PARTNERING FOR RESULTS:
Assessing the Impact of Inter-Sectoral Partnering

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TABLE OF CONTENTS   Foreword Acknowledgements I. Assessing Inter-sectoral Partnering II. Performance Monitoring and Evaluation: How Are Indicators Used? III. Challenges of Assessing Inter-sectoral Partnering IV. Framework for Assessing Inter-sectoral Partnering V. Indicators for Assessing Inter-sectoral Partnering VI. Conclusion References Annex A: Indicator Sources

Chanya Charles and Stephanie McNulty October 15, 1999   This document can be accessed through three methods. You can order a bound hard copy from the USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse using the title and document identification number (PN-ACG-107). You can download the document as an Adobe PDF. You can read the HTML version on this site. The Table of Contents is available in the left-hand column.

Foreword The search for new mechanisms and tools through which to energize public/private partnering, expand local ownership, and increase the impact and sustainability of development assistance has accelerated over the last four years in response to several key development trends: growing resource constraints (particularly in official development assistance) increasingly complex development challenges that transcend the ability of any one sector -- government, business or civil society -- to respond alone greater appreciation of the need to better integrate "top-down" and "bottom-up" approaches to development, thus ensuring that advances at the national level and at the community level can more effectively reinforce one another an emerging consensus among donors and other development practitioners regarding the centrality of civil society actors to effective development assistance, as well as the growing capacity and interest on the part of civil society actors to play such a role shifts in the way in which the business community views issues such as corporate responsibility, poverty and economic growth growing commitment to local ownership and democratic decentralization increasing recognition that dense networks of inter-sectoral institutional arrangements at the local, national and international levels are critical to the sustainability of development In this context, inter-sectoral partnering among government, business and civil society actors is attracting increasing attention on the part of a wide range of development practitioners. Among bilateral and multilateral donors, for example, USAID's New Partnerships Initiative (NPI), the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) report "Shaping the 21st Century," the World Bank's Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF) and the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) are indicative of this trend. This interest reflects an emerging consensus that by working jointly these three sectors can take advantage of creative synergies and achieve outcomes that are impossible for any one of them to achieve independently. It is recognized, moreover, that the increasingly rich institutional arrangements such partnering fosters can significantly strengthen local capacity and build societal resilience to external and internal shocks. Partnering for Results: Assessing the Impact of Inter-Sectoral Partnering is the second publication in a two-part series designed to maximize the development impact of inter-sectoral partnering. It provides a flexible tool for the selection of indicators, the tracking of progress and the documentation of the results of inter-sectoral partnering among government, business and civil society actors. The first publication of the series -- Partnering for Results: A User's Guide to Inter-Sectoral Partnering --was prepared for the USAID worldwide Mission Director's Conference in November 1998, and provides step-by-step suggestions for development practitioners interested in exploring the applicability and utility of inter-sectoral partnering to their pursuit of specific development objectives. The Partnering for Results series grows out of USAID's New Partnerships Initiative (NPI). Announced by Vice President Gore at the 1995 UN World Summit for Sustainable Development, NPI linked three strategic components of sustainable development within an overarching framework: strengthening the capacity of local actors to solve problems at the community level; fostering an enabling environment at the national level supportive of local citizen engagement; and strategic collaboration at the local level among government, business and civil society actors. The Partnering for Results series focuses on this critical third element of NPI. Development of the NPI framework and related programming tools was the result of an extremely intensive and sustained interaction among numerous USAID staff (both in Washington and in the field) and a wide array of development partners from government, business and civil society over the course of two years. Following completion of the design phase, NPI was piloted in 15 USAID missions in 1996. The results of this work are detailed in the 1995 NPI Core Report and the 1997 NPI Resource Guide: A Strategic Approach to Development Partnering (Volumes I and II). Both publications are available electronically at USAID's Inter-Sectoral Partnering web site http://www.usaid.gov/pubs/isp/. The web site contains additional materials -- such as other publications and presentations, and links to related Internet sites -- and provides a venue for an informal exchange of views and lessons learned. Partnering for Results: Assessing the Impact of Inter-Sectoral Partnering provides a framework of indicators adaptable to local conditions and supportive of efforts to systematize, track and record the impact of inter-sectoral partnering. As a growing number of organizations -- both public and private -- utilize this approach, it is our intention that the Partnering for Results series serve to spur additional conceptual and technical refinements to this important development tool. Cathryn L. Thorup Director, Office of Development Partners Bureau for Policy and Program Coordination Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank USAID's Office of Development Partners in the Bureau for Policy and Program Coordination for their ongoing support for the Partnering for Results series. Without the leadership and intellectual guidance of Cathryn Thorup and Norm Nicholson, this document would not have been possible. Special thanks to the many people who provided us with information and advice during the data collection process. Thanks to USAID's Research and Reference Services Project, especially John Pennell for his work on Volume I and the research and editing of Volume II, and Eric Bensel and Stacey Cramp for their support with edits and graphics. Finally, thanks to all of you in the field of development who are pushing ahead to learn more about and document the results of inter-sectoral partnerships. [back to top]

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