Reportes de gestión

For the M&E of its national development strategies, the government does not provide a comprehensive M&E plan or a formal document that outlines an M&E plan. It has, however, an indicator measurement framework formally written up, in the form of the Results Matrices (RM), an accompanying document to the PDP 2011-2016.

The RM is a tool designed to provide results-orientation to the current Plan. As it is grounded on the principle of results-based management, it shifts the government‘s focus, from mere input-output monitoring to an emphasis on the achievement of outcomes and impacts. As the Plan‘s principal M&E instrument, the RM enables reporting and assessment on the progress of the Plan (NEDA, 2011a). The RM was formally published, and disseminated to a wide range of actors, including (and especially to) sector agencies, parliament, development partners, and civil society.

The RM, following the format of the national plan, contains nine chapters, each one corresponding to the nine priority sectors of the government: macroeconomy, industry and services, agriculture and fisheries, infrastructure, financial, good governance and rule of law, social development, peace and security, and environment and natural resources (NEDA, 2011a). Each of the nine chapters contains statements of objectives, illustrated through an objective tree. These results statements were based on what is called the ‗strategic framework‘ of sectors, decided upon by members of their respective planning committees and subcommittees, composed of officials from line ministries, as well as other stakeholders within the same sector.

Further, each chapter or sector has a list of indicators for the various levels of development results (goal, sector and sub-sector outcomes) expected to be delivered by 2016, with corresponding baseline information, end-of-plan targets and responsible agencies, all contained in a matrix format (NEDA, 2011a). The indicators were recently revalidated in

25 2013, and progress of the achievement towards targets were also recorded, and once again captured in an updated RM volume .

Figure 1. Objective Tree and Indicator Matrix of the Social Development Sector in the PDP 2011-2016

Source: NEDA, 2011a

According to the Global Fund (2011), a national M&E system should have an M&E plan, which is typically composed of the following sections: (1) M&E coordination mechanisms – to describe functions of stakeholders and partners and composition of working groups; (2) indicator measurement framework – to present a list of indicators, baseline values, targets, data collection methods, frequency of data collection, and person and agency responsible for data collection; (3) data collection strategies – to describe data collection and reporting tools, including frequency and timeline; (4) data management – to outline how data and reports will be managed (i.e. data management infrastructure/systems); (5) data quality assurance mechanisms – to describe the system that will ensure the quality of data collected and reported; (6) program review, evaluation and surveys – to enumerate practices, plans and schedules for conducting program reviews, evaluations and surveys; (7) human resource capacity building – to describe the M&E human resource capacity at the period the M&E plan was prepared; and, (8) costed M&E work plan – to outline costs related to the implementation of M&E activities and identify technical assistance needs for conducting M&E.

The Philippines, currently, only has the second element – indicator measurement framework – explicitly expressed through the RM. This is not to say that the other elements are completely non-existent; they may be found in separate documents (e.g. memorandum or guidelines), or are conducted as part of other government functions. For example, M&E

26 coordination mechanisms should follow the structure of the planning process – monitoring of target achievements should be done within sector planning committees. This is indicated in another document, called RM Guidelines (issued by NEDA, but not formally published and disseminated), which also contains other elements such as criteria for selection of indicators, and in lesser detail, data collection strategies and data management. Further, on the issue of M&E costs, the budget for the conduct of RM-related activities (e.g. coordination meetings, indicator setting workshops, publication of the RM volume), was tucked within the budget of NEDA as lead secretariat and facilitator of the Plan process. There was also no budget explicitly allocated for follow-up M&E activities such as program reviews and evaluations.

The conception of the RM certainly illustrates the government‘s commitment to results-orientation, as advocated by several international agreements the Philippine government has pledged to uphold. It was clearly in direct response to the challenge in the Paris Declaration (specifically, indicator 11) for: ―partner countries endeavour to establish results-oriented reporting and assessment frameworks that monitor progress against key dimensions of the national and sector development strategies and that these frameworks should track a manageable number of indicators for which data are cost-effectively available‖ (OECD, 2005:7).

However, the government focused most of their efforts in the identification of results objectives and indicators, without necessarily thinking up and putting in one comprehensive document a clear strategy that could guide the conduct M&E activities related to the national plan. In a way, the RM is only an initial step towards achieving a bigger results agenda, for instance, it paved the way for better linkages in planning and budgeting (see section M&E linkage to the budget process).