I would like to share the Sri Lankan experience. In Sri Lanka the Evaluation Policy reached the legislation after 16 years and was launched in Sep 19th 2018. The Policy framework is now under construction. I have been through this process all these years and now are a member of the National Policy Framework Technical committee.
First and foremost, it is important to create a culture of evaluation and key activities can fall under three broad areas:
Enabling environment,
Institutional Capacity,
Individual capacity in the country at all levels from national to sub national government.
If the country does not have a Policy on Evaluation it is necessary to develop it in order to create the legally bonded “must” culture. However, policy alone is not enough to create a culture, which needs the following activities:
Enabling environment, creating a demand before the supply
Do not wait for the whole government but can do it organization by organization.
If the government has a central agency who already does monitoring you could add or transform the mandate to Monitoring and Evaluation.
Setting up national policy combined with sub-national.
All the international donor funded intervention (INGO’s, Finance organizations etc): at the time of the contracting government should/could ask for a joint evaluation activity (i.e. evaluation team will comprise with Government and funding organization members) it is very much a lesson learning exercise that will help in creating ownership too.
Set up a “must” activities and embed the evaluation into that with inclusiveness in every government own program/intervention/project either nationally or sub nationally.
Lobbying the legislation either upper house/lower house/senate on policy on evaluation through members who are champion of good governance. Even few members can have a large impact.
Create more awareness by utilizing your VOPEs and other Professional Associations.
2. Institutional Capacity: policy and frameworks take a long time to materialize. Therefore creating awareness on “what is evaluation” and “how” will benefit to their work and knowledge among the government institution and can make a tremendous impact. Take this message and promote the upcoming policy and framework even it is not yet ready.
Target institutional capacity for:
Government and Sub –National institutes
Academia – Setting up workshops and other possible certificate or diploma programmes by practitioners of the field of evaluation.
Institutes like Project Management, Government Administration training institutes, universities etc.
Private sector institutes under Project Management etc.
3. Individual capacity: this is important to create the culture.
However, it is better that above centres enroll all the members of the working world to adopt as part of their job as learning and implementing evaluation “Must”
Challenges:
Resources and Practitioners in the country also need international support in order to upgrade the skills and methods. i.e. evaluation is not a uniform effort it’s change all the time, methods, approaches norms and standards etc.
Make it important and vital also how to create demanding culture,
Evaluation is very costly and how do you show the authorities that it is Value for Money.
Raise awareness to all via language they understand. i.e. legislation, individuals and institutional level too.
If you need any clarification or any other assistance, please ask me I am happy to help.
RE: How to Measure the Impact of Monitoring and Evaluation Work
Dear Abubakar Muhammad Moki,
I would like to share the Sri Lankan experience. In Sri Lanka the Evaluation Policy reached the legislation after 16 years and was launched in Sep 19th 2018. The Policy framework is now under construction. I have been through this process all these years and now are a member of the National Policy Framework Technical committee.
First and foremost, it is important to create a culture of evaluation and key activities can fall under three broad areas:
If the country does not have a Policy on Evaluation it is necessary to develop it in order to create the legally bonded “must” culture. However, policy alone is not enough to create a culture, which needs the following activities:
2. Institutional Capacity: policy and frameworks take a long time to materialize. Therefore creating awareness on “what is evaluation” and “how” will benefit to their work and knowledge among the government institution and can make a tremendous impact. Take this message and promote the upcoming policy and framework even it is not yet ready.
Target institutional capacity for:
3. Individual capacity: this is important to create the culture.
However, it is better that above centres enroll all the members of the working world to adopt as part of their job as learning and implementing evaluation “Must”
Challenges:
If you need any clarification or any other assistance, please ask me I am happy to help.