Activity Monitoring
Role of NZAID staff in Activity monitoring
The key role for NZAID staff is to help strengthen local monitoring systems, to empower implementing partners to focus on outcomes. During the identification and design stages the principal role of NZAID staff (in terms of monitoring) is to encourage our partners to give appropriate attention to the proposed monitoring system. During implementation, NZAID staff should be focused on high level risks, evidence of outcomes and the functionality of systems - not on day to day monitoring and management.
During implementation NZAID staff need to be able to detect when important new opportunities emerge, or if unplanned events threaten Activity outcomes. It is also important that any potential threats to financial accountability are identified and managed.
Staff at Post have a particularly important role since they are often in the best position to identify changes that may be happening both within the Activity and in the general environment in which it is being implemented. However, collecting and analysing data is primarily the responsibility of the implementing partner. NZAID staff have the role to “monitor the monitors”, closely follow information on outcomes, and to be alert to warning signs which might appear in the implementor’s formal or informal reports or through other, often unexpected, sources.
Monitoring reports are often used as contract milestones. NZAID staff will action the milestone payment when the report is accepted (ie if its quality is satisfactory). Monitoring reports can prompt NZAID staff at post to have a face-to-face meeting to discuss progress towards agreed outcomes, risk management strategies and future directions. These meetings should be reported in a brief file note (or email for file) and make recommendations on payment of the contract milestone.
Whenever a milestone is accepted, a note should be placed on the Activity file recording the judgement that the milestone and contractor performance was of sufficient quality to make the payment. The file note should also record the Activity manager’s judgement about the quality of the Activity (see box).
Minimum Standards for Activity Quality
Activity managers should periodically make their best judgement of the quality of the Activity against the following standards. This judgement should be made regularly (eg whenever milestones are paid) and recorded on file. A rating can be either “satisfactory/unsatisfactory” or can be made on the six point scale:
- “Very high quality
- Good quality
- Adequate quality, some work to improve needed
- Less than adequate quality
- Poor quality
- Very poor quality”
The judgement, backed up with qualitative justification if necessary, should be made for each of the following criteria. Quality of:
- Relationships with partners, beneficiaries and other stakeholders
- Implementation progress
- Identification and management of risks
- Monitoring and evaluation systems and use
- Contractor/partner performance (ie is this milestone satisfactory to make the payment)
Active engagement with partners as well as reading and commenting on monitoring reports ensures that NZAID maintains oversight of the partner’s monitoring systems.
Where NZAID is engaged in an Activity with several donors, monitoring according to the Paris declaration principles of harmonisation and coordination is particularly important. If other donors have their own views and systems for monitoring, in addition to the main partner, NZAID staff should challenge donors to harmonise their requirements to those of the partner. We should seek a single set of monitoring and reporting systems for the Activity and avoid a proliferation of donor-specific reports. Depending on the context, NZAID staff may need to take the lead in promoting common sense and practical monitoring arrangements that place the primary responsibility on the implementing partner and clearly define simple, relatively hands-off oversight roles for others.
It is important for NZAID staff to monitor the capacity of our partner to manage Activity monitoring and reporting systems. If not already built into Activity design, building partner capacity may be desirable, and certainly should be preferred over donor action to undertake monitoring on behalf of partners.