Advantages of using RBM in the Canadian NGOs' workwith their local partners

Canadian NGOs use RBM methodology to facilitate management of their projects with the Bolivian partners. For example, in Ana's words: "it's a clear way of showing a vision for a project or a program with partners, internaily." Therefore, the use of RBM with the local partner organizations during project planning assists in defining of and agreeing on the project purpose and resuits. Such discussions allow project beneficiaries to better understand the project's purpose and their roles and responsibilities in it, secure their buy-in and strengthen local ownership of the project. Once ready, a clear iogic model serves as a guide for both sides as it describes a full scope of a project. Ana described that when, at the beginning of the project, her organization was stiil working on the logic model, "it created some confusion with partners because they were flot clear on what we couid fund and there were kind of ongoing constant requests for various smaii amounts of funding for things that were out of scope of our project."

She added: "I understand their point of view, we did not have a very clear iogic model that could have guided them and could have been an easy reference." If project activities are implemented by local partner organizations, RBM tools are adapted to facilitate project impiementation and monitoring by the organizations themseives. Maria said that when her organization has a new proposai or a new project they "break it into what's called Project Outlines which is essentially a

mini proposai for each municipality se, that they have their own activities, their own targets they are working towards. And this helps with the local ownership of a project ( ... ) tends to (...) outiine what local actors :roles would be". The use of RBM-based documents in planning and monitoring of a project by local partner organizations strengthens the local ownership of a project and facilitates its implementation and control.

Box 4: Andrea's experience with RBM

• Very positive experience with RBM

• Started working with the organization two months ago

• Used to work in the results-based Iogic throughout a whole professional career

• Teaching RBM to students

• RBM isa usual way of doing monitoring and evaluation in order to achieve 90% of stated targets.

• The PMF is used for operatiorial planning: S years, yearly, semester, trimester

• PMF isa monitoring plan, PMF targets are broken clown per year, semester, trimester and month

• They periodically monitor local partners organizations' progress and receive reports each 3 months based on the PMF

• Conceived simplified tool, less technical for their staff

• In the Office, each coordinator uses results-based tools in management

• Staff monitors process indicators (on activities) on a monthly basis

• RBM leads to performance: timely decisions, analysis of progress, you see your potential the weaknesses -

Canadian NGOs, by using RBM in their work with public and non-governmental organizations in Bolivia promote those new management practices focused on achieving resuits. As Manuel put it:

"Our institutional work in results-based management is directly promoted... driven towards the public sector in Boiivia. ( ... ) I think these IIRBMI initiatives have opened eyes to a new perspective of aiming for resuits and breaking the institutional practice of working routinely and without proposing changes, without resolving the optimization of resources." Canadian NGOs encourage their local partners to plan, manage and execute their activities, both project-specific and statutory, having in mmd a final result that they want to achieve. It was brought to the researcher' s attention that a lot of local organizations became interested in this "managerial novelty", as Diego called RBM, and started te, apply it as their own. There are examples of a successful appropriation of RBM methodology by public partner organizations in Bolivia that

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made use of RBM tools and approaches to plan and implement their Annual Operational Plans (POA - Programa Operacional Annual), as well as private enterprises. As Maria said: "What we've noticed in a number of municipalities was that for their POAs, their annual operation plans, there is a number of municipalities that asked fusil to help to apply RBM to have more participatory and results-based planning processes for their own planning purposes. This is something that was really exciting that we would have hoped for maybe 4-5 years down the une flot in our first year that there would be this kind of interest. So this has been I think the most significant application of RBM in the project to date." Ricardo said that "I'm flot going to say that 100% of the organizations that we support, but I dare say that minimaily 50% have appropriated this methodology. They understand it, apply it and see the benefit of it."

Stiil, with respect to public sector, the Canadian NGOs have a higher rate of success working with subnational institutions like, for example, the Departmental Autonomous Governments or the municipalities and their service-delivery organizations. As Maria said: "We certainly did include an RBM training in our workshop and there were Ministry of Health staff, many of them changed over since then with the change of Minister ( ... ) so I am flot sure that it's our best investment of time to have the RBM training with the Ministry, I think I've seen more interest with the municipal level." The main reasons why organizations have less success working with central public institutions, like Ministries, are: high staff rotation at the central level, what Maria called "a revolving door", and a "much more set" structure of those central institutions.

Table 9: Why would organizations want to use RBM with their local pariners?

RBM allows to show a vision for a project or program with partners;

RBM tools serve as a guide for partners;

RBM tools adapted to partner needs facilitate project implementation and monitoring;

RBM helps with local ownership of project;

RBM promotes new management practices focused on achieving resuits.