotional issue for families. In devolved states at peace, education is a primary concern at the community level. Weak schools systems are likely to exacerbate problems of resettlement and repatriation, contributing to destabilizing cross-cantonal migration. It would not be too bold to say that families will be reluctant to stay in communities where educational services are weak, unreliable and there is a lack of public commitment not only to investments in schools, but also to the protection of their children's futures.

The seminar had twelve key participants: six educators from the cantonal MOE in Travnik (Karakas Fahrudin, Minister of Education, Dzambas Nikola, Deputy Minister of Education, Kulasin Refija, Nakic Stipo, Zecic Stipo and Masinovic Azemina), and six from the federation MOE and the Pedagogical Institute, (Muratovic Hasnija, Radic Nadezda, Fako Atija, Nalo Jasminka and Merlo Mira). The six Travnik cantonal MOE staff have access to an operating tax system and are receiving small salaries. The two federation staff have minimal access to tax resources and are paid sporadically. The four professionals from the Pedagogical Institute have not been paid in two years.

The participants organized themselves into cross-functional teams which included representation from both the federation and the cantons. They created three groups: a) core finance (secure tax base); b) alternative finance; and c) cross-MOE legal cooperation. The next day centered on group work which required considerable attention to the teams.

The entire UNESCO team worked with the groups throughout the day to help them identify and begin planning feasible, concrete projects. The seminar staff included Zlatan Sabic, the Deputy Director for the Soros Foundations' sponsored Management of Information Technologies Center in Sarajevo. Nedim and Zlatan focused on information systems and enterprise, Lynn focused on complex educational strategy, and Edina focused on educational content and context. This team effort allowed me to target key finance issues, while the others provided complementary content skills in educational management (identification of stakeholders, enterprise thinking) and context (what could really work within the Bosnian context). I was very grateful for the support.

The group identified three critical priorities for education finance in complex conditions (i.e., war recovery in the economy, decentralization, shift to market economy, resettlement and repatriation, etc.): a) core public funding and the need for efficient and credible tax collection systems; b) alternative financing and the need to reduce economic risk through a more balanced portfolio of revenue streams; and c) stronger alignment across education and finance legislation and policy in order to provide incentives for core and alternative financing that contributes to community economic development.

This team made the issues of tax collection and distribution top priorities to the interests of both federal and cantonal ministries. One recommendation was to build the issues of tax collection and enterprise into their curricula and into a more general effort to inform the public. Another was to insure orderly and transparent flows of tax resources.

Education can be economically generative. Income generation for teachers such as adult and nonformal educational services (computer training, foreign language teaching) and micro-enterprise activities for schools such as desktop publishing, telecommunications services, translation, technology, athletics and other community services can help generate alternative funding streams. This team made the sale of professional services using computer technology their top priority. Their approach might help the federal and cantonal ministries to leverage scarce resources to generate income both for professionals and schools.

This team recognized that the cantonal and federal governments were initiating legislation related to the finance of schools that was complex, sometimes uncoordinated, and occasionally counterproductive. They believed it was important to construct legislation and policy to support both core and alternative finance in school, no small task. One way to begin was for cantonal and federal representatives to map out the existing and planned funding flows for schools and their supporting institutions and then map current legislation to it. This would enable them to see how sustainable these flows were, and what work was needed to strengthen these systems by making them more transparent and by removing obstacles to sustainability.

The Middle Bosnia project is too important not to be visible, and too delicate to stand too much public attention before visible products are in place.

This project will need a great deal of support both from UNESCO/Paris/Geneva and concerned member states. Jaques Hallak at IIEP/Paris and Juan Carlos Tedesco at IBE/Geneva have both publicly committed their support for nations in crisis and rapid transition. Now is the time to call on their generosity.

For example, they might contribute materials and research expertise to help construct a small, mobile professional library on devolution, management training and professional development. Paris and Geneva have much to offer in terms of materials, on-line research and training services. Member states like China have much to offer in terms of education and policy experience with central issues such as decentralization and revenue generation.

Internet access now can greatly reduce the costs of accessing information services in both Paris and Geneva. Thankfully, Lynn has already initiated connections in Paris. The Sarajevo office needs to invest some time and effort in building these sustaining relationships with Paris and Geneva to ensure that BiH as a new member state develops successful long term professional contact with UNESCO. Would it make sense for IBE and the interagency working group to offer the mission some coordinating help?

There is a great deal of expertise at UNESCO on topics the project needs. The project's MIS conceptual plan must include a clear, well-focused sub-plan for the establishment of a professional development communications network that links the federal and cantonal MOEs not only to UNESCO information, training and research services in Paris and Geneva, but with other member states as well.

UNESCO should establish a visible market niche to provide member states with appropriate political and culturally sensitive responses to education in situations created by crisis, rapid transition and chronic economic stress. The future of UNESCO rests in part on its capacity to provide rapid, customized and innovative responses to member states. UNESCO should use BiH as a pilot to demonstrate how it can successfully provide needed education services to a member state mission. This success can help build momentum not only in other federation cantons, but in the Republika Srpska and other Balkans nations as well. The long term result should be a regional network of ministries of education sharing knowledge and expertise with each other within country, with Paris and Geneva, with regional neighbors, and with member states in other regions.

The mission of improved educational quality in nations in crisis and rapid transition to decentralization is part of the core UNESCO mandate. The MIS project provides a unique, perhaps unprecedented opportunity for UNESCO to provide international leadership in two dimensions. First, Middle Bosnia lies at the intersection of the three international areas of military responsibility. The UN system is therefore best qualified to manage education programs within this complex area of control. Second, decentralization pushes community-based education into a critical policy position because it is so closely linked to local tax bases and family mobility. In BiH, a highly complex political situation created by the recovery from the war, decentralization, and the need to introduce new technologies is being exacerbated by urgent repatriation issues.

UNESCO, therefore, is uniquely qualified to respond to this critical and highly visible situation. It should mobilize its core resources in Paris and Geneva to cooperate with local expertise to rapidly develop local/regional educational capacities to improve quality through professional and community networks. The MIS project is important because UNESCO currently has the institutional capacity to provide a rapid, complex, multi-level education response that takes into account the need for an efficient decentralized management system within a highly complex and fluid political situation. UNESCO has also developed strong capacities in mutli-cultural, multi-ethnic education that need to be tapped. It also has been developing distance learning capacities that could provide the MOEs with access to rich, multiple sources of information and expertise in Paris and Geneva.

This project should place special emphasis on building cooperative support from the many internal sources of support available within UNESCO and its leadership in the Interagency Working Group in Geneva, currently headquartered at IBE. A priority for the project should be the establishment of continuing lines of cooperative support for the BiH ministries of education through IIEP, IBE, ASP and other areas of UNESCO that can contribute to rapid, sensitive and complex education responses to BiH as a member state.

This response should be part of a strategy to establish high quality professional networks to improve educational quality. These networks need reliable and rapid telecommunications systems.

UNESCO's commitments to member states creates a special responsibility to them. This responsibility is to help build intergenerational educational relationships which foster continuity, coherence and civility.

Educational investments can no longer be a house divided: one for school construction to generate local jobs and one for professional training and support. School construction planning must be integrated into longer term education finance and planning. Today's overfocused short term agency budgets can too often lead to poorly leveraged strategic goals for member states.

School construction planning must be integrated into members state's strategic planning for: a) viable tax collection systems; b) transparent and credible systems of public accountability; c) community and regional economic development; and d) sophisticated and sensitive educational curricula and management.

The BiH federal and cantonal ministries of education need time, resources and training to learn to work in decentralized systems. One way of building momentum is through professional networks for mutual development.

1. Bosnian educators have little to no experience with institutional management and core financing in decentralized states, alternative forms of income generation, public consensus building through policy dialogue, etc. They need to build strong grassroots commitments to legitimate governments to ensure stable tax systems. This will require longer term commitments of members states.
2. UNESCO's members states posses a unique complex capacity needed to work in politically and economically sensitive conditions.
3. UNESCO is well-positioned to provide an effective response, but country missions need strong support across departments from external cooperative incentives to leverage its limited resources across the agency's strategic goals.
4. Longer term leveraged counterpart relationships should link professionals working in conditions of chronic economic stress so they can share their resourcefulness in regional networks that link UNESCO missions both to Paris/Geneva and to each other.
5. Bosnian ministries of education need to learn lessons from, establish professional counterpart contacts with, and create information trade highways to neighboring nations.

Bosnian education needs to be rethought in terms of its potential as: a) major stabilization effort for decentralized tax systems and a legitimate state; and b) an economic generator for community development, export and a legitimate economy. It will take a cross-sectoral team effort to manage this complexity. UNESCO has the experience needed to create sensitive strategies that highly leverage its goals in complex conditions.

Unfortunately, the decentralization and downsizing efforts at UNESCO, both in Paris/Geneva and in the regional missions have weakened their response capacities too much. Outdated technology, weak knowledge transfer systems, overfocused and weakly leveraged budgets, and limited telecommunications access have so slowed responses that it may threaten longer term international policy objectives for stabilization in BiH and for the future of UNESCO's response potential to member states.

In addition to the rich resources available at IIEP, IBE , ASP, Learning without Frontiers and many other UNESCO programs with high quality information, expertise and materials, UNESCO/BiH needs to draw on professional resources and colleagues to help build a professional development center. It should help connect education professionals first across cantons, and later across the region through outreach efforts. This center should be connected first by a document distribution library, as well as by phone and fax, and where available by the Internet. The center(s) should have hardcopy materials, as well as publishing and production capacities.

The Inter-Agency Working Group (IAWG) on education for humanitarian assistance in Geneva would be an appropriate forum for consultation among international agencies and NGOs concerned with improving educational quality through professional and community development in nations in crisis and rapid transition.

• A meeting in Geneva in the spring of 1998 with a special focus on BiH and the former Yugoslavia and the implications for professional development networks for educational quality. Short briefing papers would be shared and then reworked for the fall meeting in Sarajevo

• A meeting in Washington in the spring of 1999 with a special focus on BiH and its implications for IEQ II in nations in chronic economic stress. At this meeting a strategy for IEQ II to support regional development networks in Eastern and Central Europe should be discussed with those with expertise in the region.
• An IEQ II website to support ongoing access to state-of-the art information and expertise to education professionals working in BiH.
• A mobile professional development library and center in BiH that helps education professionals and the federation and cantonal ministries generate income.
• A themebook on improving education quality at school sites in communities with chronic economic stress. Possible topics include assessment/evaluation (academic, development), practice (active learning, professional decision-making) special populations (early childhood, special needs) and site-based management (core budgets, legislative and policy mandates, supervision, community relations, alternative finance)

• Extend the UNESCO education management and information systems project to include more cantons
• Requests to G/HCD for ABEL, IEQ II, Learn-Link materials and access to USAID information and expertise on improving educational quality through professional and community/regional economic development
• Requests to UNESCO, UNICEF, UNHCR, the World Bank for appropriate professional and community development materials
• Develop a low cost professional development center with multiple sites which would

• Co-host an international BiH education working group meeting in Sarajevo in the fall, 1998
• Generate a concept paper for the development of longer term training programs for institutional and community-based educational management

Possible Activities

• Develop cantonal professional/community development center(s) to create and share resourcefulness across sectors-education, health, business, law, law enforcement, municipal governance, etc. (curriculum materials, administrative policies, procedures and formats, relevant research, professional development mini and micro-lessons, etc.)
• Develop shared professional training programs in project management and operations, creating legislation and policy alignment, transparency and accountability of financial and legal systems, core and alternative financing with schools and local governments
• Develop community-based marketing system for professional services and materials (foreign language training, computer technology, etc.)
• Develop shared school and local information systems for communications and micro-enterprise (e-mail and Internet services, computer labs for training, etc.)
• Create leveraged community micro-enterprises (e.g. sports clubs using school facilities to charge admission, sell food and logo goods)
• Develop local and shared emergency management planning (fire, natural disasters, toxic spills, civil emergencies)

Relocate and extend BiH education working group to focus on education in an economically generative context

The BiH education working group should continue, should be relocated to BiH and should focus on improving educational quality through professional and community development. Education should be viewed as economically generative. The group should be considered a 'consultation,' meaning that it exists so that members can learn about each others' needs, contributions and potential sources for greater leverage of resources. It should be expanded to include representatives from five areas:

• Re-establish the working group so that it meets annually or semi-annually in BiH
• Focus working group activities on cantonal, federation and regional professional network development
• Co-host a meeting on professional network development to improve educational quality in Sarajevo in the fall of 1998, co-hosted by the BiH working group. Each member prepares a short institutional briefing paper that presents their perspective on the current situation relative to education and its economic context: lessons learned, recent accomplishments, identification of critical issues and how they plan to contribute to building momentum for improving education and the economy in the cantons, federation and the larger economic region (professional development for basic, early childhood, special needs and workforce development, core and alternative financing under decentralization, information systems and telecommunications, income generation/micro-enterprise and community development).
• Create a pre and post-conference follow-up website
• Restructure the current BiH websites to focus on professional networks for educational quality.
• Prepare themebooks on professional development topics identified by the group. Explore distance education and micro-lesson delivery systems.

• Prepare a dynamic, on-line case study that reflects educational policy and practice lessons learned from the war, its aftermath and recommendations for next steps. Build on national education conference report if possible

• Prepare a concept paper on the feasibility of a regional network of education development centers in BiH and the rest of the Balkans. Link the improvement of educational quality to professional and community/regional development in economically generative ways. For example, the use of video-teleconferencing and distance education for professional development can also be leveraged for other economic purposes such as training for educational entrepreneurship.

It is important to know how the MOE sees and understands its own context. The following information was primarily provided by Karakas Fahrudin, the Travnik cantonal MOE as part of the interactive, context-building session.

The Middle Bosnia canton of Travnik is comprised of 11 municipalities. The cantonal budget for this year is about 70 million DM and is invested primarily in four areas: education, health, police, and law/govt. This year education received about 22.5 million DM. Almost all of it goes into salaries. Capital budgeting for school reconstruction is managed through the international community. Very little is available for furniture, books, teaching aids and equipment.

Teacher salaries in Travnik are linked to the pre-war socialist wage index used in the former Yugoslavia. It is hierarchically ranked from 1(low)-9(high) and measured in hundredths. In the Travnik canton, those in education are indexed at 3.40 (?) for primary teachers and 3.88 for secondary school teachers. In comparison, health workers are indexed at about 3.50, police at about 4.0 and the judiciary at about 5.0.

The cantons collect income, value-added (VAT), business profit taxes, and 'contributions.' In addition, municipalities can temporarily collect income, business profit and trade and service taxes. In addition, municipalities have instituted business property improvement taxes and courts have been assessing fees.

Tax collection rates have been poor. In the first six months, the canton had collected only about 43% of their projected revenues.

The tax collection system is problematic because its rates are very high, ranging from 85 to 95%. With exemptions, this translates into about a 50% tax rate for teachers. This high rate creates major incentives for business and governments to shift wages 'off book' into the 'gray' non-taxing paying, but still legitimate economy. High tax rates do not encourage the gray economy to shift into the 'green' or taxpaying economy. These counter incentives need to be examined in light of their shorter and longer term consequences for education. In Lebanon, for example, the government has been encouraging investment in the post-war economy through low flat tax rates of 10 -20%. To what extent do the high tax rates in BiH provide disincentives both to economic growth and to the development of a high quality cadre of public service employees. Some educators at the seminar believed that high tax rates and low salaries were encouraging teachers to move into the private sector ( e.g. language teaching, technology) or to enter the gray economy by going into untaxed business and services through connections with relatives and friends.

During the war the Croats had instituted a special tax for education called a contribution. Croat schools still have it and are benefiting from it. This differentiated financing arrangement is reported by the minister in Travnik to be problematic. A joint law on salaries and taxes that will create a common tax system should go into effect soon.

Currently in Travnik, income taxes serve as the basis for tax collection. This is quite problematic because the legitimate economy is very weak. The cantonal population is currently about 200,000, down from about 335,000 before the war. There are about 3,100 people being paid in education, and about 1,100 in the police. Primary school teachers earn about 240 DM per month, secondary school teachers about 280 DM.

The low salaries have created disincentives for highly qualified teachers, especially in critical market areas such as foreign language teaching, computer technology, math and sciences. Many teachers are not adequately qualified, and little is being done to stem the flow of good teachers out of education.

The current educational situation is being exacerbated by rapidly growing needs for schools and teachers to accommodate the expected 70,000 returnees through repatriation and resettlement . The MOE estimates that over the mid-term they will need to assimilate 2,500 new students. They estimate that this will require about 100 new classrooms and 150 new teachers. There is deep concern about the impact of this burden on educational quality over the next three to five years, especially if the economy remains weak and there are inadequate incentives to pay taxes.

Children in one school in Travnik are returning from 14-15 countries. This is creating havoc in terms of systems to assess children's achievements and needs so that they can be adequately identified and placed. There are only six staff members for the entire Travnik MOE. Their heroic efforts and are resulting in great strides. They cannot, however, be asked to manage such overwhelming complexity without both federal and international support. Both the cantonal and federal ministries have received international aid, but they need skills in interagency coordination and managing complex projects, and they need access to effective MIS systems.

The federal MOE should be supporting the overburdened cantonal MOEs managing the repatriation issue, but an adequate assessment, coordinating and support system is not in place.

The situation for education in Middle Bosnia requires a longer term domestic and international commitment to both professional and community development. It is too complex to be handled either through shorter term projects or through narrowly-based programs. It requires a flexible and coherent response that allows for the participation of many competing stakeholders who can be relied on to act civilly without an overcentralized command. Where civility, defined as visible mutual regard for each others' legitimate interests, is not possible, action may be necessary to reduce the social costs created by overcompetition among stakeholders. Current efforts to manage the educational complexity in Middle Bosnia, while thoughtful and appropriate, need much more support, so that this response can remain rapid, complex, flexible and clearly building momentum. An ongoing, effective international and domestic education response will require more complex systems of communication and institutionally aligned incentives for leveraged cooperation.

Unfortunately, many international agencies are unable to respond either rapidly or longer term. These conditions reduce confidence in the international community's institutional capacity to meet stabilization policy objectives. Investments in the telecommunications critical for effective decentralized governance have yet to occur. Telecommunications technology investments in international agencies and NGOs (UNESCO, UNICEF) operating in BiH are embarrassingly weak, making it difficult for even the most experienced professionals to have needed access to an appropriate infrastructure for information and expertise. The Soros Foundation is a bright exception to this bleak picture.

Education investments necessarily have been overfocused due to erratic funding streams and short term budgeting horizons within and across agencies and NGOs. This overfocus has led to weak leverage across projects and sectors, creating obstacles to economic momentum. Facilities, telecommunications/ information systems and professional development planning remain weakly leveraged. The pervasive shorter term, disjointed project orientation across agencies may inadvertently jeopardize the strategic objectives of helping Bosnians construct a legitimate, stable state. International institutions operating in education in BiH have been remarkably successful, given extremely uncertain conditions.

Democracy building and market economies require long term sustained efforts. International education investments in BiH should focus on mid-term (three to five year) investments intended to leverage momentum toward a ten year planning horizon through a series of shorter term objectives. Domestic education (the federal and cantonal MOEs) need to focus on clear internal and external incentives that help each other maintain autonomy and cooperatively leverage scarce resources over three, five and ten year planning horizons.

This project has a brief life. Its mandate, however, is sustainability. Given the very weak economy in Middle Bosnia, it will be important to leverage resources as much as possible to develop institutional management capacities at both the federation and cantonal levels. This also means being very sensitive to issues of contractor selection. There is no escape from the political and economic colorations that contractors create, but attention to them can be reduced with a strong insistence on technical quality. The visibility of the UNESCO project means that local contractors must simply be the best available for the price.

Last year I met with senior people in the ministry and in international agencies working in Sarejevo about the establishment of Internet access to educational institutions, all roads led to Soros. They still do. It had the most advanced systems and the most knowledgeable experts. Soros has the leading reputation in Eastern Europe for information systems and telecommunications technology. They are well known because they are very hard-nosed and practical. They take on concrete and realistic projects with a very highly probability of working and becoming self-financing.

At a donors' conference on BiH held in Washington, October 1996, sponsored by USAID, Beka Vuco from Soros explained to USAID, USIS, the World Bank, UNICEF, the Japanese Embassy and others how the national foundation developed rapid and effective responses had developed during the war.

The Soros Foundation is the major Internet provider in BiH. It has recently developed the most sophisticated national website in the Balkans. The Open Society Fund Bosnia and Herzegovina will remain a major player in BiH in education after other internationals reduce their presence. Azur Ajanovic, the OSF Internet Coordinator, described Soros' plans for developing Internet access to schools in BiH. UNESCO's political and cultural expertise, combined with technical expertise from Soros-related projects may be mutually beneficial. For example, Internet websites are rapidly becoming important distance learning centers, and UNESCO already has considerable international expertise in this area. The Middle Bosnia project may provide a good opportunity for Soros and UNESCO to explore new partnerships in distance learning that benefit both institutions.

The Soros-sponsored MIT center also has a working partnership with the University of Arizona. Arizona's research on group processes (multi-site, cross-institutional MIS) is state-of-the-art. Zlatan Sabic, its deputy director, is an appropriate and excellent choice for consultation on the multi-site, cross-cantonal design for the UNESCO project.

Given the complexity, visibility and the urgency of the project, it is imperative that the conceptual plan be extremely focused and concrete. I would suggest that the project be broken out into at least three sub-projects. Each sub-project would build on the other. For example, an initial sub-project could establish a communications network for information based on regular meetings, phones, faxes, directories and short self-learning lessons. Sub-project II could establish e-mail connections and a moderated list-serve capacity for dialogue about the devolution issues chosen by UNESCO. Other sub-projects might include:

• a UNESCO/Sarajevo website with on-line rapid access to information and expertise in Paris, Geneva and elsewhere (good visibility? There is something compelling about an Internet image of creative Bosnians rising phoenix-like from the war, with more wit than resources, drawing from clever people in UNESCO and its member states);
• a video-conference on decentralization issues;
• a 'professional association' network that creates dialogue opportunities and a repository of both BiH and internationally based information and expertise, etc..

An effective technological response for Middle Bosnia will require much more than e-mail connections and accounting systems. For example a professional library of education professional materials in BiH and a circulation system could draw on the strengths of UNESCO Paris/Geneva's research, training and materials production capacities. These capacities could be drawn on not only to support professional development, but they could also be used in conjunction with locally developed income generation opportunities to generate alternative financing to sustain technology investments.

A realistic response for Middle Bosnia will require a sophisticated conceptual plan that integrates curriculum, finance and technology concerns simultaneously, not independently or sequentially.

What opportunities are realistic? The situation is quite hopeful. One year ago, telephone service was sporadic and telephone lines were too 'dirty' for adequate data transmission. New, clean telephone lines offer more opportunities for electronic data transmission than in many parts of the rural US.

One year ago the costs related to an information systems network were prohibitive, not only because of weak lines, but because of high costs for satellite access. New lines with reasonable leasing fees will be essential for future sustainable financing. These charges are always subject to change, but current fees are lower than I had estimated one year ago. One year ago, there was a great deal of concern about local cantons developing incompatible local area networks (LANs) that would be expensive to connect to each other. This should remain a visible concern, but new state-of-the-art telecommunications technologies are making these concerns obsolete with the development of Inter/Intra/Extranets.

Decentralized school systems rest on their local economies. Traditional development thinking about education as social welfare may break down in economies undergoing rapid transitions to democracies and market economies. Special needs for both core and alternative education finance come into play. First, education is a public responsibility in both democracies and market economies. In fragile states it can be critical to the development of a legitimate state because of its importance to parents. Education may be a central ally for the construction of credible tax systems.

Second, tax systems require broad-based acceptance, civility and innovation. These systems are enduringly fragile because they require some degree of public consensus around their integrity and legitimacy. The legitimacy of economically-based markets and their 'economies of merit' may be directly challenged by socially-based 'economies of cousins.' Public education is a critical policy issue in decentralizing states that need to promote economies of merit, while not losing the public benefits of economies of cousins. This is a very complex task.

Third, in many areas education is one of the largest economic activities. Construction, maintenance, transportation and other activities can have important economic consequences in terms of circulating resource flows locally. Too often these economic activities are not adequately linked to educational planning that is sensitive to needs for the construction of a legitimate government and economy. For example, international investments in school construction that are not tied to adequate and transparent financial systems may feed the 'free rider' gray or 'negative benefit' black economy in ways that do not contribute to sustainable legitimate public systems. If construction firms that are awarded international contracts use their profits to support the political campaigns of those who promise to keep the public sector weak, relatively unregulated and poorly paid, so that campaign contributors can avoid taxes; then short term international investments can have negative long term consequences that undermine critical democratic aims for stabilization.

Finally, education needs to be increasingly thought of as both a shorter and longer term economic generator. Education is closely linked to the communications industry. One way to think about schools is as communications centers. They perform vital professional and information services. Teachers may create knowledge as well as teach skills with important public and private economic consequences, especially in a complex information and technology dependent economy. New ways of thinking about schools as communications centers may help communities generate alternative financing streams to both support schools and contribute to badly needed shorter term local development.

Education quality is a major local investment that needs to be visibly connected to taxpayer, parent and student interests, even though these interests are often in conflict with each other. For example, in primary schools children's health issues are closely linked to children's ability to learn. Also, in nations with long histories of weak and unjust tax collection systems, education can help the next generation of taxpayers better understand the personal responsibilities requisite in democracies. In addition, core investments in public education can help reduce future public costs and contribute to longer term economic development For example health-related activities (school meals, hygiene, conflict resolution activities for children traumatized by repatriation and resettlement) may help reduce future medical and criminal justice costs and help contribute to future productivity quality.

There are great storehouses of information and expertise in international agencies and NGOs that should be made available to UNESCO member states in need of education for professional and community development. GINIE's mission is to help develop that support.

Schedule for Maureen W. McClure mission to UNESCO/BiH

TH Oct. 9 Arrive Sarajevo, 3 p.m. Dinner meeting with Nedim to set schedule for mission.

FR Oct. 10 Review project materials- UNESCO office, visit USAID office

SA Oct. 11 Review project-related materials -discuss implications for project with Nedim

SU Oct. 12 Plan seminar to 'fit' project direction-meet with Soros team

MO Oct. 13 Meet with OCEAN team, briefing from Colin Kaiser, plan seminar

TU Oct. 14 Meet with Soros team, prepare memo for Kaiser, meet with Lynn re seminar

WE Oct. 15 UNESCO team meet to coordinate planning

TH Oct. 16 Travel to Dubrovnik, set up and seminar planning

FR Oct. 17 Seminar

SA Oct. 18 Seminar

SU Oct 19 Debrief on seminar, travel to Sarajevo

MO Oct 20 Debrief on seminar, visit USAID

TU Oct 21 Visit Soros Foundation, travel to Pittsburgh