Monitoring and accountability practices for remotely managed projects implemented in volatile operating environments

This report explores monitoring and accountability practices for remotely managed projects in volatile environments, highlighting a trend of remote management as a long-term approach rather than a temporary solution.

It addresses the challenges of ensuring rigorous monitoring and accountability in such settings, emphasising the need for innovative practices to maintain program quality and integrity. The study identifies key issues, such as the deterioration of monitoring quality, reduced access to project sites, and increased risks of fraud and corruption. It provides recommendations for good practices, including capacity building for local staff, enhanced communication, and the development of remote monitoring frameworks to support effective implementation.

The findings underscore the importance of organisational commitment to remote monitoring and accountability, recommending the integration of these practices into program planning and execution. The report calls for broader collaboration and knowledge-sharing among organisations to enhance remote management effectiveness, ultimately supporting the continued delivery of humanitarian aid in challenging environments.

Table 1 (reproduced from the report) presents a summary checklist of the good practices for remote monitoring that were being used at the time of the study or that stakeholders recommended as areas for development.

Summary checklist for remote project monitoring good practices

Table 1: Summary checklist for remote project monitoring good practices. Taken from Tearfund's *2012 'Monitoring and accountability practices for remotely managed projects implemented in volatile operating environments' (pg. 26-27), and used by permission (www.tearfund.org)
*This is an historical document, so should not be relied upon for current figures, statistics and best practice.
  Project monitoring good practice recommendation
1 Programmatic considerations, including recommendations to:
  Consider limiting the size and/or scope of the programme
  Implement multi-region projects in both secure and insecure locations
  Pursue and sustain positive community relationships to encourage acceptance and access
2 Targeted recruitment of local, national and international staff, and personnel management, including recommendations to ensure that:
  Local staff demonstrate existing capacity and the potential to develop capacity
  Team leaders demonstrate strength in capacity building and team motivation
  National staff who are less vulnerable to conflict when visiting insecure locations are recruited and adequately briefed on risk assessment
  Nationals from the diaspora are considered for expatriate positions
3 Capacity-building initiatives for local staff and/or partners, including recommendations to:
  Develop a regular internal training schedule (quarterly to biannually)
  Invest in collaborative training events with local/international actors in the humanitarian and development community
  Arrange cross-programme exposure visits
  Invest in international training events (using training-of-trainers approaches)
  Promote good practice presentations (internal and external)
4 Ensuring facilitation of regular face-to-face meetings, such as:
  Grant review meetings
  Project inception workshops
  Programme review and planning meetings
  Local staff meetings
  Meetings with other project stakeholders (eg beneficiaries, community, local government, national government)
5 Promotion of organisational values and ethos, including recommendations to:
  Capacity build local staff / partners on international codes and standards
  Capacity build local staff / partners on own organisational values
  Promote team building activities
  Ensure regular face-to-face interaction and communication
6 Developing a remote management strategy, considering factors relevant to the:
  Foundations (programmatic considerations, recruitment, logistics, finance systems)
  Preparation (adapting all existing systems to the context of remote management)
  Implementation (implementing the remote management approach, referring back to new methods of operating and supporting programme monitoring)
  Review (conducting ongoing assessments and reviews, documenting the learning, and improving remote management programming)
7 Tightening controls and building micro-management approaches to monitoring, including to:
  Ensure additional layers of sign-off and decision-making authority at project office
  Increase the frequency of reporting
  Increase the frequency of project review meetings
  Conduct spot-check, unannounced monitoring visits to project offices
8 Ensure dedicated monitoring and evaluation capacity is instigated at programme and project level, such as:
  Programme-wide advisers (M&E or Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning – MEAL)
  Project or region-specific officers (M&E or MEAL)
  Other models (eg Quality Assurance Unit, M&E teams etc)
9 Develop a monitoring and evaluation framework, at programme and project level
  Develop programme-wide M&E (or MEAL) framework
  Develop project or region-specific M&E (or MEAL) framework
10 Research and invest in information and communication technologies to support remote monitoring, including recommendations to:
  Develop web-based project monitoring
  Invest in global positioning systems (GPS referencing)
  Use photography as a monitoring tool
  Use video monitoring
11 Peer monitoring, including recommendations to:
  Promote cross-agency monitoring
  Promote local government monitoring
  Arrange cross-project exchange visits and monitoring within own organisation
  Contract monitoring assignments to external sources
12 Beneficiary- and community-led monitoring, including recommendations to:
  Recruit community facilitators and/or mobilisers
  Use existing structures within the community to support ongoing project monitoring
  Use community-based surveying tools
  Consider community-implemented and monitored programming
13 Greater collaboration between organisations of the humanitarian and development community, including recommendations to:
  Facilitate and/or participate in best practice learning events
  Facilitate and/or participate in training and capacity-building workshops
  Share resources between agencies (monitoring and beneficiary accountability)
  Use existing structures to support ongoing collaboration (eg Clusters; UN OCHA)
  Engage with local and national humanitarian and development coordination bodies

Sources

Norman, B. (2012). *Monitoring and accountability practices for remotely managed projects implemented in volatile operating environments. Tearfund. (used by permission - www.tearfund.org). *This is an historical document, so should not be relied upon for current figures, statistics and best practice.