Monitoring, Evaluating and Learning for Complex Programs in Complex Contexts: Three Facility Case Studies - Davda and Tyrrel (2019)

This paper from Abt Associates looks at effective monitoring, evaluation and learning approaches to assessing overall performance in three facilities in Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, and Indonesia. The paper addresses an issue of real strategic importance to both the Australian government and to Abt Associates: how do we judge the overall performance of each Facility? The paper argues that by their nature, Facilities create intellectual and management challenges not present in less complex and ambitious development initiatives: is it possible meaningfully to aggregate results arising from different programs? Just how much ‘contribution’ to a high-level development goal is required and how can such a convincing argument be constructed? Do we possess the skills to monitor progress in real-time and adapt our programs accordingly? And most importantly, to what extent does the use of the project framework hinder or help monitoring and learning about Facility-wide performance?