Publication: The Government Monitoring and Evaluation System in India : A Work in Progress
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2013-10
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2014-07-22
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This paper is discusses the evolution of India s approach to monitoring and evaluation of government programs. It is organized into 8 sections. (1) Describes the Indian government structure and sets the context for the challenges of building a government-wide M&E system in India. (2) Outlines a short history of the evaluation system under the planning commission and its stages of development. (3) Examines the demand side of evaluation the sources of demand for accountability, especially in recent years, and for evaluation in particular, and the locus of decisions regarding the selection of which programs to monitor and evaluate. (4) Discusses supply-side and operational issues such as staffing and capacity, and technical approaches (including the type or range of methodology applied). This section also examines the role of the private sector, think tanks, and civil society. (5) Examines the new institutional arrangements M&E. This section also examines the state of management information systems (MISs), outcome budgeting encouraged by the Ministry of Finance, and the performance management system as it operates in India. (6) Discusses the new Independent Evaluation Office (which became functional recently, in 2013). (7) Highlights the fiscal issues underpinning the emerging accountability and effectiveness processes. It outlines the current system of fiscal transfers from the center to the states and the highly centralized central-state fiscal relations, and how they may affect performance and evaluation. (8) Concludes with some observations about ways forward.
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“Mehrotra, Santosh. 2013. The Government Monitoring and Evaluation System in India : A Work in Progress. ECD Working Paper Series;No. 28. © http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19000 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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