Introducing Performance Measurements in the Evaluation of Assistance to Public Administration Reform in Central and Eastern Europe.

This paper focuses on the experience of the Policy Education Centre on Assistance to Transition in providing monitoring and evaluation services to "Support for Improvement in Governance and Management in Central and Eastern European Countries" (SIGMA), a joint project of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Poland and Hungary Assistance in Restructuring Economies program (PHARE). Part 1 of the paper describes the challenges of the experience in terms of context, program design, and performance monitoring. The SIGMA program was intentionally nonprescriptive, offering a menu of options about the types, speed, and sequencing of reforms, and the paths clients followed varied widely. Part 2 of the paper provides descriptions of how certain problems were addressed, such as the design and implementation of the monitoring and evaluation strategy, the process of establishing performance measurements, and the development of tools for data collection. The challenge to evaluators was to build suitable performance standards for reporting to stakeholders and users of assistance. Part 3 focuses on lessons learned and the outcome achievements of the monitoring and evaluation effort. Among the lessons learned were that an enabling environment for monitoring and evaluation requires senior management commitment and willingness to learn and that performance measures need to be defined for both service and program delivery. The need for the involvement of program customers from the beginning and the provision of adequate resources for monitoring and involvement are additional lessons that, like the other conclusions from this project, have implications for educational evaluation and the development and use of performance measures. Three appendixes describe SIGMA's development, methodological concerns, and sample methodology. (Contains 2 tables, 1 figure, and 14 references.) (SLD)