Quantifying achievements to improve effectiveness in private sector development

01.09.2009
Every development agency finds growing pressure to report the results that it is achieving. There are of course many responses to this pressure, including more focus on logframes and baseline surveys, but in practice, these tools are not helping managers to quantify their achievements, particularly where programmes are aiming to have market-wide impacts. As a result, the achievements of many of the best private sector development initiatives go unrecognized. The Donor Committee for Enterprise Development has therefore been addressing the question of whether programmes can measure their own results, turning results measurement from a short-term ‘event’ into a longer-term process. Credibility is assured through external certification of the measurement process used by the programme (rather than asking a short-term consultant to duplicate that measurement). The Donor Committee for Enterprise Development has been working with a number of programmes to test the concept of such a self-measurement and certification approach; the collaboration has involved detailed consideration of the minimum elements of a credible results measurement system, leading to the formulation of a common ‘standard’ for results measurement.