ECONOMICS MADE SIMPLE: Monitoring, evaluation of annual economic goals

Honest Ngowi

End of the year is a time, when a number of activities are accomplished in various sectors and contexts. These activities are those aimed at attaining several goals. They may be goals in education, politics, social issues, religion, economy, business etc.
These goals can be at individual, household, community, organisation, national or even global level. It is a good time to look back and monitor, evaluate and learn the implementation of planned activities and attainment of goals.
Setting annual goals
Monitoring and evaluation of goals assumes that there were goals that were set at the beginning of the year. These goals were to be attained at different points in time. There are goals to be attained within a day, week, month, quarterly, semi annually or annually. Goals are set based on the real situation on the ground and forecasting of the same at the planning time.
Good and realistic goal-setting calls for good and thorough situational analysis. It calls for the compilation of baseline data. Situational analysis and baseline data are very important inputs in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of annual goals.
They show where one was at the start of the year. This provides the basis for monitoring and evaluation achievements made or not made towards achieving the goals. It is important, therefore, to set realistic goals and set aside adequate resources for implementing the goals. Short of that, there will be disappointments at the time of annual evaluation.


Monitoring annual goals
In the context of this article, goals monitoring is a frequent and routine activity that intends to see whether the goals are going to be achieved as planned and expected or not. It can be done hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semiannually or annually depending on the nature of the activity being monitored. This is because attaining annual goals is a combination of activities in a coordinated manner. Monitoring of annual goals has to be done timely. Too late or too early monitoring may derail the attainment of the goals. This is because there may be irreversible damages caused by untimely monitoring. 

Evaluation of annual goals
Evaluation can be seen as a variant of monitoring. However, it is done at a specific point in time after a given period of implementing activities that will lead to the attainment of annual goals. Evaluation can be mid-term or end of year evaluation in the context of annual goals evaluation. Midterm evaluation has to be done at the middle of the year. One would look back at the half of the year that has passed and assess what was planned to be accomplished by that time, what has been accomplished, what has not been accomplished, why there is non-accomplishment and most importantly what should be done to accomplish what was supposed to be accomplished.  
 Evaluation aims at learning from implementation experience. It tries to answer such questions as what has gone right or wrong, what should and could be changed for the remaining period of implementation or in the future for the end of period evaluation. It also attempts to identify what should and could continue towards attaining goals given experiences and lessons learnt so far. The lessons that are learnt should be used to improve the implementation of activities to attain annual goals at all levels.

Who should evaluate
Evaluation of annual goals can be conducted by internal or external evaluators or both. Internal evaluators will be for those, who set the goals and worked on implementing them. These may be biased as opposed to neutral and impartial and subjective as opposed to objective. They may be in the unhealthy situation of being referees in the game they are playing. That is partly why external evaluators of annual goals are more recommended for the sake of objectivity, impartiality, neutrality and new, different and critical perspectives.

Learning
Monitoring and evaluation of annual goals should not be done for their own sake. Among the key goals of M&E include learning from implementation experience. Mid-term evaluation, for example, is important in providing lessons for the remaining part of the implementation period. It should teach us what is possible and what is not, what works and what does not.
It should provide lessons for the implementation of the remaining activities as one tries to attain the  annual goals. End of period evaluation is important in providing lessons and learning for similar activities and activities in similar environment. In the context of annual goals evaluation results of end of the year evaluation should provide input for new year goals. Without learning, new year resolutions at all levels will mean very little.

What should be done
End of the year is an opportunity to evaluate the extent to which the  goals in general and economic ones in the context of this column in particular have been attained.