Today is the last day of the seminar, with more interesting insights into development within donor agencies and with interesting plans for the future.
Pressures and opportunities for development agencies
Following yesterday's two cases, we heard today about the inner workings of AusAid, SDC and ILO.
Alwyn Chilver opened the day giving us interesting insights into AusAID's thoughts. Also AusAID is under pressure to deliver results - how credible these results need to be is less clear! Transparency, progress against MDGs, involvement of the Australian business communities are some of the challenges they face. There are also some concerns that pushing for results (getting 'big numbers') might create wrong incentives not to strive for systemic changes. Frameworks need to be defined for measuring and reporting, and these should be standardized across programs. And how to assess the quality of results? The solution might well be a standard!
Peter Tschumi then took us through SDC's efforts to enhance effectiveness through results measurement, with an emphasis on their work on knowledge management. Capacity building is a key element for SDC, to enhance and mainstream results measurement. After all, the change necessary is not revolutionary, but rather iterative or evolutionary. The main message is 'simple enough to be practical, complex enough to be meaningful'. To illustrate how SDC projects are adapting results measurement in the field, Isabelle Fragnière presented the efforts of the Samriddhi project to adopt results chains and retrofit the log frame, while the project was already running. The links between RCs and log frame remain a good discussion topic!
The ILO's endeavors in results measurement were presented to us by Merten Sievers. In their PSD projects, they do not only try to address (and measure) employment, but also quality employment (decent work). With a large number of rather small, heterogeneous projects, it is a challenge to promote the adoption of the standard. Short project cycles also push project staff to 'run after implementation' and give less time for results measurement as part of the management system. Pressure from the donors is key to promote and use the DCED standard.
Experiences with the DCED standard and planning for the future
The final presentation of the seminar was actually a 3-in-1 presentation.
Nabanita Sen highlighted the momentum that is building up, with more and more requests from projects for advice to take their M&E systems 'to the next level' or prepare for upcoming reviews. The DCED's advice is to start with a mock audit to identify first compliance gaps. The presentation will tell you what type of support the DCED offers. As to where projects stands, more and more PSD projects are taking the results measurement road, but few have gone all the way yet.
Hans Posthumous continued explaining the DCED audit process. The audit should of course help you prove you report credible results, but also reflect on how you are doing things. An audit takes on average 2 weeks. And when should you go for an audit? Basically, when you feel you are ready! It makes however more sense once your system is in place and you are using it.
Aly Miehlbradt wrapped by explaining what remains to be done with the standard. Version 6 is being worked on, but there will be no fundamental changes, just some 'tidying up' and emphasize the connections between the control points. In short, they got the standard right, the next step is to get the system around the standard right (support, incentives, etc.). To broaden and strengthen results measurement, investing in people at all levels, technical as well as managerial, will be essential.
Group discussions: planning for the future
In the afternoon, participants were grouped according to interest: donors, consultants and project implementers were asked to reflect on the question: 'how can the DCED standard contribute to our goal of projects having practical and sound measurement systems in place and use that enable learning and produce credible results?”
Whatever their constituency, project staff, donors, consultants, wished to see the standard endorsed and institutionalized. All also agreed on the need for more capacity building for all levels, from consultants to managers to technical staff. In general, it was great to see that all groups were on the same page on almost all issues raised like the needs for more funds, the need for auditor or trained accreditation, a clear message from donors on their stand, incentives to implement the standard, as well as increased communication. Many expressed also a wish to see the standard go further and applied in other areas such as Business Environment Reform (BER).
Some final insights and conclusions on the seminar
After these final discussions, Jim Tanburn, DCED coordinator, offered us some concluding remarks about the seminar. He mentioned that for the first time, it seems there is some real enthusiasm for the topic of results measurement! He also pointed out the wide range of projects using results measurement, proving it can be done, whatever the size of the project is. There are still some diverging opinions regarding the audits; some find it encouraging, others are more cautious. In any case, quality checks are needed. And the fact that the Business Environment group is taking up results measurement is also very encouraging.
The results measurement steering group, composed of Susanne Hartmann (GIZ), Peter Tschumi (SDC), Merten Sievers (ILO) and Henk van Trigt (DGIS/DDE) offered their final insights into the future of the standard. Their objective is to have a broad application of the standard so that PSD projects can work more effectively and communicate more clearly what they are achieving. To get there, they envisage:
- Dissemination and adoption of the standard in the member agencies, for which momentum is building up. For this, communicating and marketing of the standard is one of the top challenges
- Further development of the standard: with a solid foundation, only some tidying up is left. Next steps would be the inclusion of other areas like Business Environment Reform
- Establishing structures for audits, as the market slowly develops (this task may take longer than initially anticipated)
As a final conclusion to the seminar, Jim Tanburn made three important points:
- The DCED has come quite far, with many projects implementing or working towards the standard. It seems it's on the right track!
- We are all still in a learning curve. Spreading out the standard, rolling it out is the next step, as there is a lot of potential; and
- The DCED is very committed to the process of rolling out the Standard at all levels
And so ends the seminar. We hope you found these summaries interesting, and do not hesitate to let us know what you thought! Please send us some feedback on the dgroups mailing list.
