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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. The data provided by the surveys has also enabled local governments to obtain resources from donors for development projects. It has helped governments identify priority actions to help reduce poverty among their populations. In Laos and elsewhere, it has helped pinpoint who should be targeted for assistance. And it has mobilized communities to take action to address some of their problems themselves — primary school enrolment doubled in one Burkina Faso village, for instance, without additional schools being built, and villagers set up communal vegetable gardens to reduce hunger, a key indicator of poverty.

These are just a few examples of what can be achieved when communities and governments have current, accurate data on which to base their planning — data provided by implementing the Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS) described in this book. IDRC has been supporting CBMS since its inception under the Micro Impacts of Macroeconomic and Adjustment Policies (MIMAP) program in the early 1990s and has been actively involved throughout its development and expansion in the Philippines, as well as to many other countries in Asia and Africa.

CBMS started as a monitoring system in the early 1990s to provide information on the impact of macroeconomic policies and structural adjustment programs on households and individuals. It was expected that these policies and programs would affect households differently and that safety nets need to be put in place to assist these vulnerable groups. But the data coming from national statistical offices was not disaggregated enough to be able to capture this. A local monitoring system that could complement the national system was therefore needed. Moreover, as countries have moved to decentralize as a means of bringing governments closer to the people, the demand for local information has increased.

Unfortunately, this shift to a decentralized government structure has not been accompanied by a corresponding shift in the statistical system. The statistical systems in many developing countries have remained focused on meeting the information needs of central governments. Thus, CBMS has been designed to provide information that would be useful primarily to local governments, and secondarily to national governments and other stakeholders. It is intended to improve local governance and promote transparency and accountability by providing information that can facilitate evidence-based decision making.

The CBMS strategy of involving local communities in research and knowledge sharing, building capacity among local researchers and the users of research, and generating evidence-based information essential for planning and policy-making reflects IDRC’s fundamental approach to development research. 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.

The CBMS work has been premised on the fact that, to be effective, development programs 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. Technical collaboration between the CBMS Network team at the Angelo King Institute of De La Salle University, led by Celia Reyes, and partner local governments has ensured that the information collected accurately reflects realities on the ground and can be readily used in policy and planning. It is therefore not surprising that CBMS has developed into an indispensable tool for local government planners and policymakers. How this has been done in different countries is described in this book.

International commitments to meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has made it imperative that countries collect reliable and timely information to monitor progress and develop comprehensive strategies and programs to meet these goals. CBMS allows this to be realized by localizing the MDGs and providing the tools and policy space for real development to take place.

This book is about how CBMS has been developed, adapted, and implemented in various corners of the globe and how the evidence it yields has and can be used to reduce poverty. Because CBMS is first and foremost a participatory survey methodology that must be applied rigorously, we focus on technical aspects of development and implementation. Descriptions of how the system has been adapted in different countries point to its flexibility and to the various purposes it can and does serve.

This book shows how a local monitoring system can be designed and implemented to respond to local needs and capabilities in different developing countries, and how analysis of data generated from CBMS can be used by local and national policymakers to help reduce poverty. It also shows how local decision-making can benefit from the use of locally generated data and processes. This book is about local government officials who are committed to helping the poor move out of poverty, and about communities who have been empowered by the data and the space to participate in the crafting of local plans and budgets.

Of all those involved in the preparation of this book, we owe our greatest thanks to IDRC’s chief writer, Michelle Hibler. This book would not have been possible without her constant help, encouragement, and expertise. We also thank Bill Carman and Rowena Beamish, of IDRC’s Communications Division, for their careful editing work. This book has greatly benefited from the comments and suggestions provided by colleagues within IDRC, the Poverty and Economic Policy (PEP) network, as well as a number of external reviewers. Our thanks to all of them. We also extend our gratitude to the CBMS project team leaders who responded to our requests for information. Likewise, we wish to recognize and acknowledge the Philippine CBMS team for their unwavering commitment to building the capacity of local governments so that the poor will be served.

Celia Reyes is Senior Research Fellow at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies and leader of the Community-Based Monitoring System subnetwork of the global Policy and Economic Policy research network. Dr Reyes obtained her doctorate in economics from the University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of research include poverty monitoring systems, poverty analysis, and macro-econometric modeling.

Evan Due is Senior Program Specialist responsible for economics and trade programs at IDRC’s Singapore office. His research interests include public policy, institutional economics, and poverty analysis. Before joining IDRC, he served in various positions with the Canadian International Development Agency, including diplomatic assignments in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India, and headed Canada’s delegation to the OECD Development Assistance Committee’s working parties on the financial aspects of poverty reduction.

12 January 2009

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