One month anniversary

Bryony Norman, Project Coordinator

Today sees the project reach its one month anniversary (And doesn’t it just feel like it - happy birthday to me).I am now well and truly underway in terms of getting my teeth into the research for the project, despite explosions in Afghanistan’s capital this week which have made research meetings slightly trickier!

The last time I blogged I had met with seven different organisations in order to invite their participation in the research, and I mentioned that I was hoping to recruit a consultant to undertake a baseline assessment of Tearfund’s own monitoring and beneficiary accountability systems in Kandahar. I’ve now either met with, or have had some positive email/skype correspondence with, 20 different organisations, and have recruited a top-dog consultant to take on the baseline assessment. Not too shabby...

Learning to date, includes (at its most basic level) the experience that, skype, as wonderful as it is, is equally problematic. The skypage from Afghanistan to Somalia leaves something to be desired! Technological difficulties aside, the interviews have gone well, and those interviews that are taking place ‘remotely’ are giving me some kind of practical insight into the issues that face organisations operating, communicating, managing and monitoring remotely, relying primarily on skype, phone and email! Needless to say I can certainly see why the obvious preference is to work face-to-face. The interviews are proving a little gruelling to write up (20 two-hour interviews to date!), but they are certainly drawing out and highlighting some fascinating learning about remote-management approaches (particularly the different understandings of that term), and the issues, concerns and practicalities that need to be considered to ensure adequate project monitoring in these projects. As I go along, I’m draw out a few overarching issues or good practice approaches, , and will designate some focused time reviewing and analysing all of the interview data and the baseline assessment findings and recommendations towards the end of October.

I commented in my last blog that I would try to use this space on a fairly regular basis to update you on any major head way that has been made in the research to date, and to address any other specific topics. This week, I’m going to highlight in a bit more detail the methodology that has been selected for this project. (For those of you who are really keen, the full project overview, including the project methodology, is available by clicking here).

I have contacted 45 different organisations, to make known the research and innovation that I seek to undertake, and to invite participation in these processes. For me, it is crucial that I involve as many and as varied project stakeholders as possible. To reach the culmination of this project and for the research to not be of use to the wider humanitarian and/or development community, both here in Afghanistan and beyond, would be an utter failure! But it does result in slightly larger workload – there goes my night’s sleep for the next few months. The research and the innovation that I seek to develop needs to be as demand-led by this community as possible, with individual experiences, case studies, ‘monitoring nightmares’ etc. feeding into and fuelling it. And so it would appear to be developing…

Amongst the 45 different organisations that have been contacted, a large majority are humanitarian and/or development organisations that are operating within Afghanistan. Of those, I’ve tried to select a variety; those with current or historic experience in operating projects remotely; those who are beginning to consider the prospect of operating projects remotely due to a deterioration in security in their project environments, as well as; those who are pretty well opposed to ever considering the practice, based on a variety of horrendous examples that they have seen or directly experienced. I’ve met with representatives from large, international organisations (including UN Humanitarian Agencies), as well as medium and small, local organisations. I am analysing what impact organisational scale, project focus, project scale, staffing levels, as well as the different approaches to humanitarian and/or development work and interactions with project communities, is already highlighting some interesting patterns and trends, and impact for project monitoring and beneficiary accountability. Ohhh I must stop - I don’t want to give too much away ahead of the dedicated data review and analysis process (end October), but so far the research is looking good, and the approach, is yielding a good breadth of research and a useful basis for good practice thinking.

I’m also meeting with humanitarian and/or development organisations that are currently operating in other countries which experience deteriorating security (Somalia and Darfur particularly). The experiences of these collective organisations help to add a different flavour to the research, and to broaden its focus from purely Afghanistan. Political and cultural context, do seem to play a significant role in the thinking about remote-management and monitoring, and beneficiary accountability of course and what works well in one country by no means is a success in another country. I’ll be bearing this in mind as I take the good practice innovation forward in the latter part of this six month project.

So far, research and good practice organisations have been nothing but encouraging of the research, and interviews with them have been both thought-provoking and rather mind-blowing. They have really ‘opened-up’ my mind to see how much there is to say about the topics of remote-management and remote-monitoring / beneficiary accountability. I’m happy to say, however, that I’ve left most interviews feeling inspired, if a little overwhelmed!

It has been more difficult to arrange meetings with institutional donor agencies, but I’m continuing to nag and harangue in the hope of obtaining some meetings with their representatives. What has come out of the first interview I’ve undertaken with an international donor agency is that this is an issue that has been relatively under-addressed by the donor community, and something that is vital for them to consider and feed into – WOOO not a bad start...

I’ve rather set myself up by promising individual stakeholders that I will produce a mid-term report summarising the research I’ve been able to develop, and to present this to them (no less) in a ‘cluster-like’ forum in order to stimulate feedback and discussion. This will of course only be primarily possible with those project stakeholders based within Afghanistan, although I plan to repeat a similar meeting with some project stakeholders in the UK when I visit in December.

Following on from this, I’ll embark on drawing out overarching issues and concerns that have been raised during the research, and I’ll seek to liaise further with my project stakeholders in brainstorming and identifying solutions. This process will take on the second focus of the project. I’ve been thinking this week about what that might look like (e.g. case studies from organisations where good practice exists). The brain is constantly ticking over and thinking through new approaches, so watch this space...

Hopefully this provides a bit more detail regarding the approach and methodology for the project. Should you have any comments or queries, or should you feel like feeding into the research, do feel free to drop any posts or comments in response to this blog. I’ll try to keep up to date with any responses.

Until next time,

Bryony