Participatory Monitoring & Evaluation

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Good Practice & Lessons Learned

 Transforming Organizations by Learning and Adaptation:

Process Monitoring in the NWFP Community Infrastructure Project (CIP)

 Julie Viloria (SASIN) and Mehreen Hosain (WSP-SA)

  1. Background 

Rural and urban low-income communities in Pakistan live in poorly serviced settlements where lack of basic infrastructure services and poor environmental conditions result in serious impacts on health, education, security and productivity. Where public sector service delivery has failed, the rich are often able to access services privately, while the poor suffer. The voices of the poor have fallen on deaf ears; over the years there have been few institutional reforms in the state’s service delivery machinery. The vast magnitude of this problem severely impedes the state’s efforts to alleviate poverty. 

Traditional centralized, supply-driven approaches have failed to improve significantly either the coverage or the quality and reliability of services to low-income communities. As public sector resources become increasingly scarce and the poor increasingly disenchanted with the state, the imperative to search for new solutions, paradigms and partnerships has become even stronger.  

In the remote North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan, the problem is acute. Basic infrastructure services (access, drainage, sewerage, solid waste, sanitation) and social sector indicators for the 18 million inhabitants of this province, lag behind the average for Pakistan as a whole. Where rural sanitation coverage is 23% for Pakistan, it is a mere 10% for the NWFP; where female literacy is (officially) 33% for Pakistan, it is only 21% for the NWFP.

 Table 1

 Service Pakistan (%) NWFP (%)

Rural Sanitation 23 10Wells as primary source of drinking water

11.5 <33

Ponds, rivers, streams as 9.5 22

source of drinking waterUrban dwellings with flush

70 42

  

 2. Why has the State Failed to Reach the Poor? 

Paradoxically Pakistan contains some of the best examples of service delivery to the poor. Several non-public sector initiatives (e.g. Orangi Pilot Project or the Rural Support Programs) have been globally acknowledged. Examples of innovation and good practice also exist in projects implemented by the public sector. However, these good practices have remained dispersed and have yet to inform national policies or be taken to scale. Experience indicates that the failure of the state to respond to the basic infrastructure service needs of the poor stems from the following key constraints:

          Lack of demand-responsiveness and transparency in selection; typically, line

departments are supply driven and responsiveness is often skewed by ill-informed political pressure.

        Centralized line departments with little outreach at the local level.         Multiplicity of service delivery institutions with no coordination and

following disparate policies.         Lack of community participation and contribution at any level, resulting in

lack of ownership by the communities. The misguided notion that the poor are unable to pay for services is deeply ingrained amongst decision makers. Traditionally communities do not contribute at all to the capital costs of investments, and are then expected to “own” them and contribute towards O&M.

        Lack of willingness to build on the community’s own efforts, or acknowledge the ability of the community to undertake community works. Where communities have undertaken “internal” or secondary and tertiary infrastructure, the state has disregarded these efforts, and also failed to provide the requisite “external” or primary infrastructure.

        High service levels and technical standards, resulting in unnecessarily high costs. Incremental improvements and appropriate standards are not generally considered in traditional approaches.

        Issues of governance and graft.         Lack of resources for Operation and Maintenance of investments, coupled

with lack of clear ownership and responsibility for undertaking O&M. Communities and Local Councils, who do not participate in identifying, planning and implementing infrastructure, have little incentive to maintain it.

        Poor Monitoring and Evaluation, resulting in ill informed management decisions and lack of information on actual impact; and finally,

        Lack of a clear policy framework to address these issues.

The crux of the problem then lies in providing effective interfaces between the state machinery and the poor, to allow it to respond appropriately and effectively to their needs, and then embodying such best practices in policies.   3. The Community Infrastructure Project: A New Response 

Emerging out of an extensive shelter review supported by the World Bank and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in the early 1990’s, and incorporating the lessons of a pilot phase, the Community Infrastructure Project has attempted to address these problems through an active process of grass roots decision- making. The CIP is implemented by the Local Government, Elections and Rural Development Department (LGE&RDD) of the NWFP, a line department with proven out-reach at the local level. The Project, with a total cost of $38.8 million, is premised on the following key principles: 

        Integrated physical, social and economic infrastructure would be provided to selected low-income communities, both rural and urban. The CIP provides sanitation, street paving, drainage, flood protection, solid waste disposal, road improvements and other types of productive infrastructure important to the community. The physical infrastructure provides the entry-point for health and hygiene promotion, links to micro-finance, community capacity building and the strengthening of local government to collaborate with communities.

        Priority would be given to those communities who demonstrate a commitment both through their capacity to organize and through financial contributions, and make space for the active participation of women. This is a commitment, which must be made up-front.

        Communities would be organized into Community Based Organizations or CBOs and would participate fully in all aspects of design, preparation and implementation of infrastructure services. These communities would then take full responsibility for subsequent O&M. The CIP is now entering into “partnership” with a number of intermediary NGOs to assist in their outreach to communities and to build community capacity.

        Planning, design and construction standards would be suited to and affordable to communities, and local infrastructure would be supported by primary infrastructure to ensure its efficient and effective operation. The Project Management Unit (PMU), and the decentralized Project Implementation Units (PIUs), provide design and implementation assistance to communities;

        Communities would contribute land and 20% share of capital costs of infrastructure (other than primary infrastructure), and 100% of the O&M costs. Local Councils would contribute 10% of the cost of infrastructure and be responsible for the O&M of primary infrastructure.

 These principles were agreed up-front between the Bank and the Government of

NWFP, and are a radical departure from the conventional approach to service delivery

generally adopted by government. Since 1996, the Project has worked in 55 communities throughout the NWFP. Following the request of the GoNWFP to scale up the approach, at the end of 2001, 80 communities and about 350,000 of the NWFP’s rural and urban poor will have been reached. 4. Departing from Norms: How has it Helped 

While the Project is still under-going its learning cycle, it has already established that: 

        Communities, even the poorest ones, can and will pay where standards and service levels are based on their demands and are affordable. While this principle is well understood by many non-formal sector initiatives, it is revelatory for the public sector. In many instances community cash contributions have been fully paid well in advance of the government’s share. At $27 per person the community infrastructure component was affordable both to households and Local Councils;

        Using community contracting and supervision, the cost of community works can be reduced, while the quality improves. Issues of governance divert resources from the poor. In the CIP the new transparency and accountability in community works has resulted in cost reductions of up to 40%, and works have frequently been of superior quality to those carried out through government contracting;

        An investment in time to undertake a truly participatory approach (24-36 months are taken to traverse the project cycle; from identification, selection, preparation, confirmation, implementation to transfer for O&M) is necessary to both allow for quality assured processes and community capacity building; and

        Decentralized implementation allows improved responsiveness to community needs; the Project Implementation Units of the CIP were accessible to communities and could respond to day-to-day issues, which arose.

 While communities have traditionally come together for their needs over the ages,

and continue to do so with the guidance of public interest organizations; the real paradigm shift has been in the acceptance of these principles of community driven development within the bureaucracy, accompanied by the development of practical “rules” and “processes” to implement them. The seeds of a nation-wide scaling-up effort lie in the development of these practices and guidelines.

 Four important new incentives have generated commitment within communities

and helped in the success of this community driven approach: 

1. 1.                  Communities are not pre-selected, but apply to participate in the Project on the basis of selection criteria. Clear processes and criteria for identification and selection ensure transparency, and demand-responsiveness. While inappropriate political pressures are not eliminated, this helps to mitigate them.

2. 2.                  A “Community Action Plan” or CAP clearly establishes and documents the roles and responsibilities of all parties and all agreements reached.

3. 3.                  Organizational and financial contributions by the community; and finally

4. 4.                  The “Process Monitoring” Group which helped monitor and refine key processes in a timely manner, and advised both Project and CBOs to improve participation and coordination;

 These stakeholder comments illustrate the impact of Process Monitoring:

 “I was pressuring to include my constituent communities in the Project, until the information disseminated by the Process Monitoring Unit helped me to understand the criteria and the selection process, and their importance.”

(Former Minister, LGE&RDD, GoNWFP) “The Process Monitoring team helps us to solve our problems and have our demands understood by the Project; if the Project paid more attention to Process Monitoring, we would have far more progress.”(Community of Islampur, Swat)  5. Processes and the Poor: Why Process Monitoring? 

It was understood at the outset that the institutional transformation necessary to undertake such a radical departure from conventional rules and processes, would not be an easy one. The traditional weightage given to targets and service provision to “favored” communities was being replaced with an entirely new paradigm based on “processes” and the poor. A new partnership and dynamic was being introduced between communities, government, local councils and NGOs; few of these “actors” had previously engaged with each other with even a modicum of ease. Resistance to such change was not a possibility; it was a certainty. 

It was also understood that transparency and willingness to openly share information was not a known strength of state institutions; the time-honored ability of a bureaucracy to obfuscate details of essential processes was a matter of concern. The rigidity of state structures undermining the ability of the department to respond to poor communities, archaic and apparently immutable rules of business, and both political and bureaucratic interference and resistance, were all anticipated.  

At the same time a chasm of mistrust and failed promises had to be bridged for poor communities and NGOs to engage with government. These stakeholders, now had to respond to a new governmental paradigm, entirely different from the top-down, paternalistic approach they knew so well. How would they respond to these new rules of engagement? 

With a “process driven” project such as the CIP, if key processes and principles were compromised its outcomes would be too. Also, as these “processes” were new, it was necessary to test their efficacy and refine them. The fact that the CIP was being implemented in “phases” would help in correcting and refining processes in an iterative manner. The learning generated would not only improve the CIP’s effectiveness and responsiveness to poor communities, but also influence future programs. Clearly, an adaptive and innovative tool, which would allow a continuous and systematic learning process, was critical for this experiment to work.  

It was in this milieu that the SDC decided to fund a pilot “process monitoring” activity within the CIP. The activity was conceived, developed and guided by the Water and Sanitation Program-South Asia (WSP-SA).  6. Defining Process Monitoring  Process Monitoring is a flexible and responsive management tool, which helps “top-down” organizations become more participatory and demand-responsive. It can, however, also be used in a number of other contexts. With its roots in the “process documentation” approaches developed in the Philippines in the 1970’s, “Process Monitoring” has been adapted over the years, can be many things to many people and has been correspondingly defined in numerous ways. The approach was initially developed in the Philippine National Irrigation Administration (NIA) to organize farmers into viable irrigator’s associations. Its development was part of social science’s response to the need for field research data relevant to decision making within a learning process approach. 

In the CIP Process Monitoring or PM has been defined by the stakeholders in the following way: “A management tool to generate information and take corrective measures for project processes, which are adaptive and innovative in nature, with a high level of community interaction.” 

A fundamental problem, which plagued the activity for some time, was the both the need and inability of the stakeholders to understand the “difference” between “Process Monitoring” and other forms of M&E. Where expectations of revolutionary differences were not met, it was difficult initially to achieve “buy-in” to this innovative activity. Often indicators of “process” are no different from indicators of progress or impact, which led to initial confusion and skepticism. 

While conventional progress monitoring focuses on physical, financial and logistic aspects of projects, Process Monitoring deals with critical processes, which are directly related to the project’s objectives. For example, while progress monitoring would look at the number of training sessions held, or the percentage of work completed on a water supply scheme, Process Monitoring would look at the responsiveness of the

training to need and its quality, and the level of community involvement in identification, design and supervision of construction.  

Process Monitoring is not an alternative to the monitoring of progress or impact which remain critical; instead it complements and enhances the quality of conventional M&E, and is often dependent on the data generated through the project’s M&E/MIS system.   Table 2 

Progress Monitoring Process MonitoringConcerned primarily with physical inputs and outputs.

Concerned with key processes for project success.

Measures results against project targets. Measures results against project objectives.

Relatively inflexible. Flexible and adaptive.Focuses on project activities/outcomes. Looks at broader socio-economic context

in which the project operates, and which affect project outcome.

Indicators usually identified up-front and remain relatively static throughout project lifetime.

Continuous and iterative testing of key processes and indicators.

Measures both qualitative and quantitative indicators, but the main focus is on quantitative indicators.

Measures both qualitative and quantitative indicators, but the main focus is on qualitative indicators.

A one-way process, where information flows in one direction, from field to management.

A two-way process where information flows back and forth between communities, field staff and management.

Paper-oriented (use of uniform formats). People oriented and interactive.No post-action review. Constant review and follow-up.Takes communication between stakeholders for granted.

Includes effectiveness of communication between stakeholders at different levels as a key indicator.

Uses formal data collection methods. Uses participatory methodologies.Not usually self-evaluating and correcting.

Is self-evaluating and correcting.

   

The following figure indicates how looking at “processes” can differ from conventional M&E; the rectangles indicate what the M&E/MIS system would measure, while the call-outs show what Process Monitoring may look at:   

         Figure 1  Identification/ Selection Process               

      

In the CIP the Process Monitoring unit is an integral part of the M&E system, with specific staff (one female and one male) assigned to the activity, and reporting directly to the Director General and other stakeholders. Monitored separately in the formative period, process indicators are now being integrated within the overall M&E/MIS system of the CIP. Process monitoring draws on the M&E/MIS data generated to identify bottlenecks and analyze issues, and feeds information on issues of quality to the M&E system.    Figure 2

Advertisement placed

Applications received

Evaluations Short-

Selection

Is the ad clear?Have all papers including the vernacular press been covered?Have other dissemination methods been used?

Are applications complete? Are applications from all parts of the project area?Have communities understood the criteria & form and been able to fill it in?

Were the criteria followed in all cases?Were the criteria equitable or resulting in bias?Are the poorest communities being included?

Were social and technical feasibility well coordinated?Was aggregate community demand reflected? 

      

    

  Using Process Monitoring has ensured quality not only at entry, but also at each

step of the project cycle. As each process is refined, key indicators may be integrated within the M&E/MIS system so that process issues may continue to be identified in the future. This constant course correction has helped the Project remain true to its objectives. 

The processes which Process Monitoring has thus far focused on in the CIP, include:

        Community identification and selection       Community action planning       Levels of Participation in CBOs       Community capacity       Implementation Bottlenecks       Conflict Resolution       Cost-Sharing and its Impact on the Poor       Gender issues at the Community Level       Gender issues at the Management Level       Staffing issues and capacity building of the Local Government

department       Field Staff Incentives and Performance       NGO Selection and Partnerships       Coordination and Information Flows at all levels       Documentation of Best Practices

The use of Process Monitoring has resulted in a dual achievement, the generation of important learning on key processes, and the empowerment of communities and front-line field staff. Process Monitoring encompasses both the objective world of hard facts, and the subjective realm of “perceptions” and “feelings”, the invisible dynamic, which so often influences outcomes. The experience has been captured in a “Process Monitoring Manual”, which provides guidance for building capacity amongst those wanting to adapt the approach for use in other contexts.

 

Process Monitoring

Project Management 

M&E/ MIS

The CIP experience has shown that the dimension added by Process Monitoring to an M&E system can make the difference between reaching the poor only in letter or both in letter and spirit. This has been largely achieved by bringing process information and learning out into the public domain, and empowering communities and field staff by giving them shared knowledge and “voice”.

 7. Promises to Keep: The CIP Responds to Process Monitoring 

7.1 Initiating Process Monitoring; The Path of Most Resistance! 

The initial response to Process Monitoring was not a positive one. Monitoring and Evaluation has a low priority in line departments, and often there are no specific units to undertake M&E, unless a donor funded project is being implemented. Staff engaged in M&E is often recruited at lower grades than other project staff, and used for a variety of ad-hoc tasks, leaving them little time to focus on their real function. The poor stature of this staff compromises their ability to discuss issues in an open manner; where management does not want to hear about weaknesses in implementation, this information is often conveniently buried. There are few incentives to look beyond the superficial achievement of physical and financial targets. 

Perceived as an externally imposed, additional burden, the Process Monitoring team was initially accused of “spying” for the donors and of adding little value to the traditional M&E system. However, the slow “take-off” of the Project’s own M&E system, while a constraining factor for the development of a Process Monitoring system, resulted in a heavy dependence on Process Monitoring to generate management information. At the same time, the value of process information began to filter through to Project Management, who began to increasingly request studies to analyze bottlenecks, issues and best practices. All of this required extreme tact on the part of the team to contend with sensitivities and territoriality. 

Communities, who were always responsive, used the Process Monitoring “platform” to discuss and analyze key issues, reflect on the effectiveness of their own organizations, and channel feedback to Project Management to influence decision-making. In one case the Process Monitoring team at management’s request, resolved a conflict between Project Management and a community by providing such a communication channel, and clear and neutral information to both parties.  

At the Mid-Term Review of the CIP, the GoNWFP specifically requested the continuation of the Process Monitoring activity, through to the close of the Project.  

7.2 A Change in Key Rules and Processes  

Process Monitoring observation and analysis may focus on interactions and dynamics within communities, between communities, between community and line department/ project, within the project management unit itself, or between the project and

external actors. It is this ability to function at all levels, and to constantly review institutional arrangements, which contributes to the effectiveness of the tool. Both upstream and downstream bottlenecks and flaws were found to affect processes and outcomes; to analyze problems at the community level, it was necessary to trace factors through to the management level. Another fundamental attribute is the mandate to actually help in “solving” problems identified, and not merely generating data. 

Some key areas where changes resulted in the project cycle and its processes through Process Monitoring were: 

        Identification:        Processes now involve clear and widely disseminated advertisement with

mass meetings and other forms of dissemination (where previously dissemination efforts were limited and in the first phase communities were even directly selected);

       Community drop-out analyzed, and coordination between social and technical staff to determine feasibility improved (drop-out had resulted partly from poor coordination);

       The participation of women in the initial needs identification process;        Coordination between line agencies to prevent both duplication and

differences in policy; and        Feedback has also indicated that the size of communities targeted may not be

the “poorest” within the Province, a key learning for future programs. 

        Preparation:        Participatory methodologies (e.g. PRA tools) have been introduced, where

previously there was a reliance on formal surveys. Process observations indicated that these surveys were not accurately conveying collective community needs, and the needs of women were being ignored;

       Data collection has been rationalized and the time of community development staff focused on community contact (where previously they had spent much of their time on largely irrelevant data collection);

       Women’s participation through separate organizations (formerly there had been token representation on male committees, where women never actually physically appeared);

       The timing of the project cycle has been optimized;        Special women’s “programs” are being formulated, where there had been no

concrete “packages” for women and it was pointed out that women’s participation was minimal.

          Confirmation and Implementation:        Community feedback showed that changes were being made in agreed

infrastructure without consultation, where technical considerations warranted these changes they needed to understand “why”. Communities needed to be involved at all stages of survey and finalization of design.

       Continuous contact is maintained with communities, where previously long periods without contact and lengthy government procedures were destroying community trust in the department;

       Implementation bottlenecks such as contractor rates, and government contracting in certain types of works, are being analyzed to speed up progress; and cost sharing and its impact on the poor will be closely examined.

 At the Management Level, the team has provided feedback on:

       Highlighted the need to streamline the lengthy government approval process, which was keeping communities waiting. The “PC-1” process has now been adapted.

       The transparency of the process of NGO contracting        Communication and information flows within the Project        Lack of coordination with other line departments resulting in inordinate

delays in Steering Committee meetings and decision-making        The burden of excessive donor visits        The gender balance within the PMU and lack of facilities for female staff        Need for clear leadership (a previously “shared” Director General, was

now given sole responsibility for the CIP)        Staffing turnover and its impact on project management        Status of field level staff and inadequate logistic provision for them;

where previously front-line field staff was completely marginalized, the Process Monitoring “Working Group” has brought them into the sphere of decision-making.

       The neglect of M&E; the presence of the team has also highlighted the importance of M&E, and brought it on to center stage. The M&E unit now plays a key role in Project Management, despite the lack of Director level staff in the unit.

 In a number of areas change has not been achieved, however, these are now

documented and clear lessons are available for the future.  7.3. 7.3.                        Process Indicators and the Process of Process Monitoring Developing Process Indicators was a challenge. It took some time for the team to

convince all partners that an indicator of “process” could also be an indicator of progress or impact, and they were not being “short-changed”! Key indicators are continuously identified and refined. Some of these are outlined in the Process Monitoring Manual, as are the key tools used to collect data. A combination of participatory methodologies, focus group discussions, individual interviews, semi-structured surveys, and most importantly, “Participant Observation” is used. Data is triangulated for verification.  Following are some illustrative examples:

 o o       Clear community understanding of selection criteria

o o       Dissemination of advertisement widespread (including remote communities)

o o       Majority of community participating in field verificationo o       Women well informed and involvedo o       Transparent selection processo o       Poorest communities included in those selectedo o       Representation of all social groups in community organizationo o       CBO meetings well attendedo o       Decisions taken at CBO meetingso o       Broad participation during community meetingso o       Transparent selection of community representativeso o       Women’s priorities reflected in Community Action Plano o       Poor and Marginal groups included in Plano o       All community members clear on agreements reachedo o       Number of visits and time allowed for mobilizationo o       Consistency of final design with community agreementso o       Percentage of community contributing by socio-economic groupo o       Community capacity for supervising constructiono o       Community understanding of O&M needso o       Coordination of social and technical units of project

 To monitor these processes and sub-processes, the following cycle is involved:

        Key processes are identified for study in conjunction with project

staff, communities and other stakeholders       Processes are broken down into sub-processes for observation       Findings are “reflected” on, and analyzed       Findings are presented to stakeholders, along with possible corrective

measures       Decisions on course-correction are followed-up

 All of this also helps in measuring potential sustainability, a problem which

implementers have long grappled with.   

7.4 Shattering Orthodoxy: Towards a New Learning Culture Throughout the project cycle, the presence of Process Monitoring has continuously

shifted the focus from the achievement of physical and financial targets, towards the quality of community outreach and capacity building, towards issues of transparency and governance, and towards the core development objectives of the Project. The critical importance of targets is not ignored, but simply framed in the context of achieving outcomes and development objectives. Where the community mobilization and development process had once been viewed as a mere formality and even a hurdle, to reach physical implementation, it now became the key area of attention. A study of Bank

“Aide Memoires” reveals this shift in focus following the advent of the Process Monitoring activity.

Evidently, the path followed has held much resistance; the rigidity of government rules and procedures has often prevented “process learning” from being translated into “process changes”, and critiques of processes and procedures have often been met with antipathy. However, with time Process Monitoring has gained acceptance and is now viewed as an integral part of the Project. Even where it is hard to affect change, the department is now willing to at least discuss issues and learn from experience; even where these challenge commonly held truths. The transformation of the CIP from a closed, hierarchical organization, with no horizontal or vertical information flows, into a more participatory, “learning organization”, with distinct “buy-in” to community driven development, is one of the major achievements of Process Monitoring.  

At every level, Process Monitoring looks not only at whether the process is being carried out correctly, but also at the relevance and appropriateness of the process in meeting core objectives. Case studies, Field Reports and Field Notes reflect Process Monitoring findings; combined with visual documentation and the “Process Monitoring Working Group” forum, these have provided the major vehicle for disseminating the learning from the CIP. 

All of this has helped the CIP in keeping true to its central promise; to develop a new way of doing business which will allow the state to reach out effectively to poor communities.    8. Learning for Change: The Key Elements of Process Monitoring 

Process Monitoring as practiced in the CIP is not a radical departure from existing forms of M&E. A number of projects now use participatory methodologies, and include indicators other than those of progress. A number of projects and programs now also include indicators of process. The participatory tools used by Process Monitoring are also well known.  

Nor is Process Monitoring yet another complex or resource-hungry “fad”. What is intuitive “good sense” has simply been structured and worked into a systematic and practical learning methodology. Immediate and dramatic results are not always evident, but over time the change is tangible. What distinguishes the CIP’s Process Monitoring system, and has succeeded in leveraging change, is the following: 

         Participant Observation: The constant presence of a team which continuously participates in all key processes at all levels, and observes them, adds a continuity, depth and accuracy to the data generated, which can never be found in ex-post monitoring or evaluation. The team is perceived as a

“participant”, and has access to information and dynamics, which would not otherwise be forthcoming.

         An “Internal-External” Arrangement: The team within the Project was directed by the WSP-SA; this “external” accountability allowed them to be independent and objective in their findings and analysis, without buckling under management pressure to gloss over facts. At the same time they were seen as “neutral” and enjoyed the confidence of all project staff, and other stakeholders. This is a critical element of good “Process Monitoring”, which should not ideally be totally internalized.

         Effective Feedback Loops: The “Working Group” provided an effective forum to feed back findings to senior management, and translate them to “process changes”. At the same time the working group brought together all levels of staff, including field staff, giving them a voice in decision-making they had never had, and;

         Low Resources: The activity is implemented with 2 full-time field staff located within the Project, and the partial supervision of a “Director” in the WSP-SA. The total cost for the first 2.5 years, was US$80,000, a figure not very different from an annual Bank supervision budget covering a couple of supervision missions. However, independent resources for the team are important to allow it to carry out its work effectively.

 In its second phase the Process Monitoring activity will focus on refining

methodologies, providing advice for replication in different contexts, and building capacity amongst communities, NGOs and government, to undertake Process Monitoring. At the same time, the learning on the project cycle and its processes will continue, with an emphasis on establishing “process benchmarks” for community driven development. 9. Institutionalizing Change: Beyond the CIP 

The CIP has been an experiment; with both supporters and detractors in the higher echelons of decision-making, much has depended on the success of this experiment. While the team acknowledges that the learning is as yet imperfect and further refinement is called for, certain principles have been established. What has also been established is the utility of Process Monitoring in ensuring that the right things happen, in the right way and at the right time, so that the poor are really reached and empowered.

 With the new move towards devolution and the pro-poor public works program of

the Government of Pakistan, the CIP is now well placed to demonstrate how these principles can be effectively meshed with the new systems of elected local government. At present we are poised at the brink of a potential provincial, and perhaps even national scaling up of the CIP’s principles. An active dissemination and advocacy program will now focus on ensuring that these principles are incorporated in policy. The challenge is real; it is expected that Process Monitoring will continue to play a key role in making it happen.

  

 

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