Evaluation report component 5 : management information system project 522-0167

Final external evaluation covers the period 7/83-4/86 and is based on document and system review, and interviews with Mission and MOE/MIS officials. Despite a 12-month project extension, results have been modest at best, due, inter alia, to poor planning, the project"s failure to provide a MIS advisor as planned, and political instability within the MOE, leading to personnel turnover and a consequent lack of continous high-level commitment to the MIS. Management tools and documents (e.g., programs, manuals, and procedures) for the MIS have yet to be formally developed at the requisite technical level; even the basic documentation of subsystems and applications is inadequate - a problem which will likely lead to maintenance problems in the future. Although training was considered key, planned internships were never delivered, and the impact of other external training was limited by the high turnover levels. Local training in word processing and in programming was provided, primarily to the data processing unit (DPU), but training of research and statistics units was inadequate. The planned Information Systems Department was not established per se, but a new designation, the "Information System," was created as a budgeted activity with six staff positions. In addition, the project did improve to a degree the efficiency, procedures, and user-friendliness of the pre-existing educational statistics subsystem. However, the collection of educational statistics remains paper-based for the most part, and as the data are never less than a year old when published (despite project-generated improvements in this area), they are of little or no use for policymaking or administrative decisionmaking. While a fair amount of systems development activity has taken place, some of the subsystems were not particularly well conceived, others suffered from political difficulties, and none interface directly with other subsystems. The budget subsystem is used regularly, however. Despite the project"s many problems, computerization is now firmly established within the MOE and there is a demand for new applications. A.I.D. should develop a follow-on project to capitalize on this situation and on the project"s achievements, limited as they are. Key needs are: a plan for integrating existing and future subsystems; additional training of the research and analysis units; TA to MIS users as well as to data processing staff; new data management software to facilitate system development and integration; and additional hardware, including printers and terminals for MIS users.