scholarly journals Towards Building a Functional Whole-of-Government M&E System for Zambia: The Supply Side

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. 163-195
Author(s):  
Vincent Kanyamuna

Monitoring and Evaluation Systems have been identified the world over as powerful tools for good governance, they provide relevant information about development projects, programmes and policies. For that reason, governments, bilateral and multilateral development agencies, including civil society organisations have adopted M&E systems to better their performance through accountability, feedback loops and continuous learning mechanisms. This study investigated the functional status of Zambia’s public sector M&E system. Using a designated diagnostic checklist and analytical framework, the country’s whole-of-government M&E system was found to be weak in several aspects. Specifically, the study argues that for any M&E system to function satisfactorily, it is required that both its ‘supply-side’ and ‘demand-side’ are well developed and sustained. The diagnostic findings have revealed that Zambia’s whole-of-government M&E system had both its supply-side and demand-side weak. However, the study has not focused on both sides, instead, the supply-side has been fully explored and clear suggestions for improvement are made herein. Consequently, the study has proposed a new model which when implemented would holistically strengthen the Government –wide system for M&E. It remains to the powers that be to adopt and implement the recommended model. Government will need to strengthen and sustain its M&E political championship, restructure all government functions towards a results-based management approach—statistics, information technology, skills, policies, laws, etc to support an M&E regime. Likewise, the issues covered in the proposed model could also be of use to other organisations seeking to strengthen their M&E systems. Particularly, the methodology used to undertake the needs analysis could be of utmost applicability by others before embarking on a fuller process of building and strengthening their systems for M&E. Another study was underway to support the demand-side of Zambia’s M&E system.    

2003 ◽  
Vol 42 (4II) ◽  
pp. 909-924
Author(s):  
Khadija Khan ◽  
Arshad Waheed ◽  
Saadia Iqbal

The role of Civil Society Organisations as preferred partners in development is strongly emerging across the globe. Among many reasons, one is reasonably good governance. The social sector has shown the acumen to learn and apply corporate management practices and international standards fast enough to start leading the competition. Notwithstanding the fact that a large part of development funding under soft loans and grants is channeled to the government, the CSOs receive a significant share directly and indirectly to implement development projects in communities. It has opened tremendous opportunities for CSOs to experiment and evolve new approaches in project management, community organisation, service delivery, product development, resource mobilisation and financial management. What makes the civil society organisations different from the public sector organisations? Fundamentally two things; these are non-governmental and nonprofit. However, the real difference is in the way civil society organisations are managed. It includes leadership, commitment, professionalism, systems and practices, thrust of work and most of all performance.


This research aims to study the problems and find solutions of major agro-industries in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The sample was divided into two parts: The supply side was the government agency, educational institutions and civil society. Demand side was Agro-Industry entrepreneurs. The methodology was focus on meeting the stakeholder debate, and group workshop, the first step of the research was selected the potential agro-industry group to study then in the operating phase, the survey was conducted to analyze and synthesize the problems of agro-industry and find solutions by group meetings in order to present a holistic problem-solving model. This process will provide opportunity for stakeholders and related agencies to collaborate and propose appropriate guidelines for action. The results show that, within demand side, the three most important issues are labor issues, marketing and production problems respectively. While the supply side, the top three issues are the integration problems, lacking of language skills / expertise, and lacking of database. Based on the analysis of both demand and supply side, there is a lack of concrete cooperation from relevant agencies, especially in policy cooperation. Therefore, a policy that responds to the problems of agro-industry is essential for all agencies to focus on and implement concrete measures to address sustainable issues.


Author(s):  
Mingzhi Li ◽  
Kai Reimers

This chapter analyses and evaluates the Chinese government’s 3G policy of supporting the creation and implementation of the country’s indigenous TD-SCDMA standard. On the supply side, the addition of a new standard has enriched choices available on the 3G mobile telecommunications market; however, on the demand side, the government had to force operators to adopt this standard due to their lack of interest in the new standard. Building on insights gained from North’s theory on the transaction costs of politics, the authors explain this standardization process as a result of interaction between the political market and the economic market which has ultimately been driven by ideology shifts that took place on multiple levels of China’s society in recent years. They contribute to the standardization literature by demonstrating how North’s theory can be used for integrating political and economic aspects in the analysis of standardization processes.


Author(s):  
Sola Oni

E-government is an emerging field of research that has generated considerable interest recently. This research examines contributions from e-government as a means of providing solutions to developmental challenges that have been linked to corruption and a lack of transparency. Although the government has embarked upon a number of e-government initiatives, Nigeria ranks low in the area of e-government provision to its citizens. Initial findings show that the focus of existing studies have been on the supply side with little research focusing on the demand side. Initial findings also indicate that the e-government initiatives that have been implemented have little to no effect on increasing transparency and decreasing corruption. A framework for the evaluation of current e-government provision with a view to combating corruption is proposed. This will incorporate the users' perspectives into further development of e-government initiatives. The resulting framework will be applied to verify the contributions of e-government towards resolving some of the challenges facing the populace.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Pakorn Udomthanasarnsakul ◽  
Tidarat Cholprasertsuk ◽  
Panomporn Chalermwan

This research aims to study the problems and find solutions of major agro-industries in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The sample was divided into two parts: The supply side was the government agency, educational institutions and civil society. Demand side was Agro-Industry entrepreneurs. The methodology was focus on meeting the stakeholder debate, and group workshop, the first step of the research was selected the potential agro-industry group to study then in the operating phase, the survey was conducted to analyze and synthesize the problems of agro-industry and find solutions by group meetings in order to present a holistic problem-solving model. This process will provide opportunity for stakeholders and related agencies to collaborate and propose appropriate guidelines for action. The results show that, within demand side, the three most important issues are labor issues, marketing and production problems respectively. While the supply side, the top three issues are the integration problems, lacking of language skills / expertise, and lacking of database. Based on the analysis of both demand and supply side, there is a lack of concrete cooperation from relevant agencies, especially in policy cooperation. Therefore, a policy that responds to the problems of agro-industry is essential for all agencies to focus on and implement concrete measures to address sustainable issues.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qing Niu ◽  
Chi Zhang ◽  
Zhao Yu ◽  
Sifeng Zhang

Abstract Background Along with the increasing number of older adults in China, the demand for older adults services of China's aging population has been transformed and upgraded, and the demand for community cultural and leisure services of the older adults has become increasingly prominent. The research on the influencing factors of the utilization of community cultural and leisure services of the older adults can help improve the service effect and enhance the quality of life of the older adults. Based on Anderson's model, we constructed an analytical framework of the influencing factors of the utilization of community cultural and leisure services for the older adults from both the supply and demand sides, and then used Poisson regression method to empirically test the analytical framework based on the survey data of three cities in Shaanxi Province in 2019. Results The results found that supply-side factors significantly influenced the utilization of community cultural and leisure services by the older adults, mainly including service facility supply, service content supply, and service location accessibility; demand-side factors significantly influenced the utilization of community cultural and leisure services by the older adults, mainly including service acceptability, service satisfaction, and service need. The study also found that, unlike the results of previous studies, the use of community cultural and leisure services by older adults was not constrained by economic level. Conclusions Both supply-side factors and demand-side factors significantly affect the utilization of community spiritual culture services by the older adults. In strengthening and improving the supply of community cultural and leisure services, the previous "top-down" and "service-centered" approach should be changed to a "bottom-up" and "demand-centered" approach. In the past, the supply of community spiritual culture services should be changed from a "top-down" and "service-centered" approach to a "bottom-up" and "demand-centered" approach, and attention should be paid to the urban-rural differences in supply.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 158-184
Author(s):  
John Njovu

Without active civil society and their evaluations, Zambia would still be a colonised nation. It is the welfare societies and cultural groups of indigenous Africans that were the foundation for the political movements that fought for its independence from the British. After political independence, civil society grew because of the 1970s global oil and financial crises. This was to mitigate the adverse effects on ordinary citizens of the conditionality of borrowing from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and developed nations. The increase in foreign development assistance led to an increase in development projects and programmes along with their associated internal management requirements for monitoring and evaluation (M&E). Government, during this time, also started to formulate plans and programmes that required components of M&E (for example, poverty reduction strategies). After the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, M&E rose to prominence in Zambia’s national development processes. Civil society played a major role in the return to multi-party democracy politics of Zambia in 1991. Post 1991, it began to also play a major role in M&E governance and ensuring that the democratic gains of 1991 were protected. Part of the demand for external M&E capacity development was to enhance its watchdog role over the Zambian government. Though the government recognises civil society as a partner in national democratic processes, it is sometimes mistrustful and hostile to evaluation revelations that are critical of government. There remains a need to strengthen this partnership to ensure that national evaluation capacities are developed. Improved capacities will in turn lead to good governance and public service delivery in Zambia. In this way, sustainable development goals will be attained, and no one will be left behind.


2020 ◽  
pp. 026010791989687
Author(s):  
Peter Blunt

Based on primary empirical evidence from six Asian countries at different stages of development, it is argued, first, that at the national point of delivery supply-side development assistance, organisations routinely behave in a manner that is antithetical to development, contradict their stated intentions and the principles of good governance that they claim to uphold (bureaucratic misrepresentation and anomie) and waste resources on technical ‘remedies’ that they know to be ineffective (bureaucratic misdirection); second, that these things are done to serve national and/or personal vested interests on the supply-side; third, that this can lead to internal conflict and alienation in supply-side organisations; fourth, that contrary to conventional wisdom, in many ways, supply-side behaviour mirrors the behaviour of vested interests on the demand-side and that they are mutually reinforcing; fifth, that Kafka’s notion of organisation explains such supply-side and demand-side behaviour much better than Weber’s does and sixth, that the dominance of neoliberal and Weberian thinking in our political and educational institutions and the Kafkaesque nature of development agencies at the national level make it likely that development in the interests of poor people by well-intentioned and well-informed technocrats will continue to be severely curtailed. JEL: F35, F51, F54, F55 O19, O57, P48


2020 ◽  
pp. 2455328X2092243
Author(s):  
Rajesh Barik ◽  
Pritee Sharma

Among all the marginalized and stigmatized communities in Odisha, financial exclusion is high among the transgender community. This study discusses the status, importance and key challenges of financial inclusion among the transgender community of Odisha. This study tries to address the major constraints and challenges of financial inclusion among transgender community people in Odisha. To fulfil the above cited objective, in-depth interviews were conducted with 76 respondents. Additionally, the interviews were also taken from the transgender community’s president and secretary from two regions of Odisha (Cuttack and Bhubaneswar). This study points out that transgender people are deprived from accessing adequate financial products and services from the formal financial institutions. Both demand side and supply side factors are responsible for this exclusion. On the demand side, their low financial literacy and awareness, lack of proper documents to open a bank account, lack of individual interest and lack of formal employment are responsible. On the other hand, supply side factors involve unfriendly behaviour of bank staff and officers, less provision of legal documents from the government, less spread of information, less awareness programmes or financial literacy programmes among the transgender community of Odisha.


2011 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 709-744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Idean Salehyan ◽  
Kristian Skrede Gleditsch ◽  
David E. Cunningham

AbstractMany rebel organizations receive significant assistance from external governments, yet the reasons why some rebels attract foreign support while others do not is poorly understood. We analyze factors determining external support for insurgent groups from a principal-agent perspective. We focus on both the supply side, that is, when states are willing to support insurgent groups in other states, and the demand side, that is, when groups are willing to accept such support, with the conditions that this may entail. We test our hypotheses using new disaggregated data on insurgent groups and foreign support. Our results indicate that external rebel support is influenced by characteristics of the rebel group as well as linkages between rebel groups and actors in other countries. More specifically, we find that external support is more likely for moderately strong groups where support is more likely to be offered and accepted, in the presence of transnational constituencies, international rivalries, and when the government receives foreign support.


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