Towards locally owned M&E

Once in a while suggestions come in to improve IICD's online Monitoring and Evaluation tool (http://demosurvey.iicd.org). Just last week, my direct colleagues Hanna, Anne-Marijke and myself have been working on a new feature: an easy-to-download analysis. This came as a request from the project partners in Uganda. Until now, the download contained only the raw data which was not directly accessible for our partners. Project partners were already able to collect data online, by asking their end-users to fill in a questionnaire in the online tool, and now they will also be able to download the results directly from the tool. This will truly make ‘local ownership’ work in practice!

Monitoring and evaluation is key to understanding how and why modern technology exactly works for development. IICD has designed a way to measure how ICT projects impact people's lives and that has enabled our partners and us to learn a lot! Partners have improved their services to better reach their target groups and training sessions have been tailored to better fit the local needs.

The wide use of the online M&E tool resulted in 15,000 questionnaires from end-users in IICD's nine focal countries. In Bolivia the project partners have been empowered to continue Monitoring and Evaluation themselves without much support. The same trend is now happening in Uganda where the project owners of 16 projects with 65 up-country centres will be empowered to use the online M&E tool for their own benefit.

As officer Monitoring and Evaluation I have been involved in the design and development of the online learning tool since the beginning. This tool is up and running since 2005 as the open source software application WebEnq (http://www.webenq.org/), which is developed and maintained by Nivocer (info@webenq.org). Even though the tool is functioning well … “the development of the tool is never finished!” This remark was made by my colleague Anne-Marijke, after she implemented some changes in the questionnaire at the beginning of the year. It turns out many new suggestions come continuously from our partners in the countries. Next on the agenda is the improvement of measuring the longer term impact of our partner's training efforts. And surely this is not the last improvement that will be made… I will keep you posted!