Monitoring Poverty Reduction Strategies: Leadership, Budget Links, and the Role of Communication

This 30-page World Bank document from the Communication for Governance and Accountability Program (CommGAP) details results of a workshop in Cape Town, South Africa, organised in partnership with the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network (PREM) Africa Region, on monitoring and evaluation (M&E) for government officials and technical specialists who work in the areas of Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) monitoring, communication, policy, and budgeting issues. Participants shared evidence of what they have found to be successful and unsuccessful in their work, and the challenges they still face. The workshop facilitated peer-to-peer learning, and recorded the results for further training and advocacy work with policy makers and development organisations.

This conference built on findings from a 2006 seminar in Tunis, Tunisia, where "[p]articipants agreed that the primary constraint in implementing PRS M&E was seen as lack of adequate political will/leadership to support M&E”; and a learning event in Washington, DC, US, in early 2007 where its was concluded that "systematic communication interventions are essential to the generation of political will." This workshop was organised around the following three themes from which discussion questions evolved: "Securing Political Will for Monitoring and Evaluation of Poverty Reduction Strategies;" "Linking Policies with Resources;" and "Effective Communication and Information Structures and Processes."

The main findings from the executive summary are:

"Securing Political Will for Monitoring and Evaluation of Poverty Reduction Strategies

• Establish a communication infrastructure for coordination among government institutions, taking into account accountability relationships and each institution/agency’s mandate.
• Strengthen inadequate evaluative cultures within governments. Determine who questions performance, and what the incentives or rewards are for good performance.
  
• Enhance external accountability by communicating information broadly, i.e., beyond government boundaries and into the public arena.
  
• Develop communication strategies so that both politicians and members of the public will better understand the purposes of M&E in clear and accessible language.
  
• Establish simple M&E frameworks to monitor service delivery and communicate results in ways understandable to the broader public so that they can demand better services.
  
• The importance of simplicity and clarity of messages disseminated at the right time is critical.
  

Linking PRS and Budgets for Domestic Accountability – Lessons from Africa

• Balance budgetary targets and policy priorities by organizing budgets based on sectoral concerns.
  
• Build technical capacity for government agencies to work collaboratively.
  
• Cultivate understanding of “budgets as politics”, i.e., policymakers must deem the PRS as politically relevant.
  
• Mechanisms that link PRS and budgets should be implemented gradually, with the objective of strengthening pre-existing processes.

Tools for Linking Planning and Budgeting Processes

• Enhance coordination between budgeting and finance through the following tools:

1. Performance Budgeting;
   
2. Medium Term Expenditure Frameworks (MTEF); and
   
3. practical and adaptable communication solutions.
   

• Consider political, diplomatic, and technical dimensions of PRSPs (not just technical aspects) when designing tools, processes and instruments that link budgeting and finance.
• Sell the PRS to politicians before implementation starts by taking seriously their prioritization of policies and budgeting. In addition to M&E results, provide politicians with contextual information to helps them tell success stories.
  

Information Flows: Promoting Transparency in Policy and Resource Allocation Decisions on PRS Monitoring

• Harness multiple government and public communication processes to support the PRSP in engaging democratic influences across government.
• Communication should be viewed as an integrated activity in governance processes, not merely as a crisis management activity.
  
• Encourage and enable citizens to participate in all stages of project and program cycles, including implementation and evaluation.
• Cultivate a culture of sharing information and enhance understanding of the role of communication within governance systems.

Institutionalizing and Building Communication Capacity for Better PRS Monitoring and Policy-Budget Linkages

• Provide government service consumers with high-quality and up-to-date information.
• Communication must be seen as a distinct sector, of equal substance and standing as other sectors.
• Decentralize communication initiatives by shifting focus from national to local government units.

Brainstorming and Action Steps

• The practical thrust of communication capacity building and training is to help others communicate better, not to turn non-communication specialists into communication experts.
  
• Avoid parallel (i.e., redundant) communication structures within and among government ministries/agencies.
• Design and deploy M&E frameworks that include evidence of the success or failure of communication interventions to build a knowledge base of good practices and areas for improvement.
  
• People should avoid communicating about policy areas in which they lack knowledge and expertise.
• Collaborate with “technocratic popularizers”, “professional popularizers”, or “information popularizers” -- technocrats who have the ability to translate jargon into terms understandable to non-specialist audiences and improve the quality of public debate."

In conclusion, these ideas, insights, and good practices gleaned from the workshop are intended to serve as a basis for advocacy work with policy makers and development organisations and are also meant to aid reformers around the world through the creation of training and capacity building programmes.