Monitoring is the systematic and continuous assessment of the progress of a piece of work over time, in order to check progress.

Evaluation is an assessment of the value or worth of a project or programme and the extent to which the stated objectives have been achieved.

Something that can be seen, measured or counted, providing evidence of progress towards a target, is called an indicator.

The things produced by a programme or project are known as outputs and their short- to medium-term effects are called outcomes.

Impacts are the long-term effects and consequences of a programme or project.

In competitive bidding, several service providers submit bids for the same piece of work.

1. Plan and prepare: Identify a need for something, consider when you need it, ensure that you have the finance available etc.
2. Specification: Obtain written details of the item(s) to be purchased or service required.
3. Identify and select suppliers: Find out who can supply the goods/service and at what price.
4. Make decision: Decide which supplier to choose and place the order.
5. Delivery: Receive the goods or manage the ongoing contract until the work is completed.

You may have identified any four of the following reasons. M&E is essential because it helps:

• Track progress in achieving project goals.
• Measure impact of actions and programmes.
• Increase accountability by making results available to others.
• Inform decision making by providing evidence and information on lessons learned.
• Encourage investment in future activities.
• Build capacity among all involved by sharing knowledge and experience.

Water supply monitoring:

• Location, number, type and current functionality status of water schemes.
• Quality of scheme/utility management and the level of financial sustainability.
• Achievement of construction and rehabilitation targets.

Sanitation and hygiene monitoring:

• Number of households with unimproved latrines or better.
• Number of households/people using a latrine and number practising open defecation.
• Number of households/people with handwashing facilities near to a latrine.
• Number of households/people practising handwashing after defecation or handling children’s faeces.

Institutional WASH monitoring:

• Types, functionality and use of drinking water sources either in or near a school.
• Types, number and use of latrines and handwashing facilities in a school.

1. The National WASH Inventory (NWI) is an integrated record of water supply, sanitation and hygiene service coverage data in Ethiopia. Its purpose is to have a single comprehensive set of baseline data for the entire country that can be updated regularly.
2. How to make the NWI results accessible to those who need them, and how to keep the data current.
3. The purpose of the MIS is to collect and organise information about WASH in Ethiopia. The enormous amount of data generated by an inventory of the size and scale of the NWI presents major challenges in organising, collating and storing it in a systematic and accessible way. The WASH MIS is designed as a repository for monitoring data and to produce reports at national, regional, zonal and woreda levels. The idea is that data can be extracted, collated with other data, and used to produce reports, graphs and maps to facilitate all aspects of programme management.

M&E is about measuring progress towards achieving the stated objectives of a programme. Having lots of data is of no use if the data isn’t set out in some meaningful way. For the OWNP, the objectives are itemised in the results framework that sets out in detail the outputs, outcomes and impacts for each component of the Programme. The results framework is a compilation of the expected results from the Programme, with the actual results captured by the M&E process. This is still a large amount of information, so the key performance indicators are the summary points that tell us almost at a glance how well the programme is keeping to its plans.