Hans Hoogeveen World Bank and Twaweza

SEDP capitation grant monitoring January , World Bank TTL of the Secondary Education Development Program (SEDP) requests Twaweza to assist in monitoring the disbursement capitation grants. As per Letter of Sector Policy, Tshs 10,000 per student is expected to be received by all secondary schools by January 31 st. February 1 st HakiElimu and Twaweza announce in the media they will collect information to monitor the receipt of capitation grant by schools. Between February 1 st and March 15 th 50 randomly selected headmasters are called and asked questions about receipt of the capitation grant. March 25 th results are publicly launched.

Results of SEDP capitation grant monitoring By January 31 st, Ministry of Finance had only released Tshs 390 per student instead of the expected Tshs 10,000 Most schools had received nothing During the launch it became evident that Ministry of Finance had released the capitation grant in full, in the week prior to the launch.

Elements that made this possible The PAD contained a well formulated, time bound indicator There was a third party monitor able to collect quality data who was committed to going public with the findings. This put pressure on Government (and the World Bank)

(1) Survey plus mobile phone follow up Dar es Salaam Mobile Phone Survey (like Sudan survey) Phase households in baseline Weekly follow up (8-10 questions) using new or existing questions Respondent remuneration Call centre (flexible; works with illiterate respondents and low-end phones; cheap) Response rate > 70%, requiring ex-post reweighting of the sample Part of non-response due to intra-household dynamics and could be reduced further Phase 2 (starts May 2011) Use survey for CAS and project monitoring Requires close collaboration between independent monitor and TTLs to identify relevant indicators

(2) Baseline and follow up from a call centre DSM water kiosk survey Twaweza visited water kiosks to ask price of water and to collect telephone numbers of kiosk owners and clients Follow up during second round through telephone Prices at DSM water kiosks Results used by regulator and during bank supervision

(3) Data gathering by local enumerators Independent CPI : Teams of 2 enumerators and 1 supervisor collect price data in 21 urban and rural locations on monthly basis. Enumerators use paper booklet to identify products and fill a paper reporting ‘price’ forms. Call centre collects prices; no tablet pc’s or high end phones are used All price data are publicly released. Approach is will verify the quality of official statistics. Sample page from enumerator price booklet

(4) Citizen feedback using SMS TZ electricity monitoring Created dedicated (toll free) number Prepared set of codes that can automatically be processed. This allows high volumes Respondents sign up voluntarily and give relevant details (location typically) Respondents are reminded by SMS to respond Experimenting with different ways to reach respondents business cards posters

To conclude Real time data collected using mobile phones by third parties can enhance project effectiveness Survey with mobile phones presents a very flexible approach mostly suited to monitor large scale programs Specific monitoring activities using mobile phones are feasible for smaller projects Technologically much possible but chose an appropriate technology For a lasting impact monitoring would probably need to be repeated regularly. The low cost of data gathering using mobile phones allows this. Third party monitoring could, like financial audits, act as commitment device This party monitoring requires close collaboration between external monitor and TTL, preferably during project design Contrary to what is often believed, mobile phone monitoring requires less ICT skills and mostly typical survey skills such as sampling, question design, data analysis and reporting

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