Posted on 02/03/2021
Thank you, Johanna and Prashanth for presenting the evaluation results despite the remoteness challenges to deliver a participatory approach, I enjoy reading. During the pandemic, our organization also face the same situation in less remote areas like Kalimantan and Sulawesi, then forced us to improvise by hiring local consultants to conduct field activities.
Learning from the article and understanding the PNPM project involved abroad range of actors and introduced a new approach of development as we used to (after more than 20 years of Soeharto regime), the community-driven development program probably need baby steps in promoting community participation. Across Indonesia, building community-based institutions outside Bali and Java remain challenges, government-based supports institution at the village level able to sustain because of the continued support from the central government, re. village fund. Despite the growing number of administrative governments (re. new provinces, districts, and villages), good governance is still far from the expectation, the new administrative office is highly dependent on national supports while the community-based development requires some time to transforming, evolving and growing.
So I agree that people-centered indicators are necessary to assess for results of the bottom-up development approach before looking at the in-situ development. Indonesian often perceived development as establishing infrastructure, roads, electricity, schools, etc, this perception also reflecting the national development policy focus across different sectors.
Indonesia
Hiswaty Hafid
Sr MRM Manager
Swisscontact
Posted on 02/03/2021
Dear Isha,
Greeting from Indonesia.
I agree with Lewis and Abubakar,
1-2. Most of the evaluation in development projects is carried out by an individual or a team, a team usually represents an evaluation consultancy organization. During the Covid19 pandemic, the evaluation becomes more flexible in terms of outsourcing some of the evaluation activities to the local individual or a team due to limited mobilization. For example, conducting field data collection and inputting data, after online intensive training on how to carry the field works. Thus, the main responsibility such as managing the evaluation, analysis, and reporting remains in the hand of hired consultants or consultancy organizations.
3. For the evaluation the funding remains the same, depending on who needs the evaluation, and for what purpose. In the project, the evaluation funds usually very small (re. less than 5% of the total project budget), so usually the evaluation process also involved the data collection from the evaluated project internal monitoring system and using more less-rigorous methodologies or expensive activities.
4. The challenge to outsourcing some of the evaluation activities was 1). how to ensure the quality of data collections and inputs, 2). how to balance the client expectation vs onsite reality, also 3). During the pandemic, the target isolated region become another challenge to access target respondents with limited communication infrastructure.
Cheers,
Hiswaty