Using Evaluation to Promote Better Project Monitoring & Evaluation
Been gone for a year and a half working in Jakarta, Indonesia as a Monitoring & Evaluation and Communications Officer at the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (AANZFTA) Support Unit within the ASEAN Secretariat. The unit monitors and assist various AANZFTA parties in implementing policy and capacity development projects supported by the AANZFTA Economic Cooperation Support Program (AECSP).
For more information on the AANZFTA and the AECSP, please visit: http://aanzfta.asean.org/
AANZFTA parties are government agencies mostly from the Trade Ministries of the 12 countries. While their technical knowledge on trade issues are exceptional, information on whether projects are achieving their intended outcomes are generally weak owing to the following factors:
1. Lack of awareness, understanding, and appreciation on the value of M&E in the context of implementing international development projects;
2. Lack of capacity to implement M&E expectations of donors/dialogue partners exacerbated by the lack of resourcing and planning for M&E activities;
3. Weaknesses in design, specifically vague/unmeasurable outcome statements, absence of any baseline data, and weak analysis of how project activities could achieve intended outcomes, including the factors/conditions required to achieve project success; and
4. General suspicion and avoidance of evaluation/M&E possibly based on negative past experience on how evaluation was conducted, the accuracy of findings that were reported, and the feasibility of recommendations.
The challenge of changing people's perception and behavior on M&E required gaining the trust of project implementers and demonstrating the value of M&E not only for external accountability to the funders of projects but also to validate approaches that worked and what could be improved to enhance achievement of positive outcomes.
One such approach I trialed was to propose case studies to highlight and document positive outcomes and success stories of projects. While the conduct of case studies had been previously proposed by the parties, the focus solely on success was something new and was intentional as the primary objective was to get M&E buy-in from project implementers. I also wanted to show implementers the type of data that could be gathered when they conduct M&E activities. I believed that the lack of appreciation of the value of M&E could be erased by presenting implementers with evidence and data that described the change process within institutions and the various factors that contributed to these changes.
Copies of the two studies I conducted are available in the following links below:
The above approach worked! Project implementers positively received the case studies and found the findings to be useful in communicating exactly how they are contributing to positive institutional change. Implementers also valued the analysis of factors that led to success and to sustaining reforms. These confirmed implementation approaches that could be maintained and/or strengthened while providing other beneficiaries with a glimpse of what they could do to ensure success in their own institutions.
