|
International Development Organizations Endorse Results Plan
Roundtable sponsored by the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank in collaboration with the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD.
Marrakech, Morocco
At a meeting of representatives of more than 50 countries from around the
world and 20 international organizations, major development organizations
endorsed a joint memorandum with a set of core principles and an action plan
that can serve as an initial foundation for building a broader consensus and
taking effective action in the years to come.
The second international roundtable to focus on managing for development
results, the conference examined ways countries and development agencies can
work more effectively, individually and collectively, to help countries
achieve their development goals. It was cosponsored by the African Development
Bank (AfDB), the Asian Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction
and Development, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank, in
collaboration with the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development.
In opening the roundtable, President Omar Kabbaj of the AfDB, host of the
event, highlighted “enhanced collaboration with development partners” as one
of the elements that are important in a drive for greater effectiveness.
Conference speakers also emphasized “country ownership”—that is, the
principle that countries (governments and other stakeholders) must decide on
their own development strategies, and that the role of donors is to support
those strategies.
Participants described the results approach as a shift from focusing just on
individual activities to focusing also on the development goals those
activities are expected to accomplish—for example, not just building more
schools, but seeing that more children are educated. The roundtable also
addressed such issues as measuring and reporting on progress, getting better
statistics for decisionmaking, improving the business environment, and
strengthening countries’ capacity to manage for results.
The roundtable culminated in the endorsement of the Joint Marrakech
Memorandum, in which the sponsoring organizations committed to further work on
the results agenda. Attached to the Memorandum were a statement of the core
principles on which this work will be based, and an initial action plan
describing key objectives, actions to achieve them by the end of 2004, and
indicators of progress. (All three documents are attached.)
Contacts
African Development Bank (Tunis): Martin Kakra-Kouame, tel. (216) 71 10 23 96
Asian
Development Bank (Manila): Bruce Purdue, tel. (632) 632-4134; Omana Nair,
tel. (632) 632-4444
Development Assistance Committee (Paris): Fred
Roos, tel. +33 (0) 1 45 24 90 20
European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development (London): Brigid Janssen, tel. +44 20 7338 6102
Inter-American
Development Bank (Washington, DC): Lionel Nicol, tel. (202) 623-1237
World
Bank (Washington, DC): Andrew Kircher, tel. (202) 473-6313
More information, including digital images of roundtable sessions, is
available at www.managingfordevelopmentresults.org
Action plan
 (0.3Mb)
Joint Marrakech Memorandum
We the heads of the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank,
Inter-American Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, and World Bank, and the chairman of the Development Assistance
Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,
affirm our commitment to fostering a global partnership on managing for
development results. We would like to thank the Government of Morocco for
hosting this Second International Roundtable on Managing for Development
Results in Marrakech. We also wish to thank participants from around the globe
who have contributed to this Roundtable. Clearly, awareness is growing that
getting better development results requires management systems and capacities
that put results at the center of planning, implementation, and evaluation.
We accord the highest importance to supporting countries in strengthening
their capacity to better manage for development results. Since the
International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, in
2002, the development community has embraced a new partnership—one that calls
for developing and transition countries to strengthen their commitment to
policies and actions that reduce poverty and stimulate economic growth, and
for developed countries to provide increased and more effective aid coupled
with more coherent trade and other relevant policies. Within this global
partnership, countries must take the lead in managing their development and
transition processes. To steer the development process toward the goals they
have defined, countries need stronger capacity for strategic planning,
accountable management, statistics, monitoring, and evaluation.
We recognize that our development agencies, within their different mandates
and modalities for providing country support, need to enhance their
organizational focus on results. This means that we need to align cooperation
programs with desired country results, define the expected contribution of our
support to country outcomes, and rely on—and strengthen—countries’ monitoring
and evaluation systems to track progress and assess outcomes. As agencies
with regional or global reach, we pledge to better distill the lessons of
countries’ experiences and disseminate knowledge about what gets results in
different country contexts.
We are committed to fostering the global partnership that has emerged since
the first Roundtable on Managing for Results in 2002. We acknowledge that it
is only through such partnership that some of the greatest challenges in
managing for results can be addressed. A global effort is needed to support
countries in generating reliable and timely data to assess progress toward the
Millennium Development Goals and other country goals, and to strengthen
international reporting mechanisms. A global partnership is also essential to
reduce the burden on countries of multiple, agency-driven reporting
requirements and monitoring and evaluation systems. We encourage all agencies
to join in this partnership to harmonize results reporting through country-led
processes.
We are encouraged by the work that agencies and countries have undertaken,
individually and collectively, to better manage for development results.
Through the extensive discussions and preparations that have led to today’s
Roundtable, a consensus is emerging on the content and priorities for this
far-reaching agenda, and on the critical next steps. It will be essential to
widen the circle of this consensus, in part through regional workshops to be
held in the months to come. We believe that the attached core principles and
action plan can serve as an initial foundation for building a broader
consensus and taking effective action in the years to come. They will be
refined through further consultations, including through the Joint Venture on
Managing for Development Results, and emerging experiences. We endorse these
principles and action plan on this basis, and encourage all bilateral and
multilateral development agencies and developing countries to embrace them as
well.
Extraordinary efforts are required on the part of developing and developed
countries to accelerate progress on economic growth and poverty reduction.
Commitment and accountability by all partners are essential if we are to work
together to achieve better development results. The challenge is enormous,
but so are the potential rewards: healthy and educated children, productive
youth, empowered communities, and a safer and more equitable world.
Marrakech,
Morocco February 5, 2004
PROMOTING A HARMONIZED APPROACH TO MANAGING FOR DEVELOPMENT RESULTS: CORE
PRINCIPLES
In line with the spirit and commitments of the Monterrey Conference on
Financing for Development, managing for development results* aims at
improving the performance of countries and development agencies to achieve
sustainable improvements in country outcomes for long-term impact on poverty
reduction and increased standards of living. It promotes a partnership
approach and organizational change through organizational learning and
accountability.
Managing for development results combines a coherent framework for development
effectiveness with practical tools for strategic planning, risk management,
progress monitoring, and outcome evaluation. For maximum effect, it requires
objectives that are clearly stated in terms of expected outcomes and
beneficiaries, as well as intermediate and higher-order outcome indicators and
targets, systematic monitoring and reporting, demand for results by partner
countries and development agencies alike, an effective and continuous dialogue
on results, and strengthening of country capacity to manage for results.
Managing for development results builds on the principles set by the
development community in the domains of country ownership, donor
harmonization, and alignment. These principles, endorsed in the Rome
Declaration on Harmonization in February 2003 and further developed in the DAC
Good Practice Paper “Harmonizing Donor Practices for Effective Aid Delivery,”
provide that development agencies should:
• Rely on and support partner countries’ own priorities, objectives, and
results. This implies alignment with the national strategy (a sound poverty
reduction strategy or equivalent, with national linkage to the Millennium
Development Goals as applicable) and use of reliable national systems and
procedures (including the government’s budget, reporting cycle, and monitoring
timetable).
• Coordinate with other development agencies under partner country leadership
and promote joint action whenever possible (including through delegated
cooperation—that is, one donor acting on behalf of another).
• Strengthen partner countries’ own institutions, systems, and capabilities to
plan and implement projects and programs, report on results, and evaluate
their development processes and outcomes, avoiding parallel donor-driven
mechanisms.
These principles recognize the importance of ownership by partner countries
and support an approach by development agencies that strengthens partner
countries’ accountability to their citizens. Further, they recognize the
partnership between partner countries, development agencies and other
stakeholders and the critical importance of strengthening local capacity.
They also recognize that development agencies should provide support for
sound national management systems and for reforms and institutions to enhance
the business environment and foster the development of the private sector as
the main engine of growth.
In this context, although partner countries and development agencies have
different roles and responsibilities in development, managing for development
results means that they each have accountabilities—to their own
constituencies and to each other—for achieving development results. It also
means that leadership in both partner countries and development agencies is
especially critical for strategic vision, honest assessment of progress, and
institutional flexibility to adapt to new information.
Five core principles for managing for development results emerge from these
understandings:
1. At all phases—from strategic planning through implementation to completion
and beyond—focus the dialogue on results for partner countries, development
agencies, and other stakeholders. In managing for results, it is important to
have a coherent approach: (a) ex ante, at the strategy and planning phase,
when expected results are articulated and their likely costs and expected
impact on poverty reduction and development are analyzed; (b) during
program/project implementation, when monitoring is needed to assess progress
and identify necessary midcourse corrections; (c) ex post, upon completion,
when the results are assessed against objectives and other factors, and (d)
also when sufficient time has passed to be able to assess sustainability.
2. Align actual programming, monitoring, and evaluation activities with the
agreed expected results. When partner countries, development agencies and
other stakeholders focus on expected results and associated results
indicators, they can better align actual programming (including financial
support), monitoring, and evaluation activities with agreed results
objectives. Partner country priorities and constraints must remain the
starting point for development agencies’ support strategies, and the
development agencies’ planned operations, analytic support, and technical
assistance must be consistent with the partner country’s sound development
strategy.
3. Keep the results reporting system as simple, cost-effective, and
user-friendly as possible. The indicator framework for managing for results
should, to the extent possible, (a) be simple; (b) rely on country systems,
supporting capacity building to the maximum extent; (c) be geared to learning
as well as accountability functions; and
(d) be harmonized to minimize system transactions costs and facilitate
comparative analysis. The partner country and development agencies should
consult on a short list of key indicators, preferably from a standardized
list, for monitoring progress and assessing achievement of results. It is
important to take into consideration the chain of expected results. Managing
for results aims at improved efficiency; therefore, it is essential to be
selective (and not to try to measure everything) and realistic (in terms of
feasibility and cost) in choosing indicators. The results reporting system
should remain pragmatic; start with whatever baseline data is available,
including proxies; use meaningful qualitative indicators to complement
quantitative indicators, or to compensate if quantitative indicators are not
available; and include support for cost-efficient measures to improve data
availability and country or project monitoring systems. The end goal should
be a sound results-based management system that includes specific,
quantifiable indicators connected to a timeline with baseline data and
periodic assessments of project and program performance against defined
targets.
4. Manage for, not by, results. Managing for results involves a change in
mindset—from starting with the planned inputs and actions and then analyzing
their likely outcomes and impacts, to focusing on the desired outcomes and
impacts (for example on poverty reduction) and then identifying what inputs
and actions are needed to get there. It also involves establishing baselines
and identifying upfront performance targets and indicators for assessing
progress during implementation and on program completion. Missing key targets
should be a signal for partners to analyze together whether/why things have
gone off track and how they could be brought back on track, if necessary.
It should not be a trigger for the rigid application of penalty rules.
5. Use results information for management learning and decisionmaking, as well
as for reporting and accountability. Information on results should be
publicly available. While one of the goals of managing for results is to use
results monitoring information for reporting and accountability (for both
partner countries and development agencies), this may potentially prompt
behaviors that are overly risk-averse. Two approaches can mitigate this
possibility: (a) using reports on results in a positive way for management
learning and decisionmaking, taking into account lessons for better future
action; and
(b) when using reports for accountability purposes, setting performance
measures that reflect the level of responsibility of the actor (whether a
country, development agency, ministry, institution, NGO, and other
stakeholders) and results that the actor can reasonably achieve; this approach
recognizes that even with good performance in managing for results, external
factors may hinder the achievement of expected outcomes.
* The Glossary of Key Terms in Evaluation and Results Based Management (DAC
Network on Development Evaluation, OECD, 2002) defines results-based
management as “a management strategy focusing on performance and achievement
of output, outcomes and impact.” The DAC Network on Development Evaluation is
an international forum of bilateral and multilateral evaluation experts from
DAC member countries, the multilateral development banks, and other
international agencies.
|
