Governments around the world face ongoing pressures from citizens to provide more and better services, and to do this under a tight fiscal environment. This provides the context for government efforts to ensure their policies and programs are as effective, and as efficient, as possible. An emphasis on government performance has led a number of governments to create formal systems for monitoring and evaluating (M&E) their performance on a regular, planned, and systematic basis with the objective of improving it.

The focus of this book is on these government M&E systems: what they comprise, how they are built and managed, and how they can be used to improve government performance. M&E systems focus on measuring the results produced by government its outputs, outcomes, and impacts. The M&E system may exist at the level of an individual agency, entire sector, or the government as a whole. M&E can provide unique information about the performance of government policies, programs, and projects at the national, sector, and sub-national levels. It can identify what works, what does not, and the reasons why. M&E also provides information about the performance of a government, of individual ministries and agencies, and of managers and their staff. This book endeavors to expand the frontiers of issues that have been researched and analyzed. However, there are still a number of issues that are still not understood well enough. This book presents case studies on several countries that have succeeded in achieving high levels of utilization of M&E information, including Australia, Canada, Chile, and Mexico.