Very interesting discussion and full marks to Marika for making the distinction between reporting and communicating. There is plenty of reporting, but little communicating, in the same way that there are plenty of lessons but not much learning.
In an ideal world perhaps the solution should be to say that no one was to have a hand in project preparation and design until they have done at least five years of M&E.
As it is, in this imperfect world, it is almost inevitable that the jelly will always fall off the plate and never reaches project designers.
Why is this? Well, for starters, in projects for agricultural/rural development lasting around five years by the time the Project Completion Report (PCR) or Implementation Completion Report (ICR) or Implementation Completion and Results Report (ICRR) comes out in, say, Year 7, all the cast who were involved in project design have moved on or disappeared.
Others have already mentioned that M&E pumps, but there is no tube directly connecting what M&E produces with those involved in project design and implementation. Funding agencies have tried to cover this deficieny by periodically publishing collections of lessons learned from PCRs (or ICRs or ICRRs). In order to make these relevant to the general reader the lessons are so boiled down as to appear almost banal, such as "Lack of ownership and legitimacy for project outputs /outcomes caused by lack of adequate stakeholder participation / representation" (https://www.unep.org/resources/other-evaluation-reportsdocuments/unep-e… ).
Such groanings do not make exciting reading. Moreover they are unlikely to carry much weight with highly motivated project designers or managers whose motto is all too often "I did it my way"
As if all this was not enough there are the various political pressures in government to skew project design in one direction or another; particular polcy ideas or fashions on the part of the funding agency and occasionally the impact of Messianic staff or consultants projecting their own miracle cures.
The result of all this is that little if any attention is paid to past experience and often the same mistakes are made over and over again - such as:
- assuming that all government agencies will cooperate without individual funding - when it is very clear that no budget, no activity or collaboration.
- including project items that require legislation - promised on Day1 but may take over 5 years.
- "strengthening" the project by sending many staff off for training - just when they are most needed.
- insuring all will go well by having some luminary imported project manager, who for a number of reasons only arrives in Year 3
- expecting project staff to make regular visits to remote project sites - when government insists severe control of travel costs.
- project activities both complex and extensive in area - when main constraint is project management capacity.
One further problem is that financing agencies often want to "do something new". For whatever reason it is often decided after a succession of similar projects, just when everything is going smoothly and lessons from earlier project phases are in fact being embodied in later tranches of lending that the financing institution FI moves away and any linkage between M&E and project design is thereby broken.
In trying to answer the three questions I think the onus should be on the project designers/implementers to do due diligence before getting into project design to see what lessons have been learned from previous operations - it is for them to dig up the PCRs, ICRs and ICRRs and try to incorporate the findings in the new project's design..
RE: Reporting evaluation results or communicating evaluation results?
Very interesting discussion and full marks to Marika for making the distinction between reporting and communicating. There is plenty of reporting, but little communicating, in the same way that there are plenty of lessons but not much learning.
In an ideal world perhaps the solution should be to say that no one was to have a hand in project preparation and design until they have done at least five years of M&E.
As it is, in this imperfect world, it is almost inevitable that the jelly will always fall off the plate and never reaches project designers.
Why is this? Well, for starters, in projects for agricultural/rural development lasting around five years by the time the Project Completion Report (PCR) or Implementation Completion Report (ICR) or Implementation Completion and Results Report (ICRR) comes out in, say, Year 7, all the cast who were involved in project design have moved on or disappeared.
Others have already mentioned that M&E pumps, but there is no tube directly connecting what M&E produces with those involved in project design and implementation. Funding agencies have tried to cover this deficieny by periodically publishing collections of lessons learned from PCRs (or ICRs or ICRRs). In order to make these relevant to the general reader the lessons are so boiled down as to appear almost banal, such as "Lack of ownership and legitimacy for project outputs /outcomes caused by lack of adequate stakeholder participation / representation" (https://www.unep.org/resources/other-evaluation-reportsdocuments/unep-e… ).
Such groanings do not make exciting reading. Moreover they are unlikely to carry much weight with highly motivated project designers or managers whose motto is all too often "I did it my way"
As if all this was not enough there are the various political pressures in government to skew project design in one direction or another; particular polcy ideas or fashions on the part of the funding agency and occasionally the impact of Messianic staff or consultants projecting their own miracle cures.
The result of all this is that little if any attention is paid to past experience and often the same mistakes are made over and over again - such as:
- assuming that all government agencies will cooperate without individual funding - when it is very clear that no budget, no activity or collaboration.
- including project items that require legislation - promised on Day1 but may take over 5 years.
- "strengthening" the project by sending many staff off for training - just when they are most needed.
- insuring all will go well by having some luminary imported project manager, who for a number of reasons only arrives in Year 3
- expecting project staff to make regular visits to remote project sites - when government insists severe control of travel costs.
- project activities both complex and extensive in area - when main constraint is project management capacity.
One further problem is that financing agencies often want to "do something new". For whatever reason it is often decided after a succession of similar projects, just when everything is going smoothly and lessons from earlier project phases are in fact being embodied in later tranches of lending that the financing institution FI moves away and any linkage between M&E and project design is thereby broken.
In trying to answer the three questions I think the onus should be on the project designers/implementers to do due diligence before getting into project design to see what lessons have been learned from previous operations - it is for them to dig up the PCRs, ICRs and ICRRs and try to incorporate the findings in the new project's design..