Book Review: Ten Steps to a Results-Based M&E System

The book Ten Steps to a Results-Based Monitoring and Evaluation System written by Jody Zall Kusek and Ray C. Rist presents an antidote to the entrenched institutional problems that undermine growth and prosperity in the developing world. You can read the book online here. In a nutshell, the book has the following attributes:

• It is an inspiration to those already in public battle for results;
• It is an admonition to those at the helm of public affairs who turn against the reality that they are under oath and public instruction to produce desired results for the citizenry;
• It is an answer to the achievement of the MDGs and poverty reduction objectives;
• It is an advocacy tool to use by the media, civil society, parliament and the citizens to enforce social accountability from public servants including presidents; and
• It is a gospel to be referred to every morning by presidents and their advisers in struggling nations.

The Ten Steps, I may want to call the book for short, is a characterization of the development challenges facing my country, Sierra Leone. It is a description of the ongoing results battle fought by the current president, Ernest Bai Koroma, who is being referred to as the chief development monitoring officer, courtesy of his sustained, regular, and sometimes unannounced visits to project sites in all corners of the country. The president has vowed to rule Sierra Leone like a private business enterprise whose paramount objective is profit maximization. He has been pursuing a results-oriented political objective function for Sierra Leone to maximize within institutional constraints elaborated in the book under review.

From the list of key highlights I have drawn from the Ten Steps about delivery of development results, the following excerpts constantly resonate with me as an M&E practitioner in Sierra Leone:

Implementing results-based M&E systems pose many political challenges….it takes strong and consistent political leadership and will....to institute such a system. Bringing results-based information into the public arena can change the dynamics of institutional relations...personal political agendas, and public perception of effectiveness of government. Strong, vested interests may also perceive themselves to be under attack. There may be counter-reformers within and outside the government who actively oppose such efforts. (Pages 20-21.)

Highly placed champions who are willing to assume the political risk in advocating results based M&E are….needed. (Page 33.)

A highly placed government champion can be a strong advocate for more well-informed decision making, and can help diffuse and isolate attacks from counter-reformers who will have vested interest in averting the construction of such a system….It is important to know who the champions are and where they are located in government. (Page 44.)

M&E systems are essentially political challenges, and to a lesser extent, technical ones.(Page 160.)

Producers of results information need protection from political reprisals. If bad news brings career problems to the messengers, fear will permeate the system and the reliability of the information produced will be compromised. (Page 153.)

Incentives need to be introduced to encourage use of performance information….success needs to be acknowledged and rewarded, problems need to be addressed, messengers must not be punished, organizational learning is valued…. (Page 153.)

These excerpts define the major institutional challenges confronting the call for reorientation of Sierra Leone’s public sector management approach in favor of results. While the government should be lauded for the tremendous efforts made in moving the country twelve points up in the 2010 UNDP Human Development Index, answers are still being sought to the following questions:

• Are politicians prepared to deliver to the expectation of the electorate?
• Are civil servants incentivized so as to concentrate on actual results delivery?
• How informed, capable, and non-partisan is parliament as lead social accountability enforcer within the government?
• Who are really the champions for results in Sierra Leone?

What one can comment on with absolute definiteness is the fact that the civil service in Sierra Leone lacks incentives given the appalling conditions of service amongst other things. Under this circumstance, it could be rarely possible to fetch the desired commitment from civil servants for results; as such anti-corruption efforts may not do more than driving birds in a rice farm. (See Box 1). Another issue, raised in the Ten Steps, is lack of coordination for results in the country. Sierra Leone is currently experiencing a flurry of results advocacy outfits in different sectors within the public service. This duplicates the activities of one and the other (See Government of Sierra Leone, 2010, “Capacity Assessment for Effective Delivery of Development Results in Sierra Leone,” Managing for Development Capacity Scan, Implementation of the CAP-Scan Process, Freetown, Sierra Leone.), thereby constituting waste of resources in itself.

It is however important to pay some tribute to the few emerging champions for results in Sierra Leone in the likes of the current Financial Secretary Edmond Koroma, after the president, who is the brain behind the institution of robust M&E system for all public projects within the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, and the main protagonist for the unprecedented shift of government expenditure towards development financing.

In light of this review, I wish to urge AfCoP and National Chapters to find ways to disseminate to public authorities, development ideas such as contained in the Ten Steps. There is need for constant discussions of such books on our e-platforms; we could make presentation of reviews of such books during annual meetings to generate in-depth discussions with a view to finding better strategies to disseminate the messages contained therein to our respective publics. The challenge, and what torments me many a time, is how can we effectively get crucial results messages through to the politicians and other strategically placed officials that are in a better position to enforce results on the ground.

I wish to invite colleagues in AfCoP to comment on this short review, and share their views on how some of the issues in the book raised could be made beneficial in our results promotion efforts.

Reference
Bangura, S., 2010. The Performance Tracking Table in Sierra Leone’s Public Sector Management AfricanCommunity of Practice on Managing for Development Results, AfCoP Casebook 2010.
Government of Sierra Leone, 2010. Capacity Assessment for Effective Delivery of Development Results i..., Managing for Development Results Capacity Scan, Implementation of CAP-Scan Process.