Information Communication Technology & Results Management: Using Technology to Manage for Results

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Permalink Reply by Hannah J Cooper on June 4, 2010 at 4:32pm

Dear Colleagues,

First, thank you Rosa and Goaba for your comments and questions!

Goaba – I’ve asked our Solomon Mlanga to respond to your specific question. He has experience implementing egovernment in Zimbabwe and I am hoping that he will be able to provide members with an overview of the process from his point of view.

For this next part of the ediscussion we will explore how to develop a light, web based basic tool to plan, assess, and measure results.

What does this mean exactly? A light, web based tool is something that you can use online, that doesn’t take up too much bandwidth – so it doesn’t take a long time to download.

Many organizations are using online tools to help plan, measure, and report on results.One easy, fairly straight forward tool that you can use is an online survey. There is a wide range of free survey software available online (including two that I have used before: Lime Survey www.limesurvey.org and Survey Monkey www.surveymonkey.com). Surveys are a good way to get quick, rapid responses and depending on the types of questions you create, you can get a pretty nice snapshot of where things are at in your organization. They also provide the option to roll-up and aggregate responses into visual (pie chart/bar graph) form. I’ve found that presenting information in a visual form can really help to capture the attention of decision makers and it’s a nice way to aggregate data.

So how do you get started? It’s really easy. If you want to set up a survey, you can simply go to one of these websites, create a free login, and then get started. Each survey offers different features (number of questions, the way that they aggregate the data, types of questions – open, multiple choice, fill in the blanks, etc) – so it’s important to select the survey that matches the needs of your organization.

Here’s an example from Survey Monkey. Once you sign in, they ask you create a survey title and then they guide you through the process including what kinds and types of questions you want to ask (ranging from multiple choice to demographic information, to a rating scale or matrix of questions).

Here’s snapshot of what the final survey can look like – (note that these are just sample questions).

Once staff have completed the survey, you can have the option of presenting the data in various format (pie charts, bar graphs, etc). For instance:

There is a menu of options when it comes to designing your survey. It’s important to get a sense of the types of options that work for you and your organization and this ranges depending on the system that you use. Once you have a good idea of your options, it’s really important to consult your stakeholders: these include those who will be filling out the survey, those collecting the data, and those analyzing the findings.
Before designing your tool, you may want to consider the following questions and issues:

1) What kind and type of data needs to be collected?

2) What is senior management looking for – what type of information do they need and how do they want to see it presented?

3) What are some barriers to using the system –for example, are staff okay with the idea of a new login and password –or would this hinder use? How much time do staff have to complete the survey (so how long should it be)? Is the survey mandatory? Who is the ideal target population for survey completion?

4) What are some common perceptions (or misunderstandings) about gather data (I worked on a tool to gather performance data and staff were tremendously weary about reporting and using the system.) – it’s really helpful if you can understand what the perceptions are in your organization first and then work to dispel and alleviate any concerns before launching your tool.

5) IT department requirements & security protocols – depending on the scope and scale of your tool, you may want to consider getting your organization’s IT department involved early on to ensure that your tool is meets their protocols.

These are just a few things to get started! Please let me know if have any questions or comments!

I look forward to hearing from you soon!

Hannah

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Permalink Reply by Tayani Vincent Banda on June 10, 2010 at 12:39am

Just to say I am getting to follow this closely...dont have much to say just trying to keep pace..since I have started following a bit late. But I must say that this E Government is really coming in handy when people in todays world are mostly mobile and most of the times and away from their physical working desks. Part of this E-Government brings one's working space right in front of one's computer screen! And when one is in office movements are reduced, waste of paper ( environmentalists must be happy) is reduced as people get to work more on soft copies and all that. We must get rid of the BBC ( Born Before Computers) mentality that has stalled developments in our organisational systems, especially so Government structures! I must say that I am happy with my boss as he is very good at this ( E-Working, as I call it) . So Hannah lets get on wih it!

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Permalink Reply by Hannah J Cooper on June 16, 2010 at 11:06am

Hi Tayani,

Thanks so much for your message and words of encouragement!

Colleagues - I invite you to respond to my last post and Tayani's message. Are these tools that I presented relevant to you or not? What kinds of ICTs are you using in your organizations? What are your biggest technology needs and challenges? What are some emerging areas in ICTs in your countries?

Please share your thoughts!

Hannah

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Permalink Reply by Hannah J Cooper on June 28, 2010 at 2:57pm

Dear Colleagues,

Now that we have gone through some open source online tools that you can already available to help you manage for results in your organization.

Here are a few things to keep in mind before you launch your tool:

1) Don’t underestimate the importance of pilot testing. Pilot testing can provide valuable insights into gaps that your tools might have missed; technical issues that are only apparent to users; and overall flow, layout, visual displays, and usefulness and relevance of the content to users. Selecting a representative sample to partake in the pilot testing is also really important. Try to ensure that both decision makers (who will be reviewing the data and using it to make decisions) and users are part of pilot process. Pilot testing can also be used to help ensure your organization’s buy-in and understanding of the tool.

2) Alpha & Beta Versions – if you are working with a software provider, they should offer you the opportunity to run Alpha & Beta versions of your tool. All that this means is that they will run a first test version – the Alpha version – which you can use for your pilot testing. Then you can take the feedback provided during the pilot and use it to update and revise the next version, the Beta version, as needed.

3) Communications – As many of you know, organizations can be funny and sometimes, tricky animals. Establishing and implementing a communications strategy before launching your tool can go a long way to minimize headaches, misunderstandings, and miscommunication. Sometimes staff can misunderstand results tools and worry that they are being implemented as a sort of punitive measure, rather than being used to understand how projects, programs or organizations, can be improved.

Please let me know what you think about this and share your thoughts below!

Many thanks,

Hannah

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Permalink Reply by tshering on July 10, 2010 at 4:24am

To me it seems so critical that such technolgy must be in place to monitor our program results which will ease the administrative budern and make more users friendly to every stakeholders. But how sure that ICT would be able to monitor feeding of untrue data since it will be quite difficult to monitor the person who feeds data. Can ICT substitute physical monitoring or is it the result of performance to be fed and depict to others/stakeholders? how can ICT gurantee the successful of attributing to attain the desired result?

Thaanks
Tshering
Bhutan

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Permalink Reply by Hannah J Cooper on July 27, 2010 at 2:30pm

Dear Tshering,

Thanks so much for your post and apologies for the delayed response (I was on mission travel in Morocco and just returned yesterday).

As you mentioned, I think that ICTs are key to helping gather data, and present information on a user friendly way so that management can make decisions on resource allocation. As for accuracy of data - I think that this concerns all types of data collection and not necessarily the means of collecting it (ie using ICTs). I also still don't think that ICTs can guarantee successful attribution of the desired results - the tools aren't a substitute for the content or the data, rather they are simply a means of gathering information and presenting in it an way that is easier to use so that you can make an informed decision.

Let me know what you think!

Many thanks,

Hannah

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Permalink Reply by Hannah J Cooper on August 2, 2010 at 5:03pm

Dear Colleagues,

We are about to start a new ediscussion shortly, so in closing, please find attached a summary of this ediscussion. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. The discussion summary will also be posted in the elibrary.

Thank you all for your interesting and thought-provoking questions and comments.

Kind regards,

Hannah

Attachments:

• Summary of ICT ediscussion Aug 2.docx, 54 KB

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