Programme Performance Assessment in Results-based Management

Session 3

This third session discusses how the programme self-evaluation plan can be implemented. Most of the hard thinking should already have been done: you know what you have to find out and where you expect to get the information. You have planned the time and identified the staff to do it. In terms of building, you have finished the architectural work. Now you are ready to proceed to the carpentry.

There are two general issues: how to collect the data effectively is the first. This has to do with setting up procedures that will allow the data to be assembled. Although the outlines of this should have been done in the planning stage, as we will see The Devil is in the Details. And it is these details that we will examine. Here, the nature of the collection process will depend on the type of method being employed, so you can skip over the material on those you are not using.

Once you have the data, the issue of how best to analyze it comes into play. There is a simple and a complex dimension to this. On the one hand, you will test the hypothesis that there were results, based on the performance indicators. That part it simple (assuming you have the data). The next step, however, is to determine why the results happened (or why not). That involves determining such things as relative causality, the effect of external factors and other more complex issues. We will see how this can be done expeditiously.