Tracking progress in sustainable agriculture and forest management is challenging: distances are long, populations are sparse, interventions range from policies to crop and livestock practices, and the voice of the farmer is critical for success.
... See More + Recent approaches focusing on climate impacts and land use pressures (climate-smart agriculture and landscape approach) add to the complexity and require efficient data collection and analysis methods. The systemization of information and communication technology (ICT) in the monitoring and evaluation (M and E) process enables accountability- from field staff to regional and central governments and development partners. The leapfrog effects of ICT have increased access to quality information, eased knowledge sharing among practitioners and resource-constrained governments, and created opportunities to improve accountability. The expansion of ICT has also made the work of development practitioners easier and more accurate. In some regions there are already more mobile phone subscriptions than people, and even internet access has become more common. This report identifies where ICT has expanded the capacity to perform good M and E and, more importantly, it identifies where it has not. It identifies where and how it can expand data collection and M and E, but also why and how technology is not a replacement for human agency and involvement in analysis and interpretation tasks. This report seeks to present solutions to some of the questions concerning data collection and M and E. It is designed to be an operational piece that addresses how governments and practitioners can use ICT to improve their data collection and M&E efforts in rural development projects. The first section gives overview. The second section of the report focuses on the most important aspect of ICT use: articulating the needs of the project and users. The third section provides an overview of five models currently used to implement and integrate information technology into M and E efforts. The crux of the report centers on choosing the right product or set of products for the project, and it includes cross-comparative guidance on application features such as data validation, offline capacity, dashboards, and built-in analytics in section four. The service design section deals with issues inherent to the provision of public services, such as how to provide appropriate incentives for the participation necessary to sustain the program and why post-data collection efforts are critical to success is discussed in section five. Along with these practical approaches to deploying ICT, the report describes five case studies on mobile-based data collection in the agriculture and forest sectors in section six. The conclusion section follows the case studies in section seven.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 83305 DEC 01, 2013
Belden,Cory; Bothwell, Carol; Etulain,Troy Michael; Figueres,Caroline Marie Des Neiges; Goyal,Aparajita; Kelly,Timothy John Charles; Pidatala,Krishna; Pruuden, Peeter; Surya,PriyaDisclosed
