• Home
• Site Map
• Foreword
  • Foreword
  • Contributors & Copyright
• Introduction
  • Introduction
  • Methods
  • Sites
    • Why Pando and East Kalimantan?
    • Municipal Governments and Decentralisation in Bolivia
    • Municipal Governments and Decentralisation in Indonesia
• Part I. Concepts
  • Wellbeing and Poverty
    • Poverty is More Than Low Income
    • Poverty is a Lack of Wellbeing
    • Poverty and Wellbeing Have Many Dimensions
    • Further Reading
  • Local Governments and Poverty
    • How can Local Governments Reduce Poverty?
    • Four Steps to Improve Local Governmental Action
    • Further Reading
  • Forests and Poverty
    • How do Forests Influence Poverty?
    • What is Poverty in Forest Communities?
    • Are Forests Safety Nets, Poverty Traps or Escape Routes?
    • Further Reading
• Part II. Tools
  • Monitoring
    • What is monitoring?
    • Types of Monitoring
    • Indicators
    • When to monitor?
    • Who conducts monitoring?
    • Linking monitoring to planning
  • Participatory Planning
    • What is participatory planning?
    • Why is participatory planning useful?
    • When and where is participatory planning done?
    • Who should participate?
  • Tool 1: Interactive Mapping
    • What is interactive mapping?
    • Interactive mapping step-by-step
    • Use interactive mapping for monitoring
  • Tool 2: Wellbeing Monitoring
    • What is a local wellbeing monitoring system?
    • Wellbeing monitoring step-by-step
    • Step 1: Define purpose, develop plan and budget
    • Step 2: Develop local poverty indicators and formulate survey questions
    • Step 3: Design the sampling strategy
    • Step 4: Train staff and perform the survey
    • Step 5: Analyse and present the data
    • Step 6: Present findings
  • Tool 3: Community Evaluation
    • Evaluating local government programmes through community focus groups
    • Steps 1-3
    • Steps 4-6
    • Steps 7-8
    • Community evaluation step-by-step
  • Tool 4: Scenario-based Planning
    • What is scenario-based planning?
    • Scenario-based planning step-by-step
    • Visioning
    • Pathways
• Final Remarks
• Acknowledgements
• Additional Resources
• PDF Version

Step 1. Define purpose, develop plan and budget

Designing a monitoring programme requires careful planning. This step provides guidelines for the development of a local wellbeing monitoring system.

A. Define the purpose of the monitoring

Organise a meeting with local government decision makers. Even if the monitoring will be carried out by a single agency, it is important that other agencies are involved in this step. Their assistance throughout the process may be needed, and they may also be end users of the results.

Discuss the purpose of wellbeing monitoring:

• Why does the local government want to monitor wellbeing?
  
• What elements of wellbeing does it want to monitor?
  
• Is the purpose to define the percentage of poor people in a district or municipality, or is it to identify each and every poor household?
  
• Is the purpose to find the extent to which households are able to fulfil their basic needs, or is it also to identify the conditions that influence how poor households can lift themselves out of poverty?
• Does the local government need to better target assistance programmes for the poor, or does it want to improve the development planning of the administrative area?
  

It is worthwhile first to examine existing monitoring systems: what are their purpose, target group, indicators, frequency and type of data? This assessment will reveal whether additional data collection is needed and helps to avoid developing redundant programmes. It can also determine how existing monitoring systems could be improved, either through better coordination among government agencies, or through interactive mapping as in Tool 1.

B. Define the level of detail of monitoring

Planning should include discussing the level of detail needed. Is poverty data needed on individuals, families or households, or is it enough to identify only poor communities? This decision has strong implications on how data will be collected, how much information is needed, and on the resources required. The more detail needed, the greater the demand on local staff and budget.

It is important to be realistic; a simple but persistent monitoring programme is better than a highly sophisticated version that is only seldom repeated or not used at all. Limited resources might decide whether the monitoring is repeated annually, biennially or at even longer intervals.

C. Identify the implementing agency

Find out which agencies will be involved in the monitoring. If the purpose is to improve the planning related to poverty reduction, it makes sense to link poverty monitoring to the district or municipal planning agency. If the purpose is to identify poor families, the statistical service might be the appropriate executing agency.

Involving different agencies has the advantage of bringing in more expertise and different viewpoints. However, the trade-off is that coordination and cooperation can be more difficult. This also is the case when NGOs are involved.

A practical solution can be to establish a monitoring team comprising 4–8 representatives of the most relevant government agencies. This will combine existing expertise and facilitate communication across government sectors. In addition, external experts from NGOs, statistics agencies or academic institutions should be invited as needed. The monitoring team’s main function is to design and plan the monitoring system, to ensure its proper implementation and to present the findings to the local government.

D. Plan the budget

Plan a budget based on the monitoring programme design. The source of funding for the survey can affect the strategy. If the survey is conducted using local government funds, verify the schedule for disbursement of the money. Any administrative delays could affect the implementation. Unexpected delay could push back data collection to inconvenient times when community residents are occupied with other activities, like agricultural chores or forest product collecting, which increases the difficulty in contacting all respondents.

© 2007 Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
Contributors and copyright information