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Monitoring and Evaluation has a key role to play in the successful implementation of the development plans, policies, programmes and projects which constitute the backbone of national development. An effective monitoring and evaluation system can positively help obtain data and information required for the formulation and implementation of development plans, policies and programs. It can also help in ascertaining whether the extent to which the economy is achieving set national goals and objectives by providing objective and credible information and evidence.

The guidelines herein recommend some strategies that are necessary to increase the demand for M&E and its use in the development planning and budget making process in Kenya. It is important to mention from the outset that key among the guidelines is the M&E report that should be prepared on time and shared with the key stakeholders early enough before the planning and budgeting cycles commence. This is very important because M&E is critical in informing development planning and budgeting processes in Kenya and many other countries globally.

In addition to the theoretical aspects of monitoring and evaluation, these Guidelines also provide information about monitoring and evaluation methods and approaches that can be adopted by government ministries and other institutions to produce good reports for better policy formulation, planning and implementation. The use of these Guidelines is intended to bring about uniformity in monitoring and evaluation functions.

Monitoring and evaluation are management processes/tools that provide public sector institutions with insightful information about the performance, effectiveness, efficiency and impact of policies, programmes and projects. M&E helps to provide an evidence base for public resource allocation decisions and identify how challenges in implementation should be addressed and successes replicated. The value of M&E is demonstrated when it is used to design development interventions which enable public sector institutions to learn and become more effective, thereby increasing the likelihood of development interventions achieving positive outcomes or, at least, reducing the likelihood of resources being invested in interventions that cause harm or make no difference in people’s lives. Unless governments use the performance data and evaluation evidence they generate to shape plans and to decide where resources are allocated, the processes themselves have no inherent value. The value of M&E lies in its use by public management institutions and society to improve governance and achieve accountability, and by enabling learning and improvements to take place in policies and programmes.

The proposed guidelines have been developed as part of the key outputs under the assignment entitled A research study on current use of M&E evidence in development planning and budgeting processes in the 6 Twende Mbele countries: opportunities for entrenchment – the case of Uganda (2023). It is important to note that evidence/ data-driven planning and budgeting implies using good data and analytics to find insights, and then acting on those insights to gain competitive advantages. It is built on the premise that the best decisions are those supported by good data. Although the idea of data-driven planning and budgeting seems intuitive and straightforward, the study established that many Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) were found to be in great need to put into practice data-driven decision making. The findings of the study informed the development of these guidelines for use of evidence base data in planning and budgeting processes.