From Logical Framework Approach to Results Based Management

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From Logical Framework Approach to Results
Based Management

• A Flexible Tool for Participatory Development
  (Danida, 1996)(??)
• Henrik Secher Marcussen, IDS/ISG

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To-days Menu

• The Background. A tool for guided change under
  uncertain conditions and subjective perceptions
  of problems, objectives, conditions and
  directions
• Or Aid under the influence of management and
  rational planning theories
• 2) The logic behind, the method
• The options, the necessities, the criticism
• Results Based Management, RBM Human
  Accountability Project, HAP)
• The meta-scientific discussion Rationality,
  predictability and control under complex
  conditions Is it at all possible?

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1) The Background

• Development is a process of change with some
  basic common features
• A broader context in which we act
• A problem area or present situation we want to
  change
• An objective, or a vision of the future, that we
  want to achieve
• Choices about where and how we intend to move,
  through time and
• Actions we want to be implemented

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1) The Background, contd

• In moving from the present to the future, we
  want
• To create a shared perception of the changing
  context we work in
• To create a shared perception of the problems or
  barriers we wish to overcome
• To create commitment to clear objectives
• To choose transparency between alternative
  options and
• To design courses of action

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The Background, contd

• Explicit and implicit goals of LFA
• To better master the Project cycle
  (identification, inception, drafting the Project
  Document, appraisal, approval, implementation,
  monitoring, completion and evaluation)
• But in particular improve on likelihoods of
  meeting objectives (from inputs via activities to
  outcome and impact)
• To foster commonality of understandings among
  stakeholders about project objectives and means
  of achievement

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1) The Background, contd

• To engage the local population in all phases of
  the process (participation, as means or end?) to
  counter top down through bottom up-processes
• To avoid blueprint approaches by adapting to
  the local and specific context
• To foster direct involvement (incentives,
  investments, commitments, users pay-schemes,
  maintenance and sustenance, etc.), believed to
  create the ownership locally to the entire
  process
• Logically, to create improved conditions for
  sustainability

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The Background, contd

• But also to direct and control
• To improve on likelihood that objectives are well
  defined, realistic and attainable
• To create a better background for monitoring and
  evaluation
• To ensure that money well spent value for
  money
• To be able to document and justify the
  intervention towards donors and their
  constituencies, whether bilateral-state to
  state (taxpayers money), NGOs (their members)
  or the multilaterals (their members/governing
  council/board of directors)

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The Background, contd

• To create improved conditions for maintaining the
  financing wanted in the long term (Framework
  agreements) NGOs
• To create legitimacy and public/political backing
  and direct support
• To maintain organisational growth (diversify
  funding sources)
• To prove that the organisation is a professional,
  qualified and trustworthy partner, able to run a
  project/programme with the needed tools and
  deserves to be mandated with new additional
  tasks

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2) Logikken, metoden

• The LFA is, then, a framework for designing
  change processes, monitoring progress and
  evaluating impact
• This is achieved by ordering the elements of the
  change process in a logical structure
• Inputs or resources are identified as necessary
  means for performing activities
• Specific actvities are identified

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2) Logikken, metoden, contd

• Activities are leading to outputs, again
  necessary to achieve objectives
• Objectives are, hopefully, met in particular
  Immediate Objectives
• That are contributing to meeting the Overall
  Development Objective
• If Objectives are met, Outcome and Impact are
  likely to be demonstrated (in theory, at least)
  by means of Reviews and Evaluations
• To facilitate measuring, Achievement Indicators
  are identified and listed

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2) The Logic, the Method contd

• To establish the Framework, work in five Focus
  Areas
• Context
• Problems
• Objectives
• Choice and
• Action

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2) Method (the instruments). Focus Area 1 Context

• Who are the stakeholders
• Policy concerns
• Values and principles within the group, community
  or society
• Uncertainties and risks
• (Existing structures, formal and informal
  institutions arenas of power and positioning
  socio-economic inequality gender (im)balances,
  etc.)

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2) Method. Focus Area 2 Problems

• Identify problems and problem owners
• Structure problems and relations between them
• Develop a shared perception of problems
• Develop options for which problems to concentrate
  on
• (Who will gain, who will loose who will seek
  ownership, who will be excluded power games
  conflicts manipulative behaviour claims and
  rights)
• (Identify the problems that suit the solutions
  technological fixes blueprint approaches)

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2) Method. Focus Area 3 Objectives

• Identify objectives and objective owners
• Structure objectives and relations between them
• Develop options for what objectives to pursue
• (Include in objectives (problems and risks)
  considerations as to reducing existing
  inequalities foster democracy and real
  empowerment and participation, etc.)

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2) Method. Focus Area 4 Choice

• Estimate the resources that are available
• Create an overview of options
• Assess options (weigh costs and benefits)
• (Immediate and long term options include EIAs
  and SIAs identify, if at all possible, options
  that build on already existing knowledge,
  structures and institutions)
• Make a choice

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2) Method. Focus Area 5 Action

• Specify objectives chosen, results, activities
  and resources needed
• Identify critical assumptions about the context
• Check that the project is logically consistent
• Establish indicators that allows monitoring of
  project progress and impact
• --The whole being an iterative process,
  cumbersome and time consuming, going back and
  forth and trying to identify the dialectics,
  the contradictions, paradoxes and dilemmas

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3) The Options, the Necessities, the Criticism

• Can be a heuristic, idea generating tool
• Towards Learning Development iterative,
  feedback mechanisms, monitoring, synthesising,
  evaluating
• Create an overview, clarity, precision and,
  ideally, well argued and well justified choices
• Create (perhaps) better projects/programmes
  avoid (perhaps) the worst white elephants

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3) The Possibilities

• May create a consensus among stakeholders but
  is unable to force on a consensus not existing in
  the real world
• May establish longer lasting partnerships
• May create greater awareness about both
  justifications, risks and killer assumptions

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3) The Possibilities

• May help thinking logically, but cannot
  substitute for it!
• If to be a workable tool, real consultations and
  negotiations are needed
• May visualise project elements, and foster
  clarity but may also limit, frame or block for
  identifying needs or shaping visions
• Holds promise of emancipation, but often fails
• And it is crucial to determine Whom, for what
  and with which intention an LFA exercise is
  carried out.
• Qualifications, experience and background matter
  tremendously, and requirements as to independence
  and integrity are crucial elements

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3) The Possibilities

• To master the techniques, including LFA, show
  quality and professionalism and may attract
  funding in cases, LFA is a funding condition
• LFA reflects business and logistics planning of
  the 1960s, with assumptions of relatively
  well-understood and controllable change,
  engineered via a project within or largely
  controlled by a single organisation. It centres
  attention on outputs and service delivery and on
  achievement of intended effects by intended
  routes (Gasper, 2000)

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3) The Criticism

• LFA is also an instrument of control, both for
  donors and stakeholders in project locations
• LFA is a rigid tool that is narrowing the
  planning process
• Too often it is short-sighted in perspective
• May contribute to strategic thinking and capacity
  development, but also the opposite
• Risk maintaining status quo may cement and
  reify the development process
• LFA may be able to balance costs and benefits,
  particularly in relation to stakeholders, but
  does not necessarily do that

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3) The Criticism

• Time is needed, and time is always and
  increasingly a scarce ressource within
  development business
• It requires involvement, enthusiasm and
  contextual insight
• Result Routinely conducted, in a stereotyped
  fashion and, in cases, with overtones of
  paternalism and top down
• Do we talk about Logic-Less Frames,
  Lack-Frames, or Lock-Frames?

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4) Results Based Management

• Same logic, same steering, control and
  measurement mechanism More of the same, but now
  all over the place
• Life cycle management Input (Budget, etc.),
  Output target, Output indicators, Achievements, -
  and Outcome and Impact
• Monitoring tool Process and corrective measures
  Proposed action (Danidas Guidelines for
  Programme Management)

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4) RBM

• Monitoring of bilateral and NGO projects in
  relation to effectiveness, efficiency and
  quality
• Also monitoring multilateral organisations their
  performance and quality control mechanisms
• Programming, Annual Work Plans, organisational
  strategies
• RBM provides legitimicy and alludes to quality
  and professionalism

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4) RBM

• UNDP Means of linking discrete projects and
  placing under national priorities and goals
• May illustrate a collective achievement of
  UNDPs own overall success indicators
• May contribute to showing how MDGs and other
  strategic objectives are met
• May provide the successful picture UNDP at a
  glance

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• May also show insight and experience, prove
  accountability and transparency
• Using more specific indicators also assist in
  measuring output and impact
• May easily depict performance and justify
  efforts, showing value for money
• May cement language commonality and
  understandings the language of development
  common reporting standards

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Human Accountability Project (HAP)

• Newest trend, humanitarian assistance
• Intended to address past experience
  Overcrowding, unplanned and uncoordinated, and
  ineffective
• Licensing of quality, modalities of operation,
  ethical standards, etc ISO 2008 equivalent
• Legitimacy, accountability, transparency
• Justified in relation to recipients, but mainly
  addressing own funding sources

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5) Meta-scientific Perspectives

• LFA etc. have their background in western
  rationality concepts/theories within planning
• Combined with recent management theory, drawn
  from the private sector
• The trust With the tool box intact, incentives
  and/or sanctions in place, a development process
  can (in principle) be fostered that can be
  directed, controlled and predicted

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5) Meta-scientific

• ...the concept of planning embodies the belief
  that social change can be engineered and
  directed, produced at will
• Once normalized, regulated and ordered,
  individuals, societies and economies can be
  subjected to the scientific gaze and social
  engineering scalpel of the planner, who like a
  surgeon operating on the human body, can then
  attempt to produce the desired type of social
  change (Escobar)

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5) Meta-scientific

• In theory, traditional economic development
  planning is based on the assumption that the
  development process can be steered, overcoming or
  eradicating underdevelopment, poverty,
  traditions, irrationalities, and other obstacles,
  a.s.o.
• But disillusionment was the result effects of
  extensive planning exercises limited the
  development challenge much more complex,
  contextually specific and fluid

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5) Meta-scientific

• Development problems/dev. countries constitute
  complexity complex systems
• Constitute generally unknown or not fully
  understood contextuality
• Represent different rationalities
• And stakeholders are bringing their different
  ideological/cultural frameworks to the analysis
• Result Consult complexity theory!

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5) Meta-scientific

• ..complex systems cannot be fully explained by
  the methods we traditionally associate with
  techne. It is impossible to gather and properly
  process all the information pertinent to the
  working of such systems, or to predict the ways
  inwhich they will change. Clearly such systems
  will be resistant to the machinations of any
  architect who wishes to reduce it to a blueprint
  and thereby manipulate it (Parfitt, 2006)
• Where does that lead us and LFA?

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5) Meta-scientific

• Planned intervention The critical analysis,
  Olivier de Sardan Bierschenk Long van der
  Ploeg Crehan von Oppen, m.fl.
• Forms and functions of aid tabula rasa,
  a-historical the by necessity stipulated
  discontinuity as justification, the postulate
  that the world is (re)born when aid arrives, and
  the sins of the past now finally addressed
  and, as a result, all good things in life will
  materialise

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5) Meta-scientific

• Development Interface, Ferguson, Long, Arce,
  a.o.
• Intervention as meeting place, arena, interface
  between cultures and forms of rationality
• Interface mediated by institutions, formal and
  particularly informal ones, performed in arenas,
  with positioning, investments and power play
• Where interventions constantly negotiated,
  turned, twisted and modified, when adapted to
  local agendas
• Unintended consequences at least as important as
  intended ones
• Focusing on contextuality, variability, fluidity
  in local political processes

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5) Meta-scientific

• The Language of Development, Arce, Long,
  Escobar, Sachs, m.fl.
• Interventions use phrases, a language, that
  supports particular knowledge systems,terms and
  concepts which confirm and maintain certain
  representations, legitimizing particular
  interventions, while also carrying myths and
  narratives forward
• Knowledge systems paves the way for particular
  interpretations of the reality, however often
  misrepresentations inclusion/exclusion
• Sustained by epistemic communities
• Knowledge systems tend to gain hegemonic status,
  dominant and policy setting paradigm