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Results from Focus Group Interviews
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Managers and staff seem to understand the overall objectives of the Bank's managing for results agenda and its implications for Bank operations. Managing for results means aligning project and country program outcomes with country objectives, focusing on outcomes rather than outputs, and measuring and being accountable for outcomes.
Based on interview findings, policy makers (Board members, country directors) see the results frameworks as a way of setting overall strategic directions and monitoring progress toward these strategic goals. Task team leaders (TTLs) accept the results frameworks as part of their work, but disagree about their usefulness. Country directors, sector managers, and TTLs struggled with technical aspects of managing for results—developing results chains, positioning Bank operations appropriately in the chain, and coming up with performance indicators. The focus group identified the following challenges to managing for results:
Perceptions: Many people still see implementation and monitoring as being about inputs and outputs. That is, “results” will come at the end of an operation. Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is still seen as generating data, especially outcomes, the use and usefulness of which are not necessarily clear or seen as a high priority.
- Conceptual difficulties: Managers and staff alike struggle to develop results chains, that is, link higher-level objectives to Bank operations and identify appropriate performance indicators. They also have difficulty positioning a project within the chain; that is, they may come up with overly ambitious project development objectives (PDO) or position the PDO too high up the results chain, and then struggle to develop a results framework around that PDO. They also struggle to come up with numerical indicators, saying that not all important results could be measured.
- Client capacity and buy-in: Lack of client capacity and interest is often given as a constraint to carrying out M&E. It is linked with lack of clarity on the use and usefulness of monitoring data, especially of outcomes, during implementation. This has led to difficulty in collecting data, including baseline data.
- Bank pressures: TTL overload, time pressures, and lack of resources were cited as constraints. TTLs tended to see M&E as lower priority than operational activities (and also more problematic, given difficulties with results chains, indicators, lack of clarity on use, and client buy in). When developing a project, M&E was often left to the last minute, given the pressure to reduce project preparation time.
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