Funding universal service and access projects: Form strategy to impact

C.6     Monitoring and evaluation

C.6.1     Implementation and monitoring

Once the project commences, the implementation and monitoring step gathers  project data to highlight any changes in project implementation, for example, changes in technology, skills, or resources. The timing of this stage is important to allow for improvements or changes whilst project resources are still available. Progress is measured against the identified targets and indicators.

The key aspects being measured are compliance, impact and additionality:

• Compliance requirements may be environmental, social, governance-related or regulatory in nature (See ESG compliance checklist);
• Impact is measured against the desired development impact; and
• in relation to projects undertaken using blended finance.

C.6.2     Continuous assessment

Evaluation must be timely. Progress and impact are measured continuously against identified targets and indicators throughout the project. Impact assessment questions will be specific to a programme, for example:

This template can be used at various evaluation stages (and at least annually). The annual evaluation will indicate changes that are needed to the initial project plan.

C.6.3     Final evaluation

At the end of the project or at the end of the review period, a comprehensive evaluation must be conducted. This evaluation will incorporate findings from the continuous assessments, but is intended to:

• close the project;
• lead to a review of a next phase of the project.

An early evaluation plan needs to be developed to ensure transparency, accountability and to reduce compliance costs. It should be guided by the Project summary sheet. [R13]  The goal, outcomes and outputs need to be very specific so that they can be measured. Importantly, the indicators need to have been clearly defined and consistent with those used in the needs assessment for consistency and proper measurement.

C.6.4     Reports on findings

Once evaluation has occurred reports must be prepared in the established reporting format. This will complete the review process and initiate another project cycle using the inputs from continuous assessment and ‘final’ monitoring and evaluation stage. Reports will often have to be in the format provided by the USAF or other funds; however this should be streamlined at the beginning of the project to avoid an unnecessary administrative burden for those executing the project and excessive project management costs.