Crown Agents recognizes that efficient monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems are essential to ensuring sustainable, long lasting and effective development efforts. According to the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group, such M&E systems improve performance by making certain that budget, policy, and management decisions are made based on concrete and demonstrable data.
Based on a deep understanding of the importance of effective M&E systems, Crown Agents is dedicated to providing clients with effective methods to design and implement such systems. From years of experience implementing projects for a variety of donors, we have gained the expertise our partners need for creating frameworks that best enable them to make important decisions that are grounded on reliable evidence.
Emphasis from the Donor Community
While there has always been a need to monitor and evaluate the progress and final impact of a development project, there is now an increased emphasis on the part of the donor community to report on results and to publish this information. This has led to increased importance for implementing partners to focus on systems to carry out monitoring and evaluation.
The Millennium Challenge Corporation recently underscored the need to carry out good M&E work by featuring its approach to monitoring and evaluation on its main Web site. The US Agency for International Development has made it clear that monitoring progress and evaluating impact is an important part of sustainable development.
The importance of developing M&E systems is such that the donors have begun to adopt such systems for their operations. In fact, several donor organizations are in the process of changing or enhancing their internal IT systems to provide M&E functionality. The World Bank was one of the first to start this process and several have followed since.
Our Expertise and Methods
Crown Agents provides M&E services in finance, budgeting, disaster preparedness, humanitarian assistance, post-conflict programming and training. The required competences to run M&E projects include a host of disciplines that align particularly well with many of our main capabilities.
As a reflection of the new emphasis on M&E and our core capabilities, we have been engaged in several M&E projects throughout the world over the past few years. Crown Agents has strong experience in making objective assessments of donor interventions, to enable the government and the international community to better understand the factors behind success or failure. Thanks to our experience we have developed a unique and strong ability to manage M&E programs.
Our Track Record
Crown Agents works to improve, and sometimes to establish, monitoring and evaluation systems in a wide variety of locations and circumstances. Our clients are diverse, our geographic range wide, but our focus is always set on "value for money" and sustainable results.
African Development Bank Results Reporting System.
Since 2008, Crown Agents has provided consultancy services to the Quality Assurance and Results Department within the African Development Bank (AfDB) to integrate a Results Reporting System into the Bank's existing IT environment, aimed at improving service delivery while reducing risk and enhancing accountability.
Crown Agents determined AfDB's monitoring and evaluation requirements and then recommended an enhancement of their ICT systems to allow for the development of automated dashboard, reporting and alert tools. We developed a system to monitor the individual procurement activities of a project, including key milestones and project deliverables. The system enables project deliverables to reach their appropriate authorizers through the use of emails and tracks the progress of activities, highlights overdue procurement activities, and produces management reports.
The second area developed for the AfDB in Tunisia was a results reporting system that allows users to set quantifiable output and outcome targets for a project; to monitor these targets throughout the life of the project; and then to finalize this evaluation through a Project Completion Report.
Pakistan's Earthquake Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority (ERRA).
Through an initial contract with the UK Department for International Development (DFID), Crown Agents provided consulting services to the Pakistani government in the establishment of the Earthquake Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority (ERRA). This organization functions as the key coordinator and manager of earthquake reconstruction efforts.
Crown Agents assisted the ERRA in making effective use of its reconstruction resources, financial and otherwise. This assistance consisted of designing an M&E system through which all reconstruction projects could be measured. We helped establish an M&E wing within ERRA that provides real time monitoring and evaluation of current projects, along with analysis of the progress of the reconstruction process.
Additionally, Crown Agents has worked with ERRA to procure and install a financial management information system (FMIS) that ensures the effective use of reconstruction funds. This effort was complex as it required significant process changes and implementation across very remote parts of Pakistan. The system ensures better planning, provides more reliable revenue and expenditure data, thereby enhancing transparency and accountability of funds use.
Additional Experience
- In Sudan, we designed a Common Humanitarian Fund mechanism in support of humanitarian crisis response. This mechanism allows for proper monitoring and evaluation of programs financed by the Common Fund.
- Crown Agents helped the government of Ghana improve the efficiency and transparency of public sector expenditures. This work produced, in the short term, savings equivalent to US$149 million through contract term improvement.
- Crown Agents worked alongside national audit offices across the world to develop their capacity to provide independent oversight of the budget cycle. For example, in Afghanistan and Macedonia, we developed control and management systems to support newly established Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs).