Project monitoring: A vicious cycle of donor accountability or a necessary stepping stone to better national WASH sector monitoring?

Project Monitoring: A vicious cycle of donor accountability or a necessary stepping stone to better national WASH sector monitoring?Harold LockwoodAguaconsult

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure”

Monitoring really does matter ….

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

Country-led systems progressing• Aid effectiveness principles

and commitment (Paris +)• Country ownership and

leadership• Emergence of SWAps – 11

countries in Africa (AfDB, 2010)

• DP alignment with country systems (moderate progress)

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

Comprehensive country-led systems are the goal

Common monitoring to improve performance• Historic trending• Benchmarking• Well informed decisions• Basis for sector learning• Consumer

empowerment

But many challenges remain

GLAAS 2011; 74 responding countries

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

Is there a national monitoring system used to inform decision making?

No system in place

Under development

System in place and used

42%

16%

42%

Country-led monitoring remains weak

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

• Under-funded – low resource environment

• Challenges with decentralisation of responsibility for data collection and management

• Incompatibility between data systems at local government level

• Often low political priority

Development aid project monitoring

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

• Defined life-span (< 5 years) - not beyond ‘end of the project’

• Limited to ‘own projects’• Not aligned with national

monitoring frameworks or indicators (outside SWAp)

• Data flows ‘upwards and outwards’ to external DPs

Project monitoring

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Opportunities Challenges

• Innovative• Flexible• (often) well resourced• Quick cycles• Piloting

• Short-term• Temporary structures• Costly• Fragmented or duplicative initiatives

71% of European funding channelled through projects and programmesEU Water Initiative, Africa Working Group, 2008

The reality of project monitoring

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

• 1 region• 7 different funding

streams and monitoring requirements

• 1 national monitoring system

• Local government – marginalised

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

Lending banks, bi-lateral donors and large multi-laterals:• Operate at scale

• Influence over policy and sector processes

• Can fund via SWAps or Direct Budgetary Support – but not all do so

Not all project monitoring is created equal

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

Not all project monitoring is created equal

NGOs, foundations, charities and faith organisations:• Operate at varying scale - decentralised level

• Direct implementation and field research

• Advocacy and influence

• Direct (localised) funding

Accountability: the key driverWhy do we monitor? • To improve operational performance • To measure impact• To inform sector policy• To show progress and results• To see how funds are utilised

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

Accountability: the key driver

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

For whom do we monitor? • Consumers and operators• Government technocrats• Policy makers and politicians• Civil society groups• Project staff• Funders of aid projects

Development partner dilemma: the vicious cycle of accountability

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

The virtuous cycle of country-led monitoring and accountability

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

Development aid supports monitoring via

SWAps or other common mechanisms

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

Project monitoring: a force for good • Triple-S service delivery indicators, Ghana• Piloted in 3 districts in 2010 - 12 • Integrated with DiMES of CWSA• Now being scaled up to 64 districts

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Legend

! Salaga (District capital)

Piped system functionality

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Water

TripleSdistricts

East Gonja District

0 7 14 21 283.5Kilometers

No easy answers, but some critical questions

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

How can we align accountability of donor-driven project monitoring with support for country-led monitoring?

But, project monitoring is not going to go away (soon)

• How to incentivize donors to think (and fund) beyond the end of the project?

• How to better scale up and integrate innovation and learning into national frameworks?

• And, where there is no credible country-led monitoring framework, what do we do?

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

Sessions in the ‘project monitoring stream’

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

Tuesday 9th AprilSession 1: ‘Setting the scene’ (14:00 – 15:30)

• Government of Indonesia; experiences from WSP/World Bank supported monitoring

•AfDB strategy for M&E in Africa

Session 2: ‘Bi-lateral donors’ (16:00 – 17:30)• DGIS/Government of Netherlands; Sustainbility Check – experience from Mozambique

• USAID/USA; Sustainbility Index Tool – pilot experiences

Sessions in the ‘project monitoring stream’

Monitoring Sustainable WASH Service Delivery Symposium

Wednesday 10th AprilSession 3: ‘NGO innovation’ (11:00 - 12:30)

•UTS/AusAID - multi-country/partner experiences

•MWA – multi-partner experiences, Ethiopia

•Water for People – local government perspective

•WASH Advocates – schools perspective

Session 4: ‘Joining hands with countries’ (14:00 - 15:30)Panel debate

Some warm up discussions

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Turn to your immediate neighbour(s):

1. Do you recognize this tension between project monitoring and country-led monitoring?

2. How do you feel this can be best reconciled from a policy or practical perspective?

Discuss for 10 minutes or so