Monitoring

Monitoring can be defined as a systematic and continuous surveillance of a series of events. Monitoring is practiced to secure that the activities inside an organization, or the outputs of an organization, are according to established goals. Monitoring thus refers to the control of organizations. In politics, monitoring takes place both between politicians (versus bureaucrats) and within the public administration; in the latter form, it deals with organizational control. Monitoring and evaluation are closely linked; both focus on examining the procedures and processes involved and gathering information about the level of performance. In government practice, the two concepts overlap, as when, for example, the follow-up of a government program can be called either monitoring or evaluation without a major difference. It is also possible to see monitoring as a basic form of evaluation when we add some “how and why” questions, such as why a given program is lagging behind its goals or how certain societal results can be explained by certain policy measures.

Some evaluation scholars do not make a distinction between monitoring and evaluation. Others argue that monitoring does not include judging the worth and value of performance, and hence, evaluation consists of more than monitoring or accounting. In addition, the focus on theory separates evaluation research from other forms of evaluation, such as monitoring. A central concept related to monitoring is accountability. Politico-administrative systems are built on a hierarchical structure, which gives the citizens the right to control the parliament; the parliament the right to control the government; the government, the public administration; and the upper levels of bureaucracy, the lower levels. Much has been written on the possibilities and limitations of parliaments and cabinet members in controlling bureaucracy. Although bureaucrats may be subject to political surveillance, they know how to use their often long (at least in comparative terms) experience, expertise, and isolation from political battles to bypass and make strategic use of any monitoring efforts directed toward them. Whether monitoring reaches the ultimate points of delivery, where street-level bureaucrats deal with various sorts of clients, is an important issue as well, not least from the viewpoint of democracy. Finally, monitoring may be used when governments finance various external projects, as, for example, with development aid. Monitoring can even refer to the control of governmental outlays for typically outsourced projects.

The theory and methodology of monitoring are closely linked to organizational science. Organizations are collective efforts, and large organizations always need to control the unity of the organization. The theoretical issues around the concept thus deal with questions such as what kind of monitoring tools work in what kind of organizations, what motives underlie the use of monitoring, and to what extent governments are using similar or different kinds of monitoring tools and why. As noted earlier, monitoring is tied to characteristics of the organization in question. A small organization, a club, or an association can usually maintain order or homogeneity simply by exchanging communication through face-to-face interaction. Larger and more complex organizations, such as major hospitals, political parties, religious bodies such as the Catholic Church, or national bureaucracies, have a much greater need for ensuring that what the members of the organization do corresponds with the overall will of the leaders of the organization, be they outside or inside the organization.

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