Why evaluation is important for telecentre?

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Permalink Reply by DR. SYED MD. ZAINUL ABEDIN on May 23, 2009 at 8:37pm

I appreciate your initiative to focus on evaluation.Could you also consider monitoring with the question of evaluation.Let's see how other members react.

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Permalink Reply by Fatema Begum Labony on May 25, 2009 at 4:54am

Sir, thank you very much for joining evaluation for telecentre group. We will also discuss monitoring issue here.

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Permalink Reply by Cuchie Echeverria on May 26, 2009 at 8:33pm

Hi Fatema.

Yes, I agree with Dr. Syed. Evaluation should go hand in hand with monitoring. These two help us assess how effective a telecentre is and whether or not our main goals of establishing a telecentre are being met.

Looking forward to healthy discussions on how to carry this out effectively in different telecentres across the globe.

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Permalink Reply by Ananya Raihan on June 5, 2009 at 1:50pm

I appreciate Labony's initiative to discuss what works and what not - frankly and constructively. In that sense, sharing lessons learnt would also be useful, so that a new comer can avoid doing same mistakes.

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Permalink Reply by S Gavashkar on June 10, 2009 at 10:52am

I think group was not there or not even thought about. Good that this discussion group has been now created. In Sri Lankan Telecentre (Nenasalas) implementation, project identified Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) as one of the key measurement mechanism through-out the project to assess the project status. This greatly helps project team to decide where the project is heading and to take appropriate actions to make corrections.

With this in mind frequent evaluations are made by internal M&E unit at ICTA. In addition to this we have contracted Regional Impact Teams (RIT) to be in field and produce us monthly M&E reports on telecentres they visit. We have currently 4 teams operating as RITs with dedicated field M&E officers. RITs suppose to provide necessary capacity building and skill development to Telecentre Managers and operators with identified skills gaps. Also content & service deployment part of their assignment which again identified during their M&E work. This system is in place from 2006 and successfully operating.

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Permalink Reply by Jimmy L. Calata on November 26, 2009 at 1:56am

Yes, I agree Ms. Fatema.

Good project management practice dictates that M&E, in its broadest sense, should also be present in every stage of the project development life cycle, and not just a stage by itself. It also provides the reason of the end of a project, or serves as the connection between the end of a project and its new beginning or the beginning of a new one. It helps in answering such questions as: Are we getting there as planned? Should we still proceed there or should we now detour elsewhere?

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Permalink Reply by Niranjan Meegammana on November 27, 2009 at 3:57pm

1. To know, if something works, or not works, why it work or not to improve understanding of our position to initiate network actions to change/improve process/capacity/resources/advacasy/promotion-- so that resulting effect will improve Telecenter/Network sustainability.

2. To know what changes has happened from an investment/process/action to design future programs

3. To learn lessons for replication and up scaling

However it's a question how much of these we are actually able to apply in practice, M & E is more towards data now. The motivation, mentering, leadership development, small projects like ideas shoul build in

TC Evaluation in abstract

The purpose of M & E is improvement & sustainability
M & E threads are Capacity building, Content & Services, Support & Promotion
A Good Reporting Process needed at all levels and it's fedback to process

Niranjan Meegammana
Shilpa Sayura Foundation
http://www.shilpasayura.org

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Permalink Reply by Jimmy L. Calata on November 27, 2009 at 9:10pm

I think there are other useful tools aside from M&E that we can use to capture knowledge (experiences, learning, etc). And some of these probably are Profiling, Knowledge Exchange, and Research, or a combination of such tools. I am not fully aware though of what specific tools that are most commonly used among telecentres and how such tools fare with the others in terms of cost, efficiency and successfully meeting the planned purpose.

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Permalink Reply by Fatema Begum Labony on December 8, 2009 at 11:47pm

For M&E purpose we regularly collect challenge and achievement reports from the telecetre. It helps us to understand the real scenario of project implementation process and also helps the telecentre worker to identify strategy for overcoming challenges they faces.

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