After early setbacks, Mexico is wiring 2,000 libraries.

In 2002, we made a grant to Mexico's ministry of culture, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (CONACULTA), to support public access computing in about one-third of the country's 6,000 libraries. In October, we made the final payment of the $30 million grant. We anticipate that Mexico will be able to provide public access computing in 2,200 libraries—7 percent more than its original goal. Despite this success, in the spring of 2005, before the final payment was made, the project faced major challenges.

The most significant problem was a lack of capacity to manage such a complex program, which was especially evident in the project's connectivity component; about half the libraries that were supposed to be wired by 2005 weren't, and the half that were wired didn't have adequate bandwidth. In April, we expressed our concerns during a meeting with key players in Mexico. Mexican officials spent the next two months diagnosing problems and devising a revised plan that included a detailed timetable and spelled out specific milestones toward the desired connectivity and other key goals. With additional foundation funding, they also hired two new project managers. These efforts got the project back on track, and we made the third payment.

We learned a number of valuable lessons from this experience that will inform our strategies for future projects in other countries:

• We must focus on project management. We included funds for project management in our third grant payment to Mexico and will continue to do so for future international grants.
• We must give more consideration to collaboration within governments. We worked primarily with CONACULTA, but to get the project done, the ministries of education and communication and transportation had to be involved as well. Now these ministries are working together. Our future efforts will also involve national, state, and municipal governments.
• We must develop feasible, step-by-step plans in partnership with countries. Mexico's original plan was developed by a private consulting firm, and Mexico's team believed it didn't have enough input and didn't feel invested in its success.