1. Government monitoring and
evaluation systems
PME 500: FUNDAMENTALS OF MONITORING AND EVALUATION
November 25, 2019
Andrew Mutuku
University of Nairobi ISO 9001:2008 1 Certified http://www.uonbi.ac.ke
2. Outline of the presentation
Introduction
World bank support for
poverty reduction strategies
World bank lessons from
experience
2
3. Introduction
Governments are working to improve their
performance by creating monitoring &
evaluation systems to measure their
performance
Monitoring & evaluation information can
improve the quality of government decisions &
the effectiveness of government operations
Monitoring & evaluation is necessary to achieve
evidence-based policy making, evidence-based
management,&evidence-based accountability
(Mackay, 2007) 3
4. Introduction cont’d
Monitoring & evaluation information can
support government’s deliberations by
providing evidence about the most cost-
effective activities e.g. different types of
employment programmes, health
interventions, or conditional cash transfer
payments
Monitoring & evaluation also helps government
ministries & agencies manage activities at the
sector, programme, & project levels
4
5. Introduction cont’d
Monitoring & evaluation identifies the
most efficient use of available
resources
Performance indicators can be used to
track cost & performance comparisons
(performance benchmarking) among
different administrative units, regions,
& districts
5
6. Introduction cont’d
Monitoring&evaluation enhances
transparency & supports accountability
relationships by revealing the extent to which
government has attained its desired objectives
Monitoring & evaluation also supports the
accountability relationships within
government, such as between sector
ministries & central ministries, among agencies
& sector ministries, & between ministers,
managers, and staff
6
7. World Bank support for Poverty
Reduction Strategies
World Bank & other donors are now devoting
efforts to help countries measure their
performance in poorer countries working to
achieve MDGs/SGDs & other policy objectives
These strategies aim to measure the extent of
country success in poverty-reduction efforts using
performance indicators
Donor support focuses on the capacities of
national statistical offices & their statistical
systems
7
8. World Bank support for Poverty
Reduction Strategies cont’d
Assistance has included conducting
population censuses & household surveys
Poor countries in Africa & other regions
have difficulties strengthening their
monitoring systems, both in terms of
data production & especially in terms of
data utilization (World Bank &
International Monetary Fund, 2004; Bedi
& others, 2006)
8
9. World Bank support for Poverty
Reduction Strategies cont’d
Poverty reduction strategies focus on the
amount of budget & donor resources spent on
national development priorities & country
progress against the MDGs/SGDs
The missing link are the performance
indicators involving government activities,
outputs & services provided & their outcomes;
& in-depth evaluative evidence linking
government actions to actual results on the
ground 9
10. World Bank support for Poverty
Reduction Strategies cont’d
MDGs/SGDs provide a measure of country
performance but do not reveal the contributions of
the government compared with donors, the private
sector & civil society groups such as NGOs
Due to lack of funds, skills & demand, poorer
countries tend to rely on donors to conduct
evaluations & reviews
The move towards greater use of programmatic
donor lending to governments offers one way to
facilitate joint monitoring & evaluation work by
governments & donors
10
11. World Bank support for Poverty
Reduction Strategies cont’d
In Uganda, for example, the World Bank &
other donors provide programmatic budget
support to the government (Hauge, 2003)
This type of lending requires a focus on results
or outcomes of development assistance
It also requires a greater reliance on country
systems for national statistics & for
monitoring & evaluation of government
programmes
11
12. World Bank support for government
monitoring and evaluation systems
Major donors e.g. the World Bank provide support to
countries in strengthening their government
monitoring & evaluation systems
This includes loans; grants; technical assistance
including training; resource materials on good
practice; &, support for communities of practice
concerned with monitoring & evaluation & results
For instance in Latin American region, the World Bank
is currently working with over 12 governments to help
them strengthen their monitoring & evaluation
systems
12
13. World Bank support for government
monitoring and evaluation systems cont’d
World Bank support includes loans to
strengthen a government’s public sector
management or to strengthen the work of
sector ministries
Some of these are designed to build a
whole-of-government monitoring&
evaluation system, focusing on
performance indicators, rapid evaluations &
impact evaluations 13
14. World Bank support for government
monitoring and evaluation systems cont’d
They also support the conduct of rigorous impact
evaluations as one component of sectoral activities,
particularly in the health, education & social security
sectors
They also support the strengthening of national
statistical systems
They fund activities such as diagnoses of a country’s
existing monitoring & evaluation systems, provision of
monitoring & evaluation training & seminars to raise
awareness among senior officials &, sometimes, the
conduct of individual evaluations
14
15. World Bank support for government
monitoring and evaluation systems cont’d
Monitoring & evaluation training is also provided by
the World Bank
This training includes one-week introductory courses
in monitoring & evaluation, & advanced workshops in
impact evaluation offered by the World Bank Institute
The World Bank has published a wide range of material
on how to build government monitoring & evaluation
systems, including country case studies & diagnoses;
conference proceedings; examples of influential
evaluations; handbooks on evaluation & performance
indicators (Mackay, 2007)
15
16. World Bank support for government
monitoring and evaluation systems cont’d
The Bank(the Independent Evaluation Group)
, has provided financial & other support to a
global evaluation association (the
International Development Evaluation
Association, IDEAS), regional evaluation
associations such as the African Evaluation
Association (AfrEA) & the Latin America &
Caribbean network (ReLAC), & to national
evaluation associations in Kenya & Uganda,
among others 16
17. World Bank support for government
monitoring and evaluation systems cont’d
World Bank support has been
provided jointly with donors such as
UNICEF; the African Development
Bank; the Development Bank of
Southern Africa; &, with bilateral
donors such as the Netherlands,
Norway & the United Kingdom
17
18. Collaborative work with other donors
World Bank works closely with other development
partners
The 2002 Monterrey conference agreed that it was
important to provide more funding for development,
but that more money alone was not enough
Donors & partner countries wanted to be sure that Aid
was being used effectively; they also wanted to be able
to demonstrate the results of that Aid
This led to three subsequent international roundtables:
in Marrakech (2004); Paris (2005); and, Hanoi (2007),
on managing for development results
18
19. Collaborative work with other donors
cont’d
It has also led to explicit commitments to support country
efforts in this area
These commitments center around specific actions to increase
country ownership, harmonization, alignment, managing for
results, & mutual accountability for the use of Aid
This work has also led to the preparation of a resource
material -Sourcebook on Emerging Good Practice in Managing
for Development Results
This sourcebook provides a number of country case studies of
government monitoring & evaluation systems (at the national,
sector, programme & project levels), and of monitoring &
evaluation in civil society & the private sector
19
20. World Bank lessons from experience
i) Substantive demand from the government is a prerequisite to
successful institutionalization
M&E system must produce monitoring information & evaluation
findings which are judged valuable by key stakeholders, that are
used to improve government performance, & that respond to a
sufficient demand for the monitoring & evaluation function to
ensure its funding & its sustainability for the foreseeable future
Absence of real demand for monitoring & evaluation
information, can a barrier
Governments can put in place systems to conduct monitoring &
evaluation & to use monitoring information & evaluation findings
An additional dimension to the demand side is having a powerful
champion e.g. ministers
20
21. World Bank lessons from experience cont’d
Such a champion would usually require close support from a capable
ministry that can design, develop, & manage a monitoring &
evaluation system
ii) Avoid the common danger of over-engineering a monitoring and
evaluation system
Means having an excessive number of performance indicators, or by
having multiple & uncoordinated monitoring & evaluation systems
(e.g. Uganda)
Excessive data collection is not only a waste of scarce monitoring
resources; it also can lead to a situation where data providers have
little incentive to provide accurate data because they know the
information will not be used
An audit of data systems & a diagnosis of data capacities is a useful
undertaking
21
22. World Bank lessons from experience cont’d
National statistical offices have the capacity to play an important
role because of their expertise in conducting surveys & censuses,
and in data management
Over-engineering a monitoring & evaluation system would reflect a
supply-driven view of monitoring & evaluation
iii) The structural arrangements of a monitoring and evaluation
system are important
These include arrangements for data verification & auditing
They also include whether evaluations are to be conducted
internally within government, or contracted out to academia &
consultants
An overly-centralized approach can dissuade sector ministries from
making use of monitoring & evaluation information which has been
mandated by central ministries such as the finance or planning
ministries 22
23. World Bank lessons from experience cont’d
IV) importance of conducting a diagnosis of existing
monitoring and evaluation functions
It’s important to understand the strengths & weaknesses of
the monitoring & evaluation currently being conducted, on
both the demand & supply sides
Such diagnoses are useful not just for the information &
insights they provide, but also because they can be a vehicle
for raising the shared awareness of stakeholders in
government, civil society, & the donor community about the
importance of monitoring & evaluation and the need to build
a new system or strengthen existing systems
They also provide a baseline against which future efforts to
institutionalize monitoring & evaluation can be compared
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24. World Bank lessons from experience cont’d
countries which have successfully built monitoring
& evaluation systems (such as Chile, Colombia,
Australia & the United States, among others),
have found that it requires patience & persistence
It takes time to create or strengthen data systems;
to train or recruit qualified staff; to plan, manage
& conduct evaluations; to build systems for
sharing monitoring & evaluation information
among ministries; & to train staff to use
monitoring & evaluation information in their day-
to-day work
24
25. World Bank lessons from experience
cont’d
This experience provides a strong argument for the
regular monitoring & evaluation of the monitoring
& evaluation system itself, with the objective of
finding out what is working well, what is not, and
why
Such evaluations provide the opportunity to
review both the demand & the supply sides of the
equation & to clarify the actual extent of utilization
of monitoring & evaluation information, as well as
the particular ways in which it is being used
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27. Vision:
A world-class university committed to scholarly
excellence
The University of Nairobi
University of Nairobi ISO 9001:2008 27 Certified http://www.uonbi.ac.ke
