Science of Delivery and Implications for Monitoring and Evaluation

Abstract

Many developing country governments are trying to understand why the policies put in place to reduce poverty and build prosperity are not leading to the results they want. One way forward could be a new form of knowledge, the “science of delivery”. This concept is borrowed from the healthcare field, where the previous emphasis on understanding the causes and consequences of health issues is shifting to give more attention to organizing, managing and financing health promotion. Applied to the field of public management, a “science of delivery” should provide mechanism-based explanations of how and why the implementation capability of countries varies, as well as a guide to action. Key elements of the “science of delivery” are to ensure that projects or interventions have adequate monitoring and evaluation mechanisms built in to the project and to ensure these are linked to feedback loops to ensure continual learning, experimentation, results monitoring, and redesign based on experience.