By: Gerome Dalipe
The Iloilo Provincial Government has been advocating women empowerment in the Province.
But the effort may be wasted as the Provincial Government did not implement result-based monitoring and evaluation in the gender and development and other programs, projects, and activities during the capacity building.
This practice “hindered appropriate analysis” of indicators, targets, outputs, outcome, and impact. It also made the supposed contribution of the Capitol in achieving the goals of the Magna Carta of Women unreliable, the state auditors discovered.
“As such, it is expected that the IPG should have strategies and ensure that this framework and system are in place and operating effectively,” read the 2018 Commission on Audit’s (COA ) annual audit report on the Iloilo provincial government.
In October 2012, the governor issued Executive Order 181 creating a team to formulate the result based monitoring and evaluation for the Provincial Government.
The evaluation system enhances the performance monitoring and evaluation system and measures output and performance.
The Capitol monitoring team is composed of 21 personnel representing the 14 offices of the Capitol.
Among their functions and responsibilities are to actively take part in the process of formulating the framework and system of the Capitol.
This is to ensure the adoption and use of the formulated monitoring and evaluation tools and the reporting system in the programs and projects of the Province.
The Provincial Planning and Development Office was designated as the lead office in the preparation of the framework and system.
The Provincial Government conducted an orientation on the integration of indicators in the framework for technical staff.
The training or capacity building aims at increasing the knowledge and skills of technical staff on the monitoring of framework.
But an examination of the documentation on the conducted coaching and mentoring on October 29, 2015, showed that the framework was presented and discussed.
However, the group decided to cancel the scheduled workshops on the use of the three templates since the purpose was purportedly clear to the participants.
But the gender and development project and programs showed that monitoring and evaluation was not used.
The gender and development representative confirmed the monitoring was due to the complexity of data gathering and accomplishing of the forms.
The capacity building only reached the initial stage since they encountered challenges in the establishment of baselines, actual accomplishments and length of time to finish all templates.
That’s because the Capitol found it difficult to collect primary data that sometimes they opted to use secondary data sourced from other government agencies.
In CY 2017, the monitoring and evaluation program was also not carried out because of insufficient personnel and other monitoring reports with different templates required by various oversight bodies.
In the report, the auditors said that among the factors that qualify the Provincial Government’s gender and development’s Local Learning Hub was the institution of the evaluation framework and system to determine gender-responsive governance.
It will also improve its decision-making and reporting duties and open avenues for greater transparency and accountability not only as implementers of gender and development projects.
“Efforts should be exerted to capacitate the personnel of the Provincial Government framework and system and ensure that they substantially understand the purpose and processes,” the report said.
Likewise, workshops provided in the training design should be carried out in order for the participants to experience how it is performed and accomplished, so that feedback on the constraints or difficulties will be immediately pointed out for an appropriate alternative solution.
The auditors, in the report, asked the governor to direct the gender and development chair to formulate the framework and system.
There is also a need to capacitate the Capitol personnel on the monitoring and framework to assure that those are carried out accordingly.
