Fighting Poverty with Facts: Community-Based Monitoring Systems

"Primary schools for children where none existed before in remote areas of Cambodia, vocational training programs for poor rural women in Vietnam, daycare centres and sanitation facilities in the Philippines - these are just a few of the services provided by local governments after a participatory poverty monitoring system clearly identified communities' most pressing needs."

Based on its support of researchers in 15 countries of Asia and Africa that have used a participatory survey methodology called the community-based poverty monitoring system (CBMS), the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) here describes the ways in which "CBMS has permitted the acquisition of a richer body of information and data on the welfare of the poor" and "has also enabled poor local communities to assert their needs to their local and national governments and influence budgetary allocations." This in_focus book explains CBMS' origination in the Philippines in the early 1990s and the ways in which it has since been developed, adapted, and implemented in places around the world, as well as how the evidence it yields has been used and can be used to reduce poverty.

CBMS work has been premised on the fact that, to be effective, development programmes must be "targeted and based on relevant, current, accurate, disaggregated data. CBMS addresses information gaps in development planning by institutionalizing systematic data collection and validation at the local level for use by local authorities." The CBMS strategy is centred around a commitment to involving local communities in research and knowledge sharing, building capacity among local researchers and the users of research, and generating evidence-based information to guide planning and policy-making. "IDRC strongly believes in involving local communities as partners in research and in listening to the poor, who know better than anyone else what their poverty condition is and how to improve their lives. CBMS empowers them by ensuring their participation in the development process and by generating knowledge for appropriate policy responses."

CBMS - "a tool for improved local governance and democratic decision-making that promotes greater transparency and accountability in resource allocation" - has a number of features:

• It is a census of households and not a sample survey.
• It is rooted in local government and promotes community participation.
• It uses local personnel and community volunteers as monitors for monitoring activities that are conducted regularly.
• It has a core set of simple, well-established indicators (see Table 1 on page 16).
• It establishes a databank at all geopolitical levels. Moreover, the data can be disaggregated by region, gender, socio-economic group, age, ethnicity, and other variables. The results are accessible to anyone who wishes to see them, which is designed to foster greater buy-in on the part of all stakeholders.

Steps, in short, include:

1. Evaluating data requirements and existing monitoring systems to identify gaps and inform a work plan that details the commitment of all parties, including that of the local government to use the data once it is gathered.
2. Collecting and editing data: Questionnaires are developed for household and community surveys, local personnel are identified and trained to act as enumerators and field supervisors, and the community is informed. Data are collected through a household survey and/or focus group discussions.
3. Tallying and consolidating data, carried out by community members trained to do this work. The encoding system can be manual or computerised, depending on resources and capabilities.
4. Processing data (by computer, whenever possible). Village-level aggregates are then submitted to higher geopolitical levels for consolidation.
5. Presenting the results of the census in a community forum, where the extent of poverty in its different dimensions is assessed and discussed, the causes of poverty are diagnosed and explained, and priority needs and appropriate interventions are identified.
6. Establishing a databank at each geopolitical level for planning and monitoring purposes.
7. Formulating plans: "The CBMS data and its analysis serve as inputs in preparing annual development plans and socio-economic profiles at all levels of government. They also provide benchmark information for enriching the resource profiles of project sites of NGOs [non-governmental organisations] and other donors. Data from the CBMS also helps to identify eligible beneficiaries for poverty-reduction programs."
8. Disseminating findings to planning bodies, programme implementers, and other interested groups through data boards, computerised databanks, publications, workshops, and forums, among other means, including on the internet.

As Part 3 of this book illustrates, beyond its base in the Philippines, all the countries that have since participated in the IDRC-supported CBMS network share common objectives, principles, and processes. However, the system has been adapted to reflect local conditions and capabilities, resulting in differences in questionnaires, coverage, processing systems, and uses. Some of these differences reflect the varying capacity in each country, as well as political and socio-economic conditions. For example, the Indonesia case study concludes: "It is expected that the City of Pekalongan will be a model for CBMS institutionalization for other local governments in Indonesia. Ensuring local ownership of the system and data, this initiative is fully supported by local government officials, including the mayor and his deputy, who are serving as supervisors, and a technical team..." In addition to the individual country case studies, text boxes within the book include examples that show, for instance, that CBMS "is well positioned to track progress toward the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals] at the local level. For one, a number of indicators being monitored in the CBMS are included in the indicators for monitoring progress toward the MDGs (Table 3). Moreover, as CBMS surveys are intended to be carried out on a regular basis: they can therefore be used to update MDG indicators and facilitate reporting. The CBMS can also help national and local governments to cost and identify appropriate interventions to achieve the MDGs and allocate resources."

The final sections of the book explore lessons learned and recommendations from these years of implementing CBMS to address poverty while also showing "the transformative power of a community-based process", "proving a good incubator for change agents, and serving as "an effective bridge between government and the people it serves." Part 5 describes "the way forward", suggesting ways in which CBMS has been extended for other purposes such as fostering gender-responsive budgeting or sounding an early warning of impending social crisis. It also outlines the need for further research - for example, to "develop what can be termed as non-conventional indicators to capture dimensions of poverty that are not ordinarily measured and monitored, such as empowerment..."

Click here for the 123-page report in PDF format.

More research results and analysis can be found on the companion website.