Good Practice in Impact Monitoring

Reconstruction and Development of

Population Administration in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (PAS NAD)

PN. 2005.2081.7-001.00

01.08.2007

1.  Structure of the project and of the impact monitoring

1.1 Overview of the project

Target groups / Final beneficiaries are the total population of Aceh Province, in particular Tsunami-affected people living in Banda Aceh City or in the Districts of Aceh Jaya, Aceh Besar, Aceh Barat, Pidie and Bireuen who demand and receive services from population and civil registration authorities.
Intermediaries are civil servants of the Ministry for Home Affairs and authorities on Province level being in charge of population administration, civil servants of District offices for population administration as well civil servants of the Ministry for Religious Affairs being responsible for local offices for religious affairs.
Overall Objective / Service delivery by the population registration and civil registration authorities in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam is improved.
Indicators / ·  At least 95% of the tsunami refugees who have applied for identity and civil status documents in the six districts most heavily affected by the tsunami have received the appropriate papers.
·  At least 95% of those issued with identity and civil status documents assess their treatment by the authorities as transparent, according to regulations, citizen-friendly and non-discriminatory.
·  Data is systematically exchanged in the six districts most heavily affected by the tsunami between the population administration authorities and the offices for religious affairs.
·  The population registration authorities in the 23 districts/ cities of Aceh Province make data from their digitised population registers available to other relevant authorities in the public sector.
·  At least 90% of the 2.4 million citizens of full age have received new identity cards in the 23 districts of Aceh Province.

1.2 Interests and expectations

The monitoring approach designed by PAS NAD serves to the genuine project management functions of steering, re-planning and reporting. Being a reconstruction and rehabilitation project in a Tsunami-affected area it is the nature of PAS NAD that project management tasks, including monitoring, rest to a high degree with the staff in charge of implementing the German contribution, especially the German team leader.

More over, PAS NAD is one out of five TA projects of the German Technical Cooperation in Aceh which jointly constitute the “Aceh Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Programme”. The five projects are co-ordinated by a co-ordination office that carries out a considerable part of the overall reporting to the German and Indonesian partner organisations as well as a lot of public relations activities. Therefore, it depends on getting regular monitoring information on the outcomes and impacts achieved by PAS NAD (and by the other four TA projects).

The Indonesian co-ordination agency for all rehabilitation and reconstruction projects implemented by donor organisations in Aceh has built up and administers a data base that is supposed to inform on the progress of reconstruction in Aceh. For this purpose, all donor organisations are asked to provide regularly project-related data on pre-defined “key performance indicators”. The collection of respective data that rather refers to outputs than to outcomes has been integrated into the monitoring approach of the project.

The Indonesian partner organisation on national level, i.e. the General Directorate for Population Administration at the Ministry of Home Affairs, is highly interested in getting monitoring data, showing the progress regarding the provision of services for the Tsunami-affected people and achievements regarding the strengthening and reform of agencies in the field of public administration. Partner organisations in the project area on District level rather expect to acquire skills and instruments that enables them to assess (and to improve) the performance of services rendered to their customers. This demand was considered with respect to the selection of monitoring areas and data as well as with respect to monitoring procedures. Further more, the joint elaboration of a comprehensive framework of instruments to monitor and assess the quality and performance of population administration has been an important target of the project.

1.3 System boundaries, impact chains, and impact hypotheses

The outputs and outcomes intended by PAS NAD can be illustrated by five single impact chains, referring to:

(1) the reconstruction and reform of population administration authorities in six pilot districts in Aceh that were most severely affected by the Tsunami;

(2) the strengthening of civil society organisations and their participation in issues related to population administration;

(3) the enhancement of the regulatory and procedural framework for Population Administration on District, provincial and national level;

(4) the establishment of an administrative unit in charge of population administration issues on province level that performs oversight, coordination and service functions;

(5) the technical assistance for all 21 districts in Aceh with regard to the establishment of population data bases and the effective issuance of identity documents and civil certificates.

In the following, two impact chains are demonstrated exemplarily.

The first impact chain refers to the reconstruction and reform of population administration in six pilot districts in Aceh. This impact chain encompasses two outputs.

An “established instrument for mobile population and civil registration” is the first output provided by the project. It refers to the establishment of mobile service units that enable the district agencies to provide population administration services for persons without or with hampered access to the responsible offices; this especially applies for refugees, living in camps. In order to produce this output, the project develops the concept for this novelty in public services, provides minibuses especially equipped for registration services, elaborates specific administrative guidelines and operating procedures as well as a training manual on the basis of which the civil servants assigned are trained. The district agencies, i.e. the local partner organizations, provide staff and resources to operate the mobile service units.

The second output are “reformed public administration capacities of six district offices for population administration”. Apart of the reconstruction of damaged or demolished office buildings and the improvement of the technical, in particular the data processing equipment of the offices, the project together with the district agencies develop a comprehensive framework of elements that serve for organizational development such as an appropriate organization structure, operating procedures, job descriptions, planning instruments etc. More over, it facilitates the introduction of these elements and conducts qualification measures for the staff.

The civil servants make use of the reformed capacities of population administration as well as of the new instrument of mobile registration, implementing the new or improved regulations, procedures and instruments in their routine tasks (use of output). The district agencies benefit from an improved efficiency of service provision. More over, the quality of the population data improves.

The widespread corruption in public services could prove to be a negative factor, hampering the willingness of staff to improve the performance and quality of population administration services without additional “incentives”. Moreover, a change of political priorities set by the Province government could slow down reforms in the field of population administration. Further more, the impact chain could be (positively or negatively) affected by the election victory of the former liberation movement in Aceh, which could lead to an replacement of personnel in district governments and administrative heads, including those of the agencies for population administration.

A second impact chain concerns the strengthening of civil society organisations and their participation in issues related to population administration. This impact chain contains two outputs as well.

One output is the “established network of civil society organisations”. It is result of the project’s activities to identify appropriate civil society and Islamic organisations in Aceh and to support the foundation of an association. A related output are “information, consultancy and networking services by civil society organisations regarding issues connected to Population Administration”. In order to produce this output, the project provides training as well as methodological and technical support with respect to the organisation of workshops, conferences and other events, the conduct of information campaigns, the monitoring of the quality of service delivery as well as the elaboration of concepts and recommendations on a broad range of issues connected to population administration.

Various stakeholders involve the new association and make use of the range of services offered by its member organisations, establishing co-operations on issues of population administration (use of outputs). In this regard, different “users” and topics of such co-operations can be distinguished: For example, decision making bodies on District and Province level involve the association in the elaboration process of new regulations; district agencies consider the results of customer satisfaction surveys conducted by civil society organisations; religious leaders take up suggestions of civil society organizations regarding the connection of civil registration with Islamic law and human rights (especially women rights). Corresponding to the diversity of stakeholders the specific benefits are also manifold. Among other, the cooperation contributes to an increased knowledge and awareness of the citizens on these issues, which complies with the target of both political and religious leaders in Indonesia.

The impact chain could be negatively affected by events that challenge the reputation of the association and its members. On the contrary, any case of appreciation of their work by third parties will have positive effects.

The implementation of a reformed regulatory and operational framework and the application of results of consultancy and monitoring provided by civil society organisations result in the outcome of an improved service delivery by the population and registration administration. This outcome has two dimensions. One dimension is the increased effectiveness of the district administration expressed by the fact that all tsunami-affected refugees in the six project areas receive those identity and civil status documents they have applied for. The availability of up-to-date population data for planning purposes in other public sectors is a further benefit, resulting from the improved quality of population data. Another dimension is the transparent, citizen-friendly, non-discriminatory treatment of customers.

Several impacts beyond the attribution gap are included in the monitoring approach, particularly as they contribute to the joint impacts of all BMZ financed reconstruction and rehabilitation projects in Aceh. Particularly, it is expected that PAS NAD contributes to enhanced possibilities of Tsunami victims to put forward claims of possession and demands for support. Furthermore, it is assumed that the availability of up-to-date population data will actually be used by other actors for an improved planning of public services and infrastructure. In addition, it is expected that the outcomes of PAS NAD contribute to an increased social awareness on civil rights, in general, as well as to an improved legal protection and self-determination of women in Aceh.

1.4 Essential fields to observe

The more complex impact chains are set up, the more difficult it is especially for the partners, to understand the connections between all of their elements and to comprehend the main intervention strategies. This applies even more to the local partner organisations of PAS NAD that are not familiar at all with the idea of “impact orientation”. After weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of very detailed impact chains, it was decided to portray only a limited number of rather important impact hypotheses in the single impact chains which makes it easier to understand the “logic”. Due to this, a considerable share of the fields portrayed in the impact chains have been selected for monitoring.

Generally, the most important impact hypotheses refer to the use of project outputs by the various mediator groups. Especially, in those intervention fields already outlined in chapter 1.3 impact hypotheses with regard to the use of output are very critical:

–  The civil servants of the district offices for population administration actually implement new organizational, procedural and quality standards elaborated and introduced by the project and, thus, modify considerably their previous structures and work routines.

–  Important actors in the field of population administration actually co-operate with a new established association of civil society organisations, involve their expertise and take up the results of information, consultancy and networking services provided.

On principle, all impact hypotheses displayed in the impact chains are regarded as somehow “certain”. However, in the specific context of the post-Tsunami and post-conflict situation in Aceh, due to various reasons there was (and is still) a considerable uncertainty to which extent the intended outcomes can actually be realised: Firstly, a comprehensive project appraisal including a thorough analysis of expected outcomes could not be conducted as the project had to react on an emergency situation; secondly, the project management had (and still has) to be able to adopt the priorities of project implementation to any (quite unpredictable) developments in the project context and to further expectations from the side of the German and the Indonesian governments in addition to the initial project concept.

The single impact chains of PAS NAD are strongly interconnected. First of all, they all end up in the common direct benefit expressed by the overall objective. Apart of this, various interconnections can be identified on the use of output level (and the immediate outcomes): The use of project output (understood as modified routines of mediator groups) in one impact chain result in outcomes that serve as an additional contribution to induce modified routines in another impact chain.

1.5 Essential impact indicators

All indicators defined for the overall objective in the BMZ offer (respectively in the BMZ commission) have been integrated into the impact chains on the direct benefit level. Each of the five indicators can clearly be assigned to one or two of the single impact chains and describes the outcomes achieved through the project activities and outputs and their utilisation by mediators in the particular intervention fields.

One indicator was slightly modified, following the decision that mobile registration services should be offered to all Tsunami-affected citizens in the project area and not only to the (diminishing) number of refugees, living in camps.

Due to the difficult overall context of project implementation and the necessity to constantly review and adopt the activity planning to modified (externally set) priorities and hardly predictable developments in the project environment it was refrained from defining milestones in the sense of “phased indicators” of the expected direct benefits. Instead, between the use of output level and the overall objective level, further outcomes were added that can be regarded as “logical steps” on the way to achieve the indicators for the overall objective.