This document discusses the importance of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) for programs and projects. It defines monitoring as an ongoing process of collecting and analyzing data to track progress and make adjustments, while evaluation assesses relevance, effectiveness, impact and sustainability. The key aspects of building an M&E system are agreeing on outcomes to measure, selecting indicators, gathering baseline data, setting targets, monitoring implementation and results, reporting findings, and sustaining the system long-term. A strong M&E system provides evidence of achievements and challenges, enables learning and improvement, and helps ensure resources are allocated to effective programs.

1. Importance of Monitoring and
Evaluation

2. Lecture Overview
 Monitoring and Evaluation
 How to Build an M&E System

3. What is M, what is E, why and how to monitor
MONITORING & EVALUATION

4. What is Monitoring
 Ongoing process that generates information to inform decision
about the program while it is being implemented.
 Routine collection and analysis of information to track progress
against set plans and check compliance to established standards
 Helps identify trends & patterns, adapts strategies, and inform
decisions
 Key words:
• Continuous – ongoing, frequent in nature
• Collecting and analyzing information – to measure progress
towards goals
• Comparing results – assessing the performance of a
program/project

5. Why is Monitoring Important?
 Evidence of how much has been or has NOT been achieved
• Quantitative: numbers, percentage
• Qualitative: narrative or observation
 Examination of trends
 Highlight problems
 Early warning signs
 Corrective actions
 Evaluate effectiveness of management action
 Determine achievement of results

6. What is Evaluation
 Evaluation is an assessment of an intervention to determine its
relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, and sustainability. The
intention is to provide information that is credible and useful,
enabling incorporation of lessons learned into decision making
processes.
 Key Words:
• Assessment – of the value of an event of action
• Relevance
• Efficiency
• Effectiveness
• Impact
• Sustainability
• Lessons learned

7. What is Evaluation?
Evaluation
Program
Evaluation
Impact
Evaluation

8. What is M and what is E?
Monitoring
Measures progress towards
goals, but doesn’t tell us the
extent to which results
achieved or the impact
Continuous, frequent
Has to take place during the
intervention
Evaluation
Measures whether progress
towards goal is caused by
the intervention - causality
Infrequent, time bound
Can evaluate ongoing or
completed intervention

9. Monitoring and Evaluation
Evaluation
Program
Evaluation
Impact
Evaluation
Monitoring

10. Components of Program Evaluation
 What are the characteristics of the target population?
What are the risks and opportunities? What
programs are most suitable?
 What is the logical chain connecting our program to
the desired results?
 Is the program being rolled out as planned? Is their
high uptake among clients? What do they think of it?
 What was the impact and the magnitude of the
program?
 Given the magnitude of impact and cost, how
efficient is the program?
Needs assessment
Program theory
assessment
Monitoring and
process evaluation
Impact evaluation
Cost effectiveness
Are your questions connected to decision-making?

11. Evaluation
Programme
Evaluation
Impact
Evaluation
Program Evaluation

12. Who is this Evaluation For?
 Academics
 Donors
• Their Constituents
 Politicians / policymakers
 Technocrats
 Implementers
 Proponents, Skeptics
 Beneficiaries

13. How can Impact Evaluation Help Us?
 Answers the following questions
• What works best, why and when?
• How can we scale up what works?
 Surprisingly little hard evidence on what works
 Can do more with given budget with better evidence
 If people knew money was going to programmes that worked, could
help increase pot for anti-poverty programmes

14. Programs and their Evaluations: Where do we Start?
Intervention
 Start with a problem
 Verify that the problem actually
exists
 Generate a theory of why the
problem exists
 Design the program
 Think about whether the
solution is cost effective
Program Evaluation
 Start with a question
 Verify the question hasn’t been
answered
 State a hypothesis
 Design the evaluation
 Determine whether the value
of the answer is worth the cost
of the evaluation

15. Endline
Evaluation
Life Cycle of a Program
Baseline
Evaluation
Change or
improvement
Distributing
reading
materials and
training
volunteers
• Reading
materials delivered
• Volunteers
trained
• Target children
are reached
• Classes are run,
volunteers show up
• Attendance in
classes
• Entire district is
covered
• Refresher training of
teachers
• Tracking the target
children, convincing
parents to send their child
• Incentives to volunteer to
run classes daily and
efficiently (motivation)
• Efforts made for children
to attend regularly
• Improve coverage
Theory of
Change/ Needs
Assessment
Designing
the program
to implement
Background
preparation,
logistics, roll
out of
program
Monitoring
implementati
on
• Process
evaluation
• Progress towards
target
Planning for
continuous
improvement
Reporting
findings -
impact,
process
evaluation
findings
Using the
findings to
improve
program
model and
delivery

16. Program Theory – a Snap Shot
Impacts
Outcomes
Outputs
Activities
Inputs
Results
Implementation

17. With a Focus on measuring both implementation and results?
HOW TO BUILD AN M&E SYSTEM

18. Methods of Monitoring
 First hand information
 Citizens reporting
 Surveys
 Formal reports by project/programme staff
• Project status report
• Project schedule chart
• Project financial status report
• Informal Reports
• Graphic presentations

19. Monitoring: Questions
 Is the intervention implemented as designed? Does the program
perform?
Inputs Outputs Outcomes
Implementation
Plans and
targets
 Is intervention money, staff and other inputs available and put to
use as planned? Are inputs used effectively?
 Are the services being delivered as planned?
 Is the intervention reaching the right population and target
numbers?
 Is the target population satisfied with services? Are they utilizing the
services?
 What is the intensity of the treatment?

20. Implementing Monitoring
 Develop a monitoring plan
• How should implementation be carried out? What is going to be
changed?
• Are the staff’s incentives aligned with project? Can they be
incentivized to follow the implementation protocol?
• How will you train staff? How will they interact with beneficiaries
or other stakeholders?
• What supplies or tools can you give your staff to make following
the implementation design easier?
• What can you do to monitor? (Field visits, tracking forms,
administrative data, etc.)
• Intensity of monitoring (frequency, resources required,…)?

21. Ten Steps to a Results-based Monitoring and Evaluation
System
Conducting a
readiness
and needs
assessment
Selecting key
indicators to
monitor
outcomes
Planning for
improvement
selecting
realistic targets
Using
evaluation
information
Using findings
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Agreeing on
outcomes to
monitor and
evaluate
Gathering
baseline data
on indicators
Monitoring for
results
Reporting
findings
Sustaining the
M&E system
within the
organization

22. Conducting a needs and
readiness assessment
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
 What are the current systems that exist?
 What is the need for the monitoring and evaluation?
 Who will benefit from this system?
 At what levels will the data be used?
 Do we have organization willingness and capacity to establish the M&E
system?
 Who has the skills to design and build the M&E system? Who will
manage?
 What are the barriers to implementing M&E system on the ground
(resource-crunch)?
 How will you fight these barriers?
 Will there be pilot programs that can be evaluated within the M&E
system?
- DO WE GO AHEAD?

23. Agreeing on outcomes
(to monitor and evaluate)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
 What are we trying to achieve? What is the vision that our M&E system
will help us achieve?
 Are there national or sectoral goals (commitment to achieving the
MDGs)?
 Political/donor driven interest in goals?
 In other words, what are our Outcomes: Improving coverage, learning
outcomes… broader than focusing on merely inputs and activities

24. Selecting key indicators
to monitor outcomes
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
 Identify WHAT needs to get measured so that we know we have
achieved our results?
 Avoid broad based results, but assess based on feasibility, time,
cost, relevance
 Indicator development is a core activity in building an M&E system
and drives all subsequent data collection, analysis, and reporting
 Arriving at indicators will take come time
 Identify plans for data collection, analysis, reporting
PILOT! PILOT! PILOT!

25. Gathering baseline data
on indicators
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
 Where are we today?
 What is the performance of indicators today?
 Sources of baseline information: Primary or Secondary data
 Date types: Qualitative or Quantitative
 Data collection instruments

26. Planning for
improvement selecting
realistic targets
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
 Targets – quantifiable levels of the indicators
 Sequential, feasible and measurable targets
 If we reach our sequential set of targets, then we will reach our
outcomes!
 Time bound – Universal enrolment by 2015 (outcome – better economic
opportunities), Every child immunized by 2013 (outcome - reduction in
infant mortality) etc.
 Funding and resources available to be taken into account
Target
1
Target
2
Target
3
Outcomes

27. Monitoring for
implementation and
results
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Impacts
Outcomes
Outputs
Activities
Inputs
Results
Implementation
Results
monitoring
Implementation
monitoring
Change in percentage children
who cannot read; Change in
teacher attendance
Provision of materials; training
of volunteers; usage of
material; number of volunteers
teaching

28. Evaluation(?), Using
Evaluation Information
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Monitoring does not information on attribution and causality. Information
through Evaluation can be useful to
 Helps determine are the right things being done
 Helps select competing strategies by comparing results – are there
better ways of doing things?
 Helps build consensus on scale-up
 Investigate why something did not work – scope for in-depth
analysis
 Evaluate the costs relative to benefits and help allocate limited
resources

29. Reporting findings
Sustaining M&E System
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Using Results
 Reporting Findings: What findings are reported to whom, in what format,
and at what intervals. A good M&E system should provide an early warning
system to detect problems or inconsistencies, as well as being a vehicle for
demonstrating the value of an intervention – so do not hide poor results.
 Using Results: recognize both internal and external uses of your results
 Sustaining the M&E System: Some ways of doing this are generating
demand, assigning responsibilities, increasing capacity, gather ing
trustworthy data.

30. THANK YOU