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COUNTRY / Malawi
NAME OF MAIN AUTHOR / 1.Ted Sitima-wina
(DETAILED AFFILIATION) / Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, P.O. Box 30136, Lilongwe, Tel: +2651788 888
NAMES OF OTHER AUTHORS / 2. Jimmy Kawaye
(SHORT AFFILIATION) / 3. Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, P.O. Box 30136, Lilongwe, Tel: +2651788 888
PRESENTING AUTHOR NAME / Ted Sitima-wina
SUGGESTED NEC SUB-TOPICS / Use of Evaluation Results

TITLE: PROMOTING USE OF EVALUATION RESULTS BY SENIOR GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS IN MALAWI

1.  Overview / Introduction

Ministry of Economic Planning and Development (MEP&D) in Malawi developed a National Monitoring and Evaluation Master Plan (NM&EMP) in 2006 that provides the main framework for monitoring of economic and social development policies and programs in the country. Government implemented the Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy from 2002 to 2005 and has been implementing the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS I) from 2006 to 2011 and is now implementing MGDS II (2011 – 2016) as the main frameworks for implementing national development activities. These national development strategies show that all stakeholders have a role to play in implementing, monitoring, evaluating and reviewing development initiatives. To buttress the NM&EMP the Malawi government launched a Sector Working Groups’ approach for implementing and managing development initiatives.

The roles and responsibilities assigned to various stakeholders have generated growing pressure on MEP&D to be more responsive to both internal (government officials) and external (civil society organisations-CSOs) stakeholders on both downward and upward accountability to deliver the aspirations of the people and concrete development results. The penchant for results underscores the need to determine if planned activities being implemented under any development strategy by sectors are improving the welfare of the people in an inclusive manner. Therefore the pressure has tasked the MEP&D to provide information and data through monitoring and evaluation systems (being established in all public institutions) that is made available to the senior government officials, development partners and the public on a regular basis. The collection of information and its dissemination has been made possible by having a functioning national M & E system based on the NM&EMP. The NM&EMP describes the type of data to be collected for a specific time period for a particular national strategy per sector.

Previously, the challenge was that a great deal of data related to development initiatives was being collected by different stakeholders (research institutes, universities, government institutions, CSOs etc) and was hardly shared with the public. With the establishment of the NM&EMP, it has ensured that the data collected is harmonized and streamlined, disseminated, discussed and utilised for decision making within the national monitoring framework.

The National M&E system has therefore become an important public sector instrument in managing and monitoring delivery of development results and other services.

2.  The Framework/Architecture/Institutional Arrangement

i) Sector Working Groups

On 20 November 2008, the Government of Malawi launched and institutionalised Sector Working Groups (SWGs) in its development approach. The overall aim of SWGs is to provide a platform for negotiation, policy dialogue and agreement of plans and strategies as well as undertakings among stakeholders at sectoral level. There are a total of sixteen SWGs. Each one of them is composed of a ministry, CSOs, development partners and the private sector. It is chaired by a Controlling Officer and co-chaired by DPs representative. SWGs also provide an operational framework for the Malawi’s Development Assistance Strategy (DAS) which aims to ensure that external resources mobilised by Government are effectively utilised to implement the MGDS. The goal of DAS promotes the five norms embedded in the Paris Declaration (2005) and the Accra Agenda for Action (2008) on aid effectiveness which are ownership, alignment, harmonisation, managing for results and mutual accountability. The attraction of this approach is that although they are crafted to increase aid effectiveness, their principles are the same as those required to enhance the effective utilisation of national resources.

To complete the equation of accountability, MEP&D has put in place a programme that promotes use of evidence by controlling officers in managing development initiatives through establishment of Results Based Management and M&E systems in all public institutions. The Results Based M&E system has a component that emphasises utilisation of evidence based evaluation results. This component aims to support the effective allocation of resources via an increased use of evidence to inform decision making at programme, strategy and policy level in Malawi; and enhances the likelihood of strategies and programmes being effective in achieving the intended objectives, set targets and results.

Utilisation of evidence based or evaluation results has the following objectives:

·  increase the capacity of public policy-makers and intermediaries in the country to access, appraise and use available evidence.

·  increase the capacity of policy-makers, senior government officials to commission useful, relevant and high quality research to inform their decisions.

·  establish and strengthen working partnerships between government departments, research-institutions, universities, DPs and CSOs.

·  inform capacity-building efforts that address skills gaps in application and understanding of evaluation results.

ii) Technical Working Groups/Committees

The Technical Working Groups are key components in the development process which facilitates maintenance of technical standards and bringing in “best practices” into the sectors. Membership is drawn from specific thematic areas/SWGs and DPs to mainly pursue “actionable” recommendations or decision points submitted by TWGs through Secretariat. They are involved in reviewing technical studies and progress reports from implementing institutions and making recommendations to the SWGs. The TWGs are also responsible for selecting projects/programmes for implementation within the monitoring and evaluation framework.

3. Overall approach:

The approach focuses on the “demand side” through active engagement with senior government officials as research-users in which a “conducive” environment is created to understand evidence-based assessment of development initiatives. The starting point is the Office of the President and Cabinet where a Monitoring and Evaluation “Board” was established which is chaired by the Chief Secretary while MEP&D is the secretariat. Based on the Paris Declaration and Accra Agenda for Action, the Board through the Secretariat demand Output based annual budgets from each Ministry with clearly articulated indicators with annual targets and baseline data. The “Board” then demands monthly and quarterly progress reports from Secretariat, highlighting contributions made to achieving of annual targets as set out in the national development strategies such MGDS II and Economic Recovery Plan (ERP).

The M&E Division of MEP&D is responsible for coordinating all outcome and impact monitoring activities across all sectors in the country and other ad hoc surveys conducted within and outside the national monitoring system. The evaluation/review results are synthesised into a management report and submitted to the Board. The secretariat is also responsible for disseminating statistics and information through various channels such as press releases, media briefing etc.

To ensure functionality of the approach, the line ministries have been provided with technical and financial support to build strong M&E sections that collect input (including expenditure) and output indicators data and produce annual, quarterly and monthly sector review reports. The planning process of MGDS and ERP has also been participatory and with wide consultations resulting into clearly defined indicators and targets for all sectors. A planning framework that links the national strategies with the sub-national strategies has been provided through crafting of a district planning manual. The district planning framework serves as the basis for National Strategy Implementation monitoring at the District level as well. This entails close integration of national level monitoring systems and those for district-level monitoring.

Monitoring and evaluation committees have been established at the district (sub-national) level as a mirror of committees at national level. These committees facilitate the discussion and dissemination of district specific evaluation results and draw participation from different institutions at district level including those representing communities like CSOs. As beneficiaries, communities do take an active role in the actual assessment of the development activities in their localities. Projects/Programmes assessment tools called Comprehensive Community Based Scorecard have been provided to selected communities as benchmark for quality assessment of delivery of public services and feedback system into public policy arena.

CSOs are also part of the institutional framework at the level of data collection, analysis and feedback. M&E Division of MEP&D has made efforts to collaborate with CSOs so as to provide independence and credibility of some of the evaluation results. CSOs play a crucial role in the implementation of community based monitoring activities.

On national level, Technical Working Committee (TWC) do consider monthly, quarterly and annual technical reports and recommendations from the secretariat which include progress reports from implementing institutions and making recommendations to the Principal Secretaries (PSs) Development Results monitoring committee. The TWC draws on expertise of its members, mainly the research centres on policy and impact analysis on a quarterly basis or when required. This ensures independence and credibility of evaluation results. Reports from the Principal Secretaries are summarised with key recommendations and submitted to Office of the President and Cabinet for decision making through the “Board”.

There is also a Development Stakeholders Forum which comprises the CSOs, donor community, media, academia, and private sector. It acts as a national accountability forum where issues of underperformance, based on the Annual Review of MGDS, are raised and government is called upon to act. The forum also is involved in facilitating information dissemination, discussion and policy recommendation. The forum meets once every year.

4. Challenges, Opportunities and Conclusion

Despite the aspirations to design and deliver coherent and harmonised M&E systems in Malawi, a number of challenges have worked to hamstring their operationalisation and functionality. These include weak capacities by stakeholders to collect data at the district council and sector level, non-compliance to scheduled reporting timeline, weak skills in data analysis, data quality and storage and dissemination of development results to facilitate usage and accountability. The demand for evaluation results and usage is obvious but supply of credible research results is nonetheless limited. For instance, most of the demand is coming in the context of mid-term and end-term impact evaluations of policy and project interventions of government, donors and the civil society. The skills and personnel to undertake such key development inputs are trifling or negligible.

On the supply side, Malawi does not have the type of research institutions that are active and prominent in other countries, like independent think tanks and research institutions, evaluation network or association. Nevertheless, the establishment of NM&EMP provides an opportunity for evidence based evaluation utilisation. In addition, some evaluation institutions such as 3ie and University of Johannesburg have shown interest and commitment to collaborate/work with MEP&D and local universities to harness the generation of evidence based evaluation and its utilisation. This activity signifies the south-south capacity building initiatives.

5. References

Government of Malawi (2006), National Monitoring and Evaluation Master Plan, Lilongwe, Malawi.

Government of Malawi (2005), Institutionalizing Sector Working Groups (SWGs) to Strengthen the Implementation of the Malawi Growth and Development (MGDS), Lilongwe, Malawi.

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