Online-Monitoring-Tool – More efficient Reporting for the German Development Cooperation by Means of web-based Data Collection and Analysis

Thorough documentation and reporting are important elements of project management. This applies to businesses in the private sector as well as to government programs or the activities of non-governmental and non-profit organizations. Reliable monitoring processes are essential to German development cooperation as well. As part of the “Perspektive Heimat” program of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (GIZ) is currently supporting 13 partnering countries in improving living conditions of people in their home countries. Prospects to stay and perspectives for the future are supposed to be created and strengthened in the states of origin. In this context, the GIZ is active in terms of advisory centers for job market, migration and reintegration matters. The centers are complemented by a broad array of partnerships in countries where the GIZ is working closely with established local initiatives, civil society, the private sector and international organizations and institutions. The monitoring of these activities and regular reporting result in a transparent process.

The implemented measures are being presented to the BMZ and the GIZ in a monthly report. The reporting is based on more than 1.000 individually gathered metrics every month. In the past, the GIZ would collect the data in an extensive spreadsheet and transmit it to the federal ministry. However, the compiling of this data required a considerable amount of manual labor. An alternative had to be found. The solution was a web-based IT Tool for the gathering and analysis of data that aims to:

• increase efficiency while at the same time decrease errors
• present the data in a more simple and informative way (especially in monthly transnational analysis)
• reach a high process reliability in terms of input, review and aggregation.

What is the Online-Monitoring-Tool?

The Online-Monitoring-Tool features various user roles with different user interfaces and corresponding rights in terms of input, release and access of the monthly data. Relevant stakeholders from the participating organizations hold the respective individual access keys to the tool. This makes a decentralized input of the data through a dedicated form possible. The tool then aggregates the data following a predefined model and creates a number of key performance indicators. The automatic aggregation of the data is more efficient and prevents errors that can occur during manual data compilation. Following thorough quality management, the data is released. This released data can afterwards be filtered, aggregated and graphically displayed according to states, regions and periods of time. This makes the everyday work of the users both at the GIZ and the federal ministry easier: Instead of looking for individual reports to various countries and periods of time and calculating the numbers manually, they now find the data in question by making a couple of mouse clicks in the new system.

Impulses for a Reform of the Monitoring for the whole GIZ

Unlike standardized software products, in-house developments are usually created with the special requirements of the users in a specific context in mind. While this is also true for the Online-Monitoring-Tool, the experience and learning process that occurred during the development could benefit future projects in this subject area: The underlying logic of the transnational decentralized data collection as well as the instruments that are being used in the digitization of monitoring processes (for example aggregation, release, report creation and data analysis) could provide valuable impulses.

Sector: Flight / Migration
Region: Global
Technology: Cloud database
Project status: ongoing