8: Monitoring and evaluating partnerships
Systematic partnership monitoring and evaluation can reinforce the added value of cross-sector partnering by demonstrating achievements and sharing learning about working in this way. While all partners need to justify partnering engagement, in view of the onus on good governance in public sector processes it is of particular importance for government to be able to demonstrate that working in partnership is both effective and accountable. Most of the partnerships researched during the PwG programme had weak monitoring and evaluation systems. In a number of cases individual partners undertook their own appraisals with timescales and methodologies that did not coincide with those of others. Furthermore, little effort was made to disseminate findings strategically so that lessons were shared and improvements made. The evolution of joint monitoring and evaluation frameworks is often hampered by lack of resources and capacity. Where common assessment frameworks exist, they tend to focus on looking at the results of the partnership’s work in terms of tangible outputs as opposed to outcomes.i Very few seek to examine working relationships among partners and the link between process and performance. Greater effort is required by all partners to ensure that adequate resources are made available for more rigorous partnership monitoring and evaluation and that the requisite skills for this are identified and developed. This requires putting in place systems that assess both the effectiveness of a partnership’s results (outputs and outcomes) and review the benefits derived by different partners from the process of partnering. Ideally monitoring and evaluation systems should be established at the very start of a partnership’s development and, where relevant, ensure consideration of the needs and circumstances of target groups and intended beneficiaries in order to make certain that goals are being met efficiently and effectively. As partners are likely to have diverse views and expectations on how partnership knowledge and information is acknowledged, stored and used, clarity around intellectual property rights is helpful (see Chapter 7). It is also important that documentation of a partnership’s work is undertaken and diffusion of relevant review and assessment findings are targeted appropriately for different audiences. Long-term sustainability of partnership activities relies upon sharing and incorporating the learning gained from monitoring and evaluation into institutional practices. In view of the policy and implementation roles of government, and the scope of their reach, proactively ensuring their involvement in partnership dissemination activities in Africa is particularly important in supporting sustainable change.
i In a development context outputs are classified as the concrete results of a project or programme, e.g. products and services delivered, or number of people reached. Outcomes, meanwhile, are the impacts/benefits/changes that take place over time as a result of a specific intervention.
26 The Partnering with Governments Navigator
To promote organisational accountability, different sector partners are under both internal and external pressure to justify their engagement in, and value derived from, working in partnerships. These different demands have broadened the call for the monitoring and evaluation of not just the project activities of partnerships but of the partnerships themselves.15
Even when governments are aware of partnerships, they often have very poor information as to how effective they are.16
