This post title was prompted by my reading of Daniel Ticehurst’s paper (below), and some of my reading of literature on complexity theory and on data mining.
First, Daniel’s paper: “Who is listening to whom, and how well and with what effect? Daniel Ticehurst, October 16th, 2012. 34 pages
Abstract:
“I am a so called Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) specialist although, as this paper hopefully reveals, my passion is monitoring. Hence I dislike the collective term ‘M&E’. I see them as very different things. I also dislike the setting up of Monitoring and especially Evaluation units on development aid programmes: the skills and processes necessary for good monitoring should be an integral part of management; and evaluation should be seen as a different function. I often find that ‘M&E’ experts, driven by donor insistence on their presence backed up by so-called evaluation departments with, interestingly, no equivalent structure, function or capacity for monitoring, over-complicate the already challenging task of managing development programmes. The work of a monitoring specialist, to avoid contradicting myself, is to help instil an understanding of the scope of what a good monitoring process looks like. Based on this, it is to support those responsible for managing programmes to work together in following this process through so as to drive better, not just comment on, performance.”
“I have spent most of my 20 years in development aid working on long term assignments mainly in various countries in Africa and exclusively on ‘M&E’ across the agriculture and private sector development sectors hoping to become a decent consultant. Of course, just because I have done nothing else but ‘M&E.’ does not mean I excel at both. However, it has meant that I have had opportunities to make mistakes and learn from them and the work of others. I make reference to the work of others throughout this paper from which I have learnt and continue to learn a great deal.”
“The purpose of this paper is to stimulate debate on what makes for good monitoring. It draws on my reading of history and perceptions of current practice, in the development aid and a bit in the corporate sectors. I dwell on the history deliberately as it throws up some good practice, thus relevant lessons and, with these in mind, pass some comment on current practice and thinking. This is particularly instructive regarding the resurgence of the aid industry’s focus on results and recent claims about how there is scant experience in involving intended beneficiaries and establishing feedback loops, in the agricultural sector anyway.The main audience I have in mind are not those associated with managing or carrying out evaluations. Rather, this paper seeks to highlight particular actions I hope will be useful to managers responsible for monitoring (be they directors in Ministries, managers in consulting companies, NGOs or civil servants in donor agencies who oversee programme implementation) and will improve a neglected area.”