FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean

Since the Marrakech Round Table in 2004, the international community has supported five specific commitments related to improving the effectiveness of development assistance1, synthesized in the concept of "Managing for Development Results". This implies taking into account from the beginning of any initiative, project or program the expected outcomes and how to achieve them. Furthermore, the implementation, progress monitoring, and subsequent evaluation should consider the expected outcomes that were established at the beginning of the process.

Results-based public management: Tools for the design and implementation of public rural development programs with a project cycle approach

This document brings together the experiences obtained from the Evaluation and Analysis of Rural Policies Project under taken by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fishing and Food (SAGARPA) during the implementation of the "Results-Based Management" focus in its different Programs. In this respect, on four occasions the National Council for the Evaluationof Social Development Policy of Mexico has granted recognition to SAGARPA for its good practices in the development, execution and evaluation of public policy in the field since 2007, taking an important step toward improving its programsand orienting them toward performance and impact in the rural sector.

The document "Results-based public management: Tools for the design and implementation of public rural development programs with a project cycle approach" includes the four phases of the life cycle of a project or program.

The first module includes the methodological tools for conducting a sector diagnosis, which constitutes the first step that justifies the intervention by making it possible to identify a problem, dimension it, identify and quantify the population or areafacing the problem, and stratify such population.

The second module presents the procedure and methodological tools for the design of a program or project which will besynthesized in the Logical Framework. In this module the methodology is shown for conducting the objectives analysisand the alternatives analysis, constructing performance indicators, identifying the means of verification, identifying riskand assumptions, and collecting counterfactual data for a baseline of the performance indicators of the program or project.

The third module provides the methodology for the implementation of a program or project which, under the results approach, should include a monitoring and evaluation system consistent with its design, budgeting, and regulation, as well as design and processes evaluations in the first year of implementation of the program or project.

The fourth module consists of the methodology for evaluating the outcomes obtained by the program or project as a result of its implementation through the design of the results and impact evaluation of a program or project.