The international development community often thinks about monitoring and evaluation (M&E) for accountability reasons. After all, donor governments donate resources to developing countries in an effort to make the world a better, more equitable place. We, as development organisations and consultants are trusted implementers of programmes and thus must use resources in a way that the donor governments envision. Accountability focused M&E asks questions like: did the implementers deliver the books, medicine, or training that we asked them to deliver? Are you using limited resources in a manner that would be approved by the funders? Are we ensuring that there is no waste?
This view of M&E has its limits. It only speaks to constrained resources and it makes monitoring and evaluation efforts almost an auditing exercise. There could even be a negative effect on strengthening M&E worldwide, because recipient institutions of the donor funds may interpret accountability as lack of trust. The narrow view of M&E as auditing closes the door to learning from the experience of managing and implementing programmes.
Our new job today is to enhance the M&E practice and message. The fundamental questions in M&E should be:
• What have we learned from our experience in development efforts?
• What are we learning today from the current implementation programmes?
• What can we say about the impact?
• How is it affecting people's lives?
• How successful are we being in transforming the world?
• Are we sure that the intended recipients are benefiting ?
• How would people have fared had the programme not been implemented?
• What can we learn about sustainability?
Of course, given the human dynamics and the myriad of variables that affect our lives, including all those factors that are driving globalisation, these questions are not easily answered. But, we must first begin with the questions, and with the intention to getting those answers. Ultimately, our success will be measured by how well we move the world from one of needing assistance to one that needs our expertise as advisers on occasion. We must start with the goal of changing the donor-recipient perception of M&E, and to successfully do that, we must first refocus M&E as a tool that will help us learn from every implementation programme. We must begin by transforming ourselves.
Dr Rose Mary Garcia is director of monitoring and evaluation at Crown Agents USA
Join Dr Garcia and other experts in the field for a live debate on impact evaluation this Tuesday, 7 May from 1-3pm BST / 8-10am EDT
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