Building Government Monitoring and Evaluation Systems

A growing number of developing countries are pursuing efforts to introduce performance budgeting. At the same time, they are keen to develop a broader performance culture within their governments. There is thus a strong interest in the experience of countries that have successfully used monitoring information and evaluation findings to strengthen government performance.

The United States is one such country. Its government has a long history of major initiatives to achieve a greater focus on the performance of government and, by doing so, to improve the actual performance of government. One of the U.S. Government's main initiatives to strengthen its performance is the Performance Assessment Rating Tool (PART). This is managed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The PART provides a standardized methodology for rating all 1,000 government programs, and for identifying needed improvements to these programs. The PART also provides an information base to assist government decisions on program budgets.

This brown-bag presentation was held in June 2007. It was organized by the Bank's Independent Evaluation Group and the Bank's Latin America & Caribbean Region. The presenter was John Pfeiffer, a Program Examiner in the OMB. Keith Mackay (IEG) was the chair and discussant.

The video of the brown-bag is presented in the following segments:

Main presentation (38:35)

Discussant’s comments (12:01)

Questions and answers (46:19)

Click here to view the presentation on Google Video.