M&E Strategy development and implementation: A contribution to the discussion...

Building on my extensive MEAL work experience at Right To Play , Millennium Challenge Account - Benin II (MCA-Benin II) and Agence Régionale pour l'Agriculture et l'Alimentation de la CEDEAO this article highlights my contribution to the discussion on Monitoring Evaluation Accountability and Learning (MEAL) Strategy development and implementation:

• Crafting MEAL Vision for the Organization...?
• Adopting Good Measurement Practices...
• Strengthening Capacities and Systems...
• Enhancing Research Collaboration...
• Building a Learning Culture ...
• Effectively Communicating Results ...

?1. Crafting MEAL Vision for the Organization...?

A key entry point is that MEAL Strategy should emerge from your organization's strategic plan. All programs within a thematic area of the strategic plan should contribute to the development of the evidence base. Every element/functional area of the strategic plan should include an evidence-based theory of change (ToC) based on MEAL research, documentation, and evaluations..

As a result, MEAL staff shall (always) be involved in the development of projects, not only on reporting. It should be woven into the very fabric of everything the organization does, and there should be no single project running that does not contribute significantly to the development of the evidence-base for its ToC.

The MEAL vision of an organization, should include, from my perspectives, these key considerations as a desired future state.

2. Adopting Good Measurement Practices...

Increasing MEAL Team leadership and autonomy within the organization, ensuring that programs are guided by strong measurement frameworks, implementing rigorous monitoring procedures, and adhering to global evaluation standards and practices.

• ?Matching ambitions with adequate resources

The implementation of good measurement practices (to generate and use credible evidence) requires adequate human and financial resources. From my perspectives, this is a MUST. This includes establishing and maintaining dedicated evaluation capacities across offices for both producing and using evaluations, as well as adequate funding for studies commissioning, data collection, knowledge management, and lesson learnt documentation and dissemination. The MEAL Strategy should provide projections for budget allocation to measurement as well as plans for ongoing MEAL team capacity development.

• ?Evaluating the “evaluators”

This is a practice that we should promote, cultivate, and even institutionalize as part of our measurement strategies. The goal is to ensure that internal and external evaluations are rigorous enough to be trusted and used. Robustness would enhance the external validity of the findings and contribute to collective knowledge about how interventions work. Poor evidence, flawed analysis, or inappropriate advice are more harmful than helpful. The "DAC Quality Standards for Development Evaluation" suggests the following methods for ensuring high-quality evaluation. It might be beneficial to have them written/described in the organisation's MEAL Strategy: i) Periodic meta-evaluations or systematic reviews to look at the overall quality of evidence on a particular topic and to identify where more work is needed; ii) Involvement of staff as observers in an evaluation carried out by a more experienced evaluation unit or secondment to another donor; iii) Performance review for evaluation consultants (and quality clauses in consultant contracts); iv) Investing time in checking terms of references (because poor quality reports are often the result of a poorly designed evaluation or unclear or overly ambitious terms of reference).

• Monitoring how evaluation findings are used

This could be included as a measurement practice promoted by the strategy. Monitoring the use of evaluation findings, such as tracking references to evaluation findings in the media, key policy documents, or strategy papers, could potentially help building data on evaluation's reach and influence.

• Adhering to global evaluation norms and practices

Describing in the MEAL Strategy how the organization adheres to evaluation standards and practices that are widely accepted in the evaluation sector will not only increase stakeholder acceptance of measurement approaches, but will also contribute to organizational development. African Evaluation Association (AfrEA) has developed five key principles named African Evaluation Principles (AEP), which provides a guiding framework for good evaluation practice in Africa [1]. United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) released an updated set of evaluation norms and standards [2]. I would suggest the utilization of these resources -among others- as a reference when developing the evaluation standards and practices to which an organisation wish to adhere. Listing of global evaluation standards and practices should not be the end of the process. Most importantly, the MEAL strategy should also clearly define the mechanism for ensuring systematic compliance with the norms and standards. Adherence to norms and standards may also be reflected in the KPIs.

• Incorporating rigorous output and outcome monitoring procedures

It is critical to harmonize outputs and outcomes monitoring processes throughout the organization. This entails having up-to-date and contextualized outputs monitoring tools (country and/or project/program-based). Both staff and partners responsibilities in monitoring activities should be clarified in the global measurement roles and responsibilities document/framework. System for reporting outputs data need to be discussed and harmonized.

• Developing Global Standards

Global standards and protocols should guide all MEAL activities, including recruitments, trainings, evaluations, follow-up, technical support, data processing, reporting and more. A global outputs and outcomes indicators are necessary to inform the measurement parameters for the organization as a whole, so that it can speak to thematic results consistently and comparatively across the organization. The MEAL strategy should also describe key domains to monitor to ensure the effectiveness of organizational performance and quality assurance, as well as provide appropriate guidelines. For instance, while country specific projects may use customized output tracking templates to report on each and every output indicator for projects/programs implemented, it is often highly advised to consider global outputs indicators for which projets report on using the same metrics and templates. That been said, though it is necessary to have standardized monitoring processes and streamlined monitoring practices, it is fair to leave room for contextualization and flexibility in the approach to allow consideration of local contexts: adapt monitoring tools/techniques to be used across the organization while ensuring MEAL plans and procedures are relevant to countries' contexts, partners, beneficiary groups, donors requirements and expectations.

3. Strengthening Capacities and Systems...

Referring to both human and technological capacity where there is investment in human resource skills, numbers and abilities, as well as a parallel investment into a global monitoring system.

• Building Human Capacity

MEAL personnel shall be professional and qualified to use appropriate methods to examine activities and results, as well as have the ability to manage the entire MEAL functions effectively. The Strategy should establish periodic (annual, for example) MEAL capacity assessments to ensure that appropriate capacity development measures are implemented. As an organization grows and expands its MEAL approaches, there would be a need to upgrade the technical capacity and skills of existing staff, as well as discuss/develop a motivation and retention strategy for skilled/qualified team members. More over, there are new and emerging areas and approaches in MEAL, and team's capacities should be strengthened (on going basis) in order to advance future trends in the M&E sector and anticipate future roles and responsibilities (as the organization grows).

• Investing in technological capacity

Many organizations still lag behind in terms of incorporating technology into their MEAL process. Making the transition to using technology devices and online platforms for data collection and measurement is critical. Indeed, developing global standards and processes includes the need to standardize the use of MEL technology systems throughout the organization, at least for major or impactful MEAL activities. This requires having a comprehensive plan for measurement activities (routine M&E, baseline assessments, midterm evaluation, final evaluation, impact assessment, research and learning studies etc.). It entails budgeting sufficient amount to procure licences, tablets and/or mobil phones for data collection, drones, softwares etc. Reporting on global outputs indicators could be done via an online platform (web-based), allowing staff to sign in using their credentials to upload outputs and outcome data into the system....

4. Enhancing Research Collaboration...

Encouraging organizational curiosity…forming new institutional partnerships to systematically investigate (and/or confirm) new theories/hypotheses about your work… supplementing organizational capacity with expertise from research.

• Forming Institutional Partnership

Clear guidelines to be provided for building institutional capacity, including a typology of institutional partnerships, selection process for (i) academic research at the national and global levels, and (ii) overall planning and implementation.

• Supplementing organizational capacity with expertise from research

Learning studies, baselines, midterms, final evaluations, and other assessments are frequently led by external experts. Building the capacity of country or local project teams to conduct specific research or learning studies may require attention. When organizational capacity is supplemented with external expertise, there should always be a strategy for competence transfer and country office capacity development.

5. Building a Learning Culture ...

?Adopting evaluative thinking in all aspects of the job; being results-oriented and striving to make decisions based on the best available evidence; identifying and working to fill evidence gaps; questioning assumptions and being open to critical analysis of what is working or not in a particular context and why; adopting organizational practices that commit to keenly analyzing research and evaluation results, sharing knowledge, and acting upon recommendations from research and evaluation efforts.

• ?Making learning part of the culture of the organization

To encourage a learning culture , the MEAL Strategy should clearly articulate, develop, or (re)define what "learning" means and its importance to the organization (statement of organizational definition of learning). The MEAL Strategy would drive the team to adopt an institutional attitude that encourages critical thinking, demands strong evidence about results and a willingness to adapt and improve continuously. To make this possible, the following are suggested: i) Using evaluation as an important instrument for knowledge management; ii) Setting a positive “tone from the top” where senior managers show clear support for learning and accept both positive and negative findings from evaluations; iii) Creating incentives and systems to ensure that learning (including taking lessons from evaluations done by others) becomes part of normal daily business in the organization.

• Acting on monitoring, evaluation or research findings

Findings from evaluations, researches or the regular monitoring activities should influence the decisions and actions of decision makers and senior managers. The MEAL Strategy should define and describe procedures and mechanism to ensure that appropriate and timely actions are taken for strategic planning, programme design and oversight. This mechanism could include:

1. Establishment of a Formal Management Response System, which would require staff and stakeholders at various levels of responsibility to respond promptly to each evaluation's findings and recommendations. Management response systems ensure that both internal and external stakeholders are aware of relevant findings and can take appropriate action to correct or improve future programs. This would also promote the organization's learning routine and encourage all employees to participate in evaluations. A strong feedback system will help ensure that learning from evaluation is considered during the design phase of future programs, preventing mistakes from occurring again. Requiring systematic evaluation feedback and response also helps to prevent selective repression of poor results and promotes transparency.
2. Establish a formal and well-designed system for documenting learning from failures and successes, which is required for knowledge management and timely experience sharing with peers and stakeholders.

• Adopting a MEAL Community of Practice (CoP)

The Community of Practice (CoP) will enable MEAL teams to share and learn through a series of interactions, capturing the social nature of human learning. For the following reasons, it is important that MEAL strategy creates the MEAL CoP:

i) Connect people who might not otherwise have the opportunity to interact, either as?frequently or at all.

ii) Provide a shared context for people to?communicate and share information, stories,?and personal experiences in a way that builds?understanding and insight.?

iii) Enable dialogue between people who come?together to explore new possibilities, solve?challenging issues, and create new,?mutually beneficial opportunities.

iv) Stimulate learning by serving as a vehicle for?authentic communication, mentoring,?coaching, and self-reflection.

v) Capture and diffuse existing knowledge to?help people improve their practice by?providing a forum to identify solutions to?common problems and a process to collect?and evaluate best practices.

vi) Introduce collaborative processes to?groups and organizations as well as between?organizations to encourage the free flow of?ideas and exchange of information.?

vii) Help people organize around purposeful?actions that deliver tangible results.?

viii) Generate new knowledge to help people?transform their practice to accommodate?changes in needs and technologies.

Ensuring ongoing interaction among our MEAL community members is thus a critical requirement. This interaction can occur in person, through formal meetings or more casual interactions and conversations among staff, as well as online, via email, web forums, social media, and video networking.

6. Effectively Communicating Results ...

The MEAL Strategy should establish clear guidelines for delivering messages and presenting evidence in a way that stakeholders can understand and access immediately. In the MEAL Strategy clearly and formally:

i) Prioritize the dissemination of evaluation findings so that when an evaluation is planned, a dissemination and communication plan is also developed at that early stage of the process.

ii) Establish institutional links between the Communication and MEAL Units to facilitate information sharing. When creating annual reports or other products to raise public awareness, communication units should incorporate evaluation findings. Evaluation units, in turn, can use communication professionals' expertise to effectively convey their messages.

Many thanks for taking the time to read this paper. I look forwards to your critics and contributions to the dialogue !!!!!

Adéléké Oguniyi