Evaluation/Learning Brief #10: Striking the right balance for monitoring and evaluation in a complex organisation

Monitoring and evaluation can be relatively straightforward processes within simple projects, and there are well established procedures that can be applied. However, as this Evaluation and Learning Brief highlights, M&E systems are much more difficult to design and implement at the level of complex organisations. The key here is to strive for balance between an M&E system with too much rigidity, which suits head offices but allows little room for flexibility at field level, and one with too much flexibility, which may lead to a loss of coherence throughout the organisation. Danish Refugee Council currently operates a system that has less central coherence than most similar-sized organisations; however with recent changes to the DRC MEL System the balance appears to be shifting.