Monitoring & Evaluation, crucial for good governance
Since the announcement by President Nana Akufo- Addo that he will establish a Ministry for Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E), considerable controversy, fuelled by a lack of understanding of the issue, has arisen over its necessity. Consequently, the Alliance for Development and Industrialisation (ADI), a grouping of new generation entrepreneurs and corporate executives, sees the need to bring clarity to the issue.
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Firstly, the critical importance of monitoring and evaluation is not in doubt. It is accepted best governance practice globally to monitor and evaluate the rollout of public policy as executed through projects and programmes.
Indeed, in Ghana, M&E is regarded as integral to good governance, with dedicated units established in many, indeed most public institutions such as ministries, departments and agencies.
However, what has been disputed is the need for a full Ministry for this purpose.
ADI believes that it is indeed needed in order to increase the efficacy of M&E with a view to vastly improving the impact of public policy design and implementation. The creation of a separate Ministry of M&E with responsibility for this function across all institutions of governance will allow for the expansion of the M&E function from its hitherto traditional one to an enhanced functionality which would have significantly improved results all along the public policy design and implementation chain.
Holistic framework
Key here is that it will allow for the establishment of a national M&E framework which is holistic in nature. Most projects and programmes require collaborative effort between various public institutions and it is at the M&E level that such collaboration is best ensured.
Indeed, M&E could now be involved in actual policy design as well, with a view to ensuring that the policy implementation can be quantitatively, and therefore accurately tracked, monitored and evaluated. It is also important to consider that internally executed M&E from within a government institution tends to be compromised due to lack of independence.
Furthermore, M&E must now be continuous and proactive. In its previous form in Ghana, public sector M&E has tended to be carried out on an intermittent, stop start basis. This has allowed for gaps during which public projects and programmes can go off course and even derailed completely.
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A full ministry will prevent this from happening, and indeed will be positioned to actually forestall diversions from the plan, before they even occur.
Crucially, a Ministry for M&E should ensure the sustainability of the function. We recall the establishment of an Office for M&E within the Presidency in the previous administration, which was subsequently allowed to wither away.
It is of utmost importance that the M&E function under the new dispensation will be executed through the full utilisation of ICT, in order to ensure real time tracking of programmes and co-ordination between various public institutions.
All this requires a properly staffed technically competent and well equipped secretariat, which we believe the new ministry will provide.
We are optimistic that properly executed, the new, expanded M&E function will have major positive effects on the quality of public policy implementation and the consequent impacts.
It is instructive that Ghana has had to forgo huge quanta of donor funds, especially from multilateral development finance institutions such as the World Bank, because of poor project and programme implementation.
Besides, properly executed M&E will allow the government’s Economic Management Team to make more accurate forecasts and consequent policy decisions, using the up-to-date, accurate data and information provided by the M&E Ministry.
It is crucial that we concentrate primarily on achieving the outputs targeted by public policy, rather than just focus on the inputs. Indeed to this end we recommend that government discontinues the system of including “in progress” status in its classification of projects.
A project or programme should either be classified as “completed” or “not completed.”
ADI is confident that the new M&E Ministry will serve to significantly improve the capacity of the government to efficiently execute its programmes and projects for maximum positive impact.