As resources become scarcer, a reliable system for monitoring, evaluation and management is increasingly important in bilateral official development cooperation. Against the backdrop of global crises, growing doubts about the legitimacy of development cooperation and ongoing funding cuts, the pressure to use existing resources more effectively and efficiently is rising. To meet these demands, bilateral official development cooperation needs an integrated system for monitoring, evaluation and management. Beyond merely collecting data, such a system provides relevant information, supports learning processes and thus enables evidence-based decision-making at all management levels.Compared to many other policy areas, German development cooperation has already taken significant steps to strengthen monitoring and evaluation. Bilateral official development cooperation uses indicator-based systems of objectives, for example, and an evaluation system characterised by a clear division of labour, established standards, transparent guidelines and a high degree of quality and independence in both project-level and strategic evaluations.At the same time, evaluations, expert reports and studies indicate that there is still considerable potential to improve the interplay of monitoring, evaluation and management. A comparison of the requirements set out in the BMZ’s guidelines and procedural documents with their implementation in practice reveals a clear gap between objectives and reality. Two areas offer significant potential to enhance the effectiveness and cost efficiency of German bilateral official development cooperation:1. strengthening coherence within and across systems of objectives at different management levels, and2. enhancing learning from monitoring, evaluation and research.
Wolf et al. (Sun,) studied this question.