DETERMINANTS OF PERFORMANCE OF MONITORING AND EVALUATION SYSTEMS FOR COUNTY GOVERNMENT PROJECTS: A CASE OF MAKUENI COUNTY
Bonareri Janet Onsomu - Master of Arts in Project Planning and Management, University of Nairobi, Kenya
Dr. Kisimbii Johnbosco (PhD) - Lecturer, School of Open and Distance Learning, University of Nairobi, Kenya
ABSTRACT
Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) has progressively become a crucial component in project performance. This is especially because of the need to reduce failures of projects in the collaborative effort to address the socio-economic challenges that have kept the gap widening among rich and poor nations. Most of county government projects fail as a result of ineffective M&E, where best practices are not applied. The study determined the aspects that affect the smooth execution of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms in the county government projects. The theoretical concepts that enlightens the study are dynamic capabilities theory, the theory of change and the program theory of evaluation, which forms the basis of assessing the relationships between the role of management, human resources capacity, funding and stakeholder participation in ensuring successful M&E activities in Makueni County projects. The blueprint plan that the investigator followed was a descriptive design. In responding to the research quest, a sample of 245 persons clustered into two groups, one comprising of 200 project committee personnel and the other group of 45 county staff, were statistically enrolled as research subjects. From this population the researcher randomly sampled 100 project committee elected members, representing 50%, and purposefully sampled 45 County staff, interviewed using questionnaires. The reliability and validity of the tools were established through a test-retest technique over a period of two weeks in a sample of 14 elected committee members from Machakos County as a pilot where a Cronbach coefficient alpha of 0.825 (82.5%) was realized hence the instrument was reliable. The collected data was organised, cleaned and analysed using SPSS version 21 to generate descriptive and inferential statistics that were presented in tables, charts and narratives. Availability of funds, human capacity, role of management and stakeholder participation were found to correlate positively with the performance of M&E, with the associated coefficients being with correlation coefficients being 0.514, 0.347, 0.317 and 0.148 respectively. The associations between the predictor and response variables was presented in the linear regression model as Y = 3.488 + 0.317X1 + 0.347X2 + 0.514X3 + 0.148X4. The findings indicated that the County Government of Makueni allocated funds for M&E activities, but the funds were insufficient. The study further established that the human resource was not fully trained which affected their capabilities. On stakeholder participation, involvement was only conducted on lower level activities. The role of management was found to affect the monitoring and evaluation activities; no doubt however that a significant majority admit there is very limited support offered by the management involved in order to bolster the tracking processes.
