Jacob Mumpande

Monitoring and Evaluation has in recent years been embraced by civil society and government as a key feature of public service delivery. This has been used to promote efficiency in service delivery, good governance, to promote transparency in expenditure and promote financial accountability, so that set objectives can be achieved. However, implementing Monitoring and Evaluation has also been challenging as a result of poor policy design, poor policy implementation, the lack of accountability and the lack of exemplary systems.
The importance of Monitoring and Evaluation during programme implementation has driven many governments, civil society organisations and donors to invest substantial funds in developing comprehensive M&E and tools. However, practice reveals that, while some of these comprehensive M&E systems have been successfully implemented, others could not be used to achieve the purposes for which resources were utilised in designing them. Some development actors have argued that, even though great effort is invested in the development of M&E systems, not all of them actually get implemented, or even if they do, they are only partially implemented. The Non-Governmental (NGO) sector in its implementation of social programmes, uses M&E systems to monitor programmes for various reasons, including accountability and organisational learning purposes. Government on the other hand uses the legislature as a Monitoring Framework for development in the country.
Therefore, there is great importance for a study to investigate the above assertion by examining monitoring and evaluation policy and practice in both civil society and government. The structure of this framework will be examined against community development wide Monitoring and Evaluation framework and established practices by development actors. The research will also examine monitoring and evaluation practice carried out by UN development arms which have long history of practice. This investigation will look at activities, inputs, outputs, implementation constraints, outcomes, and impact assessment.