RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MONITORING, EVALUATION, ACCOUNTABILITY AND SERVICE QUALITY IN WATER PROJECTS
Abstract
The success of projects plays a key role in achieving organization growth and development. For the project success to be realized, it requires project monitoring and evaluation exercise. This adds value to the overall efficiency of project planning, management and implementation by offering corrective action to the variances from the expected standard. Monitoring and evaluation systems can aid in promoting greater transparency and accountability within organizations and governments. Monitoring and evaluation can be done at the project, program, or policy levels. This paper aimed at establishing the contribution of M&E in promoting effective service delivery, focusing on three variables for measuring the contribution of M&E on service delivery. The study considered factors like management decisions, accountability, efficiency, effectiveness and transparency as important measures of service quality. There is a growing recognition that takes a stance on service delivery stating that, in order to improve public service delivery, it is not enough to concentrate merely on the monitoring and evaluation mechanisms. When privatizing water systems, a project evaluation might involve the assessment of the improvement in water fee collection rates for instance. Generating and using information on the performance of service providers by both government and non-governmental actors can lead to substantial enhancement of public transparency and accountability, which in turn fosters adherence to higher quality standards in service delivery. The discussion from the paper will enable organizations adopt best practices in improving the service delivery. The paper elucidates that in order to improve service delivery, there is need to ensure improved infrastructure and equipment, better technical capacity and internal reforms, which all are complementary to building capacity for greater accountability. The paper recommends on the need for examining the roles or influences of monitoring practices that have not been covered in the study on sharing and transferring project management skills, cognitive skills, technical skills, human skills within or outside organizations projects.
Key words: Impact Evaluation, Performance, Public Services, Service Delivery, Organisations.
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