Monitoring a project or programme and its results is essential for success.
Monitoring does not only control the delivery of objectives, it also helps to further develop and steer the project, to anticipate, detect and resolve conflicts, to identify resistances, inconsistencies, and reduce incoherence. Time frames and intervals of evaluation procedures have to be considered very carefully to achieve this. A second important precondition for effective monitoring is the availability of reliable up-to-date data and indicators, which describe cross-sectoral issues.
Monitoring provides information for measuring progress at three levels:
Thus monitoring provides information useful for feed-back and corrections. It is selective and focused in the measures it uses and the data it collects; relevance and usefulness are the guiding principles. Monitoring is not something additional, but is an integral part of the whole project or programme.
It is mandatory to use specific parameters and, if possible, quantitative indicators for monitoring. These indicators must be cross-sectoral in order to measure and to enhance integration. Incorporating quantitative objectives into policy approaches not only eases development of indicators for individual projects, it also helps to ensure implementation of these policies.
In most instances it is sensible not to use individual statistical parameters (e.g. proportion of unemployed persons in a population) as indicator, but rather to compress several parameters into an index. Thus for example statistical parameters for unemployment rates, charity services, income, and so on can be combined in an index of social status, whilst demographic data such as in or outward movements, birth rates, and so on can be subsumed in a demography index. Using this procedure makes the required before and after analysis more understandable and easier to communicate, without preventing more detailed or closer examination of detailed data as required.
Geo-information systems (GIS) are suitable as IT instruments in particular to manage and evaluate complex data and are required in the majority of integrated projects. GIS consists of several different databases from various specialist departments, which can be overlaid one on the other as it were by transparent slides and thus combined with one another. In principle older databases can be linked with GIS. In this way it is possible to visualise complex information through maps. GIS thus enables not only project but also political decision making by indicating connections or links. It also furthers cooperation between specialist subject areas.
In elaborating municipality-specific monitoring systems and parameters, recourse may be drawn from experience in other municipalities. Existing indicator systems for sustainable integrated development issues exist all over the world at different governmental levels. For instance, several cities have developed holistic systems of this kind to measure and monitor urban processes.
To adapt these systems to one's own situation should not be too difficult a task. To make the necessary data available, is however, a challenge in many cities. In any event there must be a critical examination as to whether existing statistical data (and existing systematics for data capture) are adequate and sufficiently significant for the present integrated project. In every case it is better if there is insufficient quantitative date available to use qualitative indicators (which might for example be obtained by means of interviews), than on the basis of inadequate data to draw conclusions for development of holistic issues.
It is not uncommon for other departments of the municipality or even in private industry to have information and data available which can be used for the necessary monitoring system. For this reason too, cross-sectoral cooperation based on partnership is vital.
A study commissioned by the Berlin Senate in 1997 revealed a trend towards social segregation in certain neighbourhoods. Neighbourhood management was one of several responses to the debate these findings provoked. A monitoring system was set up which has been continually developed and adapted since its inception in 1998. This system monitors socially integrative urban development and observes socio-spatial trends. It is an effective instrument for pinpointing development trends at an early stage, enabling focused measures to be put in place. At the same time, the system can be used to monitor the success of the measures introduced.
The monitoring system records twelve indicators from the following fields:
Using the 12 indicators, a development index was created at the neighbourhood level for areas with around 10,000 residents. These areas require particular attention. Summarizing the most important findings of the recent annual monitoring report, we can conclude that:
Thus the monitoring results indicate to which extend objectives have been fulfilled, which issues need to be closer investigated and to which extend the programme and its projects have to be adapted.