Broadening monitoring and evaluation within reforming national agricultural research systems

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Ghana, together with the Natural Resources Institute of the United Kingdom and with input from the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration convened a one-day Policy Dialogue Forum on “Broadening Monitoring and Evaluation within Reforming National Agricultural Research Systems”. The meeting provided a platform for discussing current experiences with monitoring and evaluation by CSIR and for introducing alternative practices (frameworks, methods and tools) that would enable research bodies to manage and demonstrate their performance and contribution to national development targets in a consistent and coherent form. While the pilot project was conducted at institutional level, involving two CSIR institutes (CRI and FRI), the forum was conducted at the corporate level, and including other corporate organisations from the public and private sectors. The objectives of the forum were 1. To disseminate experiences from the first phase of a performance measurement action research project within NARS in Ghana and Uganda 2. To raise awareness among Ghana’s research management community and allied stakeholders of the importance of measuring institutional performance as an element of demonstrating developmental impact 3. To explore with key stakeholders opportunities for strengthening institutional performance measurement and management in the context of ongoing institutional reform in CSIR and other public sector organisations. Participants were made up of Senior Management Personnel from public organisations and training institutions.