"Thank you for giving us an opportunity to comment on the draft M&E framework of the IDT. The IDT M&E Framework is well crafted and comprehensive in scope. It provides an excellent road map for setting up appropriate monitoring and evaluation systems for the management of the programs and projects of the IDT. The emphasis on ‘managing for impact’ is apt. It should enable an assessment of how IDT investments and/or interventions can contribute to substantially effect real change in the circumstances of beneficiary groups.However, measurement of impact can be tedious, time consuming, costly and complicated because (i) it may be difficult to attribute change to the specific interventions of a program or project (i.e. the challenges of establishing a causal link or attributing change in terms of isolating other plausible explanations to change-eliminating counterfactuals); and (ii) some investments may require a long gestation period (5-10 year time frame) to have intended and/or unintended effects on beneficiary groups. Therefore, it may be useful to refer to ?managing for results? which is a much broader concept and which allows for assessing short and medium term outcomes. It should be noted that in some investments, outputs can be considered as results." |
