The Evalution Capacity Development (ECD) unit of World Bank’s Operations Evaluation Department is designed to help countries strengthen their monitoring and evaluation (M&E) capacity. The unit targets ‘high-intensity’ support to Uganda and Egypt and various other types of support to an additional 32 countries. This paper from the World Bank collates some of the main lessons learned from ECD activities and outlines the major issues which need to be addressed.
Experience shows that almost any regime can produce short-lived results, but only governments with a sound basis of legitimacy can produce sustainable ones. Because, in the public sector, this can only be verified after many years, attention must be paid to the governance context within which M&E capacity is to be built. Strong governance, accountability and transparency must all be considered when evaluating the likelihood of the long-term sustainability of public management policies and programmes.
In developing countries, M&E should be introduced at an early stage in the reform process. A good understanding of local realities, particularly institutional and administrative capacity, is required to accurately define an appropriate scope and timeframe for ECD assistance. The following issues must be addressed early in the implementation of ECD activities:
- Evaluation may be approached through assessment of met objectives or of achieved results. Objective assessment is required for the long-gestating impact of M&E capacity improvements, complemented by mid-term assessments and close collaboration between M&E capacity efforts and donors.
- Government in-house or independent M&E capacity? Whilst both have their strengths and weaknesses, experience shows that thorough evaluations require substantial resources which are lacking in most developing countries’ governments. Creating M&E capacity requires evaluation capacity fostered outside of government and direct help to create strong in-house capacity to design, guide and monitor the external evaluator.
- The interaction between the executive and the legislature is important for future M&E capacity building, both in terms of the legislative capacity to impact intelligently on budget formulation and the assessment of budget execution.
- Performance measurement is a means and not an end. Performance indicators must be simple and clear and chosen with participation from front-line staff and service-users. Their effectiveness should be assessed regularly and adjusted. Expansion must incorporate feedback.
- Most ECD work to date has focused on macro-level issues, but support for M&E depends on visible results on the ground, requiring improvement at sector ministry level, and even at the level of specific public services.
- The preponderance of evidence demonstrates the importance for developing countries to focus on the step-by-step problem analysis of M&E capacity. However, there must also be a larger vision of what ECD ‘success’ looks like.
Building effective M&E capacity is neither quick nor easy:
- Even in highly advanced countries, the evaluation system suffers from some of the same pitfalls evident in developing countries: weak piloting, overstated achievements, ambiguous results and timing discontinuities.
- The current systems of M&E and programme reviews emerged from almost 30 years of experimentation, learning, and required sustained efforts at strengthening institutional, organisational and human capacity.
- Steady and sustained support from international donors and intelligent and realistic sequencing of ECD assistance is essential to the process.
