Workshop 10. Achieving National M&E systems resilience through incentive schemes

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Trainer: Thania de la Garza Navarrete and Alonso M. de Erice Domínguez
Level: Intermediate/Advanced
Language: English

Workshop description:

The workshop focuses on using incentive structures to face the challenges of making a National M&E System resilient. Through short presentations and interactive activities, the trainers will walk participants through the relevance and utility of incentives as tools to model an enabling environment that contributes to the sustainability of M&E systems. Demand and supply of evaluations, as well as the development of linkages to the use of the results, are common challenges faced by the M&E systems. Some of the most complex challenges in the path for institutionalizing M&E Systems, creating enabling environments for them to grow in, and ensuring their sustainability, are not visible at the design stage and when the first steps are taken.

The workshop will discuss activities, challenges, and stakeholders involved in the defining incentives process, offering a space for countries to share their experiences and gain from knowledge sharing. The relevance of adapting each step to the needs and characteristics of each country will be highlighted at all times.

Trainers will guide participants as they map incentives and face case scenarios requiring their sophistication and evolution, parting from existing M&E frameworks. The shared information will be highlighted by trainers as they present the process followed, the stakeholders involved, and the challenges faced in Mexico when designing, implementing, and institutionalizing a whole government M&E System.

Participants will work in groups to map a series of obstacles faced in their experience and incentive-push their way over them. A series of risks will be introduced by the trainers, as the focus shifts towards some common key stakeholders in the process, involving participants as they relate to their experiences with these stakeholders in their countries.

Finally, everything shared and discussed during the workshop will be put into practice in an interactive board-game-themed activity where participants will face challenges, avoid risks, and climb their way to resilient M&E systems using incentive schemes. The workshop is targeted at government officials from national and sub-national institutions directly and indirectly engaged with evaluation and public policy, including central planning and finance ministries, sectoral ministries, evaluation units, as well as evaluators and program managers.

Learning outcomes:

Upon completion of the workshop, participants will be able to identify existing and probable challenges that may limit the continuity of existing M&E systems or threaten the likeliness of their development. Participants will be able to look at obstacles from a different angle and propose solutions, based on incentive structures, that contribute to the resilience of national M&E systems, recognizing how different processes and stakeholders within the systems take part with different interests and objectives. Participants will know some examples of custom-fit incentives for commonly relevant stakeholders and will know how their peers have faced similar challenges. It is expected that participants end the workshop considering incentives as the main tool to model an enabling environment that allows for M&E systems resilience.