Document(s) 5 of 10

“The efforts to measure, monitor and report on progress towards the MDGs have highlighted the need to improve most developing countries’ capacity to produce, analyse and disseminate data.”

— The Millennium Development Goals Report 2008 (UN 2008, p. 50)

As explained in Part 1, knowing who the poor are, where they are, and why they are poor is essential for addressing poverty. But despite efforts to measure, describe, and analyze poverty, understanding it through the eyes of the poor continues to elude many policymakers and planners.

Recognizing the importance of understanding poverty from the perspective of the poor themselves and conveying this information to policymakers, the Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS) was developed in the Philippines in the 1990s. It emerged in response to the need for a poverty-monitoring system that was adapted to local contexts and capacities, conducted by local researchers, and intended for local-level planners.

The system needed to capture the various dimensions of poverty in an ongoing, dynamic way, and to allow the poor themselves to validate the information in collaboration with local officials and planners. Why? Because this makes it easier to diagnose the extent and nature of poverty, to formulate appropriate responses, to allocate resources to identified beneficiaries, and to assess the impact of policies and programs. In doing so, CBMS aims to reduce poverty.

CBMS initially evolved as a specific research project funded by IDRC. But as the activities described later in this book show, it has taken on an instrumental and independent role to provide local government officials and policymakers with a regular source of information on core development indicators at the household level. Because nationally aggregated data from surveys and censuses cannot provide detailed, current, local information useful for local government, the demand for CBMS-generated data has grown, especially where government functions are decentralized. As an easy-to-use and cost-effective tool for local government planning agencies, it is now being adopted, supported, and institutionalized within local governments throughout the Philippines as well as in other countries in Asia and Africa.

The origins of CBMS

The need for a multi-dimensional approach to poverty referred to in the previous chapter played an important role in the development of participatory monitoring and evaluation (PME) activities worldwide. In the Philippines and elsewhere, these initiatives promoted the participation of communities — initially in areas of natural resource management — as beneficiaries in monitoring development project outputs. Development agencies promoted these programs as part of their development projects to track their progress and account to donors. Because they were linked intrinsically to specific development projects, PME activities tended to remain tied to the largely externally financed programs and usually only spanned the life of the projects themselves. Consequently, they were not institutionalized into more sustainable local systems within government.

CBMS did not originate as a PME activity. Instead, it developed organically out of an indigenous research initiative, in response to local researchers’ interest in monitoring the impacts of macro-adjustment policies on local communities and households. This initiative began as a series of locally led inquiries on how macroeconomic adjustment policies affected households and firms. The initial research pointed out that macro reforms can have negative and unintended consequences, and that policymakers can introduce inappropriate policies because they lack good field studies of how households — especially the poor — behave and are affected. This laid the foundations for an IDRC program called Micro Impacts of Macroeconomic and Adjustment Policies, or MIMAP.

The research program emphasized the critical need for poverty measurement, monitoring, and analysis to be done at the local level, conducted by local researchers, and involving local stake-holders and policymakers. This gave rise to the establishment of a local network of Filipino researchers led by Celia Reyes, which came to be known as the CBMS Research Network.

In their assessment of existing systems, the CBMS research team found that various sets of data existed at the village, municipal, and provincial levels. But national sample surveys were not sufficiently disaggregated to track households over time. Moreover, the data was not returned to the communities. This meant that the communities could not compare how they were faring relative to others, nor could local leaders use the information for planning a wide range of public services, including targeted anti-poverty programs for which they were responsible. Other surveys, carried out by NGOs, were not comparable and were carried out at irregular intervals.

Basically, the lack of appropriate information at the local level constrained local governments from carrying out their decentralized functions and made them less accountable. It also reduced the effectiveness of public investment in fostering development and reducing poverty in communities.

The CBMS research team in the Philippines was convinced that the best way to address these data gaps was for local governments to work in partnership with residents — at the barangay or village level — in monitoring poverty and development. The CBMS researchers proposed such a system, to be piloted in sentinel sites. The team designed a simple Household Profile Questionnaire that used minimum basic needs indicators already present in many of the existing survey forms, but also included other key poverty indicators. The indicator list was purposely simple so that the survey could be easily administered and understood by local officials and community members. To the extent possible, it was also consistent with standard concepts and definitions used by national statistical offices.

The system was developed in consultation with local government officials, community representatives, and other stakeholders, according to the specific features of the locality in which it would be administered. Beginning in the two Philippine barangays of Masuso and Real de Cacarong in the province of Bulacan, the team was able to demonstrate the value of the system for local poverty monitoring and local-level planning to both local government officials and community representatives. And, as important, the process of data collection was found to build capacity and empower local communities as they became aware of their economic and social conditions. The pilot also enabled the team to evaluate the indicators and validate the information collected and processed by other agencies.

The pilot demonstrated that the CBMS was feasible. The survey generated most of the data needed by local governments and could be used to prepare their local development plans. The research also showed the areas in which local governments needed to increase their capabilities so that they could design and implement programs to address the needs of specific groups. The pilot further pointed to the need for training in survey enumeration, data processing and analysis, database maintenance, project identification, prioritization, monitoring, and budgeting (Reyes and Ilarde 1996).

The work of the CBMS team gained considerable popularity in the Philippines, leading to its initial uptake in 1999 when then-Governor of the province of Palawan, Salvador Socrates, invited the CBMS team to introduce the system province-wide. With the support of the provincial executive and line departments, CBMS demonstrated its sustainability as a local system adapted to local conditions.

CBMS is a system of collecting, analyzing, and verifying information to build knowledge that is applied in planning and development.

What is CBMS?

What is CBMS and how does it differ from other poverty-monitoring instruments? CBMS is an organized way of collecting ongoing or recurring information at the local level to be used by local governments, national government agencies, NGOs, and civil society for planning, budgeting, and implementing local development programs, as well as for monitoring and evaluating their performance. Fundamentally, it is a tool for improved local governance and democratic decision-making that promotes greater transparency and accountability in resource allocation.

CBMS’ five objectives are to

• diagnose the extent of poverty at the local level;
  
  
• formulate appropriate plans and programs to address problems;
  
  
• provide the basis for rational allocation of resources;
  
  
• identify eligible beneficiaries for targeted programs; and
  
  
• monitor and assess the impact of programs and projects.

What sets CBMS apart from other monitoring systems is that it is based on a partnership between local communities, local governments, and trained local researchers in an institutionalized system of regular data collection, validation, and analysis for local program development. Furthermore — and significantly — it builds the capacity of local governments to use poverty statistics in formulating development plans and poverty-reduction programs. It also builds the capacity of the local communities through information. “CBMS implementation is itself a poverty-reduction policy,” says Louis-Marie Asselin of the Centre d’étude et de coopération internationale (CECI) and a MIMAP/CBMS trainer, “since one of its goals is the empowerment of local communities.”

CBMS is grounded in the principle that poverty can best be understood through the lives and experiences of the poor themselves. It tracks poverty and development at the household level at regular intervals through a set of basic indicators (Table 1). The data is collected and analyzed by trained community members, in partnership with local government officials, for use by local development planners. The method can be applied quickly, inexpensively, and frequently. It is easy to sustain and is easily conducted by trained local fieldworkers. The principal aim is to reduce poverty, but there are other important associated benefits, such as increased capacity of local government officials and community representatives in development planning, increased gender equity, environmental sensitization, and even early warning of crisis impacts.

CBMS has a number of distinctive 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.
  
  
• it has a core set of simple, well-established indicators.
  
  
• 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. Because the monitoring exercises are conducted regularly and the results processed rapidly, the data is very useful for ongoing local-level planning. And because the results are accessible to anyone who wishes to see them, there is greater buy-in on the part of all stakeholders.

A household census

CBMS is unusual as a poverty-monitoring system in that it collects information on all households in the community. This is essential for informing special targeted poverty interventions such as cash transfers, health benefits, and other public sector entitlements.

Roots in the community

CBMS is locally owned by the communities and local governments, which take the lead in data collection and processing. They also keep the database and use the data to formulate annual development and investment plans. The data collected provides vital baseline information for preparing socio-economic profiles, project proposals, and other related development reports. CBMS data also serves as a barometer for gauging the effectiveness of programs and projects.

Community engagement

Community participation is critical to the success of CBMS. Informed from the outset about the survey’s objectives and uses, the community provides enumerators to collect the data, as well as personnel to process and analyze it. Information is collected from every household and the data is tallied and consolidated at the village level. The processed data is returned to the community for validation and discussion. This empowers communities by providing them with information and a process through which they can actively participate in diagnosing poverty and identifying appropriate interventions, including allocating resources. Because community members are involved in data collection and validation, CBMS develops the capability of communities to generate and use data. It facilitates the dissemination of data collected to the next higher geopolitical level for immediate action and, ultimately, reaches national planners. The system also uses the information generated by existing monitoring systems as supplemental information.

A core set of indicators

A requisite for establishing a good poverty monitoring system is first determining what to monitor. The CBMS core indicators capture multiple dimensions of poverty. Easy to collect and process, the system is flexible and accommodates community-specific indicators. For instance, the Philippine province of Camarines Norte includes indicators related to natural calamities. In Ninh Binh province, Vietnam, indicators have been added to determine women’s well-being. In Tanzania, child labour is measured. In Ghana, an indicator covers access to community services such as banks and the post office. And because the CBMS indicators are sensitive to gender differences, the data can also show how girls and boys, and men and women are affected differently by policies and benefit unequally from programs. For example, a survey in one Vietnamese commune showed local officials that many children had dropped out of school because their families could no longer afford to send them. Boys and girls were affected equally, but not for the same reasons: the boys quit because of travel costs; the girls, to work in the fields.

Together, the indicators provide information not only on how poor a community is, but also on who in the community is poor, and where. Figure 1 shows how information from CBMS can complement national surveys.

Figure 1. Complementing national surveys with CBMS.

CBMS step by step

“CBMS consists of doing very simple things,” says CECI’s Louis-Marie Asselin. But once the data is generated, you can do very sophisticated things with it, as with survey data from national statistical offices. “It is worthwhile to do this simple thing,” he adds, “but it must be done correctly.” Implementing a community-based monitoring system requires following a number of steps.

Advocacy and organization

Data requirements and existing monitoring systems must be evaluated to identify gaps and develop a work plan that details the commitment of all parties and the involvement of key human resources at all levels, as well as the financial and physical resources for training, data collection, processing, validation, database management, and dissemination. The commitment of the local government to use the data must be ensured.

Collecting and editing data

Questionnaires are developed for household and community surveys, enumerators are identified and trained, and the community is informed. The data is collected through a household survey and/or focus group discussions. Local personnel are identified and trained as enumerators and field supervisors.

Encoding data

The data gathered is tallied and consolidated by community members trained to do this work. The encoding system can be manual or computerized, depending on resources and capabilities. Computerized encoding facilitates data analysis and mapping.

Processing data

Processing is a critical step since the results form the basis for local planning and program implementation. Wherever possible, computerized processing is initiated, even at the village level. Village-level aggregates are then submitted to higher geopolitical levels for consolidation.

Validation and consultation

The results of the census are presented 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.

Presenting the processed data to the community is vital to CBMS implementation, both to ensure data accuracy and obtain explanations for the findings.

Establishing a database

Databanks are established at each geopolitical level for planning and monitoring purposes. This ensures access to census results by various stakeholders.

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 and other donors. Data from the CBMS also helps to identify eligible beneficiaries for poverty-reduction programs.

Disseminating findings

CBMS results are made available to planning bodies, program implementers, and other interested groups through data boards, computerized databanks, publications, workshops, and forums, among other means, including on the Internet.

Resources needed

CBMS requires resources — human, financial, and physical.

It is, however, an extremely cost-effective tool for local governments. Partnerships ensure resource availability and success. To implement the system, key government personnel from community to provincial levels participate as monitors, field supervisors, survey enumerators, and data processors.

Local governments generally cover the various recurrent costs in implementing CBMS. The technical costs, such as training personnel in the collection, processing and analysis of data, have tended to be borne by the research teams (for example, the CBMS Network Coordinating Team, based at the Angelo King Institute for Economics and Business Studies, provides these services). The communities themselves also make valuable contributions by collecting and validating data.

The per-household cost of carrying out CBMS is considerably lower than the cost of surveys carried out by national statistical offices. For example, CBMS costs only around US$0.30 per household in Vietnam and US$0.75 in the Philippines. In addition to human and financial considerations, the most important element for CBMS implementation is the commitment of local government and other stakeholders to undertake the census and use the data generated.

CBMS around the world

As the CBMS network has spread from its base in the Philippines, it has supported research to develop indicators relevant to local cultures and conditions in different countries and regions, to adapt monitoring and analysis methodologies, and to develop case studies of vulnerable groups. Research teams have tested the application of new tools such as GIS (geographic information systems) to present CBMS data in map form.

As Part 3 of this book illustrates, all the countries now participating 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.

By bringing together the various elements described here and grounding them at the local level, CBMS has emerged as an innovative system. It has also set new standards in methodological rigour through the process of verifying data collected — and interpreting that data — with the communities. In doing this, the CBMS technical team facilitated understanding between communities and planners, government officials and policymakers of the important issues and prevailing conditions.

This is perhaps the most significant difference between CBMS and other poverty-monitoring approaches: the system is not only designed to satisfy the growing demand for up-to-date disaggregated information at the household level, but is also intended to be “institutionalized” at the lowest levels of government — the level that actually designs and implements many of the programs intended to address poverty. It also effectively promotes a system of “evidence-based” policy planning and decision-making.

Document(s) 5 of 10