This post is written by Raymond R. Gervais, MERIT - Monitoring and Evaluation Consultant.

  • The problem: Understanding and implementing a government-wide monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system presents specific challenges for countries undergoing major public administration transformations such as Mongolia.

  • Why it matters: M&E constitutes a core element of governments and their administration’s accountability to their populations.

  • The solution: Beyond the adoption of a public administration model, deployment of an M&E system requires intense capacity building and a clear vision of what results produce expected changes.

As described by analysts such as Rist and Kusek, implementing Results-based management (RBM) monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is a complex endeavour. Civil society pressure groups, legislative bodies, and internal auditing administrations were among those organisations that fostered policy statements and the correlated legislative frameworks. In most developed countries, the keyword was accountability in different versions, such as value-for-money or taxpayers’ expectations of results. Many factors are at work on the path to the deployment of the RBM model: organisational, human, development of M&E systems, and use of performance information for decision-making.

"In many central and local administrations, the M&E function was assigned to civil servants who did not have the technical capacities to face these challenges."

In Mongolia, the general background set in motion after the return to democratic governance produced a set of first tentative steps toward RBM; the number of laws and resolutions reflected these unstable grounds. In the nearly two decades spanning the 1996 to 2013 period, Mongolia’s government and administration demonstrated a will to implement monitoring and evaluation systems but the capacity of public administration and the overbearing determination of political instances to adopt its chosen model (New Zealand model) conflicted. The M&E function remained confusing, which certainly explains the long list of resolutions adopted by the government, with the added constraint that capacities to perform activities described in all resolutions were weak; in many central and local administrations, the M&E function was assigned to civil servants who did not have the technical capacities to face these challenges.

A significant turning point appeared when the government formulated a new Law on Development Policy and Planning (2015), then it's National Development Policy (2016): “Mongolian Sustainable Development Vision-2030”. This meant that the focus then was not on sector programmes or projects but on whole-of-government goals involving all levels of administration, with increased attention to their achievement, accountability, and quality of public service rendering. It was up to Resolution 89 in 2017, a general and global regulation for monitoring and evaluation of all administrative bodies, to bring clarity as it was aligned with the new development policy law, and brought together most elements of many previous versions of the guidance to M&E in Mongolian public administration. However, it suffered from real challenges: incoherencies in concept definitions; adoption of a self-assessment scale which in effect resulted in a very subjective “evaluation” of achievements; power given to M&E officers to affect civil servants’ careers in a human resources (HR) perspective.

Finally, there was a divide between planning and M&E units in the field in central and local administrations which pushed monitoring officers away from decision-making processes into ex-post technical operations.

Recent developments in the reshaping of Resolution 89 were seen as an important step toward meeting expectations from core ministries and provincial administrations in the M&E sector.

During 2019 and a good part of 2020, yet another attempt was made to issue and implement a new resolution in line with the development law and long-term national objectives: Resolution of Government of Mongolia №206: 2020 General regulation for monitoring and evaluation of enforcement of policy documents and activities of administrative bodies. Through it, the central administration (Cabinet Secretariat) is looking for improved coordination between planners and M&E officers throughout the national administration, clear actions on the quality of information, an attempt at separating human resource management and monitoring, and adoption of a “comprehensive” M&E cycle in analyses of policies, programs, and projects.

Revisiting factors associated with RBM adoption can offer some lessons:

  • Organisational Factors: The first challenge Mongolia created for itself on the path to RBM was in effect adopting an administrative model from New Zealand, with a long tradition of democratic rule guiding civil service. Reconciling two sets of norms became overwhelming, which might explain the number of versions M&E procedures had to go through. The Cabinet Secretariat was prevented from meeting its role in quality control of reports because stakeholders at the central and provincial levels would dribble with performance scores, until they became meaningless. Scores would not really measure performance in policy or programme implementation.

  • Human Factors: Creating a performance management culture, using RBM standards, was difficult in the midst of rapidly changing guidelines, containing complex performance assessment processes. Planners in all offices held to their monopoly, marginalising M&E to ex-post interventions on documents rarely shared, reducing the participation of stakeholders in planning and implementation.

  • Developing Performance Measurement Systems: There are rising concerns and interest in these systems, but capacities still have to be developed. Redesigning a mindset to move from project to programme and ultimately to policies and long-term visions is slow and rigged with obstacles. The Mongolian administration and its partners are aware and are sharing lessons learned.

  • Using Performance Information: Adjustment in practices and in the mindset are required to prevent Mongolian civil servants from thinking that monitoring is a means to stifle their careers. Improving decision-making must be the main reason for M&E with performance measurement tools produced through consensus among stakeholders.

There is still much to be done, with many positive factors in Mongolia that play toward achieving objectives, provincial or national, in the foreseeable future. Unremitting political will, by champions and all concerned stakeholders, coordination among partners, and higher education aware of field realities would do much to bring changes cited in resolution after resolution. In the end, human resources with innovative ideas and capacities to implement them need to be invited to set their energies toward the common goals of social improvement and informed leadership.

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