Planning projects that make a difference : an integrated, results-oriented & principled approach to project design, monitoring & evaluation

Almost ten years ago, in 1996, an independent committee was commissioned to review the effectiveness of the Australian overseas aid program, in terms of its contribution to poverty reduction through sustainable development. The resulting report came to be known as the ‘Simon’s Report’. While revolutionary change was not advocated, the review emphasised the need for the aid program to focus squarely on outcomes and with sensitivity to the distributional effects of projects. An enhanced role for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) was seen as a critical element of an effective aid program. The report did not specify what an enhanced approach to M&E might entail, although the institutionalisation of a process of critical review and continuous improvement was called for. These comments remain relevant today. It is timely to now ask: what evidence is there that current approaches to M&E are contributing to the achievement of targeted development results? or more foundationally: what actually constitutes an enhanced results-oriented approach to M&E? The focus of this essay is how the enhancement of M&E to facilitate targeted development results, might be progressed in any aid context. Revisiting a specific set of principles previously presented as underpinning a principled approach to the enhancement of M&E practice in overseas aid environments (Munce 2004), this essay emphasises their conceptualisation as an integrated whole, highlights their underlying assumptions and discusses their implications for meta-evaluative and project planning purposes. This approach integrates project planning, monitoring and evaluation from the beginning, with the intention of launching an ongoing participatory and contextually responsive process of results-oriented reflection, information exchange, learning, feedback and action, on multiple levels. In so doing, the framework goes beyond the mere enhancement of M&E as a discreet set of independent activities, to a re-conceptualisation of the entire approach to project design