Chapter 4
national M&E system National statistics act of the country in one sector may need National government’s poverty to draw data from Other Health monitoring system government information the M&E systems of M&E systems management systems other sectors and may need to provide data Education to M&E systems in Orphan management monitoring information other sectors to avoid system systems duplication, overlap Civil society and overburdening Private sector organization M&E systems M&E systems the implementers of programs. Figure Source: Authors C4-4 shows the Figure C4-4: Linkages between the National potential links M&E Systems of Different Sectors between the M&E systems of different sectors, from the perspective of a cross-cutting M&E system (for example, for HIV or poverty programs). 5.3. Link between a national M&E plan and M&E plans of individual organizations Another type of linkage that needs to be understood is between a national M&E plan and an M&E plan of an individual organization. In the education sector, for example, the Ministry of Education may have developed a national education monitoring and evaluation plan. The question is, “How does the M&E plan of a training college or of a school, or an NGO that trains teachers, link to this national education M&E plan?� A national M&E plan provides a common recipe book of what should be reported to the national ministry and what will be reported by the national ministry. Each individual organization should include in its indicator set all national-level indicators on which it needs to report (to the Ministry of Education, per the example in the previous paragraph) and should use relevant data generated by the national ministry (summary data) for its own planning purposes. Figure C4-5 illustrates the relationship between national-level indicators and objectives, and program-level indicators and objectives (and, therefore, between national M&E plans and the M&E plans of individual organizations). In this example (Figure C4-5), the national strategic plan contains 2 types of objectives, OVC and PMTCT objectives (relating to programs for Orphans and Vulnerable Children, and to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission). These objectives are measured in the national M&E system by including one indicator in the M&E plan linked to every national strategic plan objective. At the program implementation level, the program implementation guidelines include 152
Making Monitoring and Evaluation Systems Work