Health communication, HIV/AIDS, social mobilisation, learning evaluation, capacity building

ALPS is an attempt to deal with the problems of the massive amount of work involved in programme reporting, to reduce the reliance on written reports, and to make more of the learning from existing work.

A key component of ALPS is replacing country reports with annual ‘participatory reviews and reflections'. Creative methods of reporting have been used. Different programmes find what is most useful for them; methods to promote learning, record the most significant achievements, and look at what works and why it works. Feedback on challenges and constraints are seen as important.

What progress on ALPS?

Charles Owusu, Impact Assessment Facilitator from Action Aid gave an account of progress and key lessons learned after 2 years of experience of implementing the Accountability Learning and Planning System (ALPS) at Action Aid.

ALPS is an attempt to deal with the problems of the massive amount of work involved in programme reporting, to reduce the reliance on written reports, and to make more of the 'learning' from existing work.

A key component of ALPS is replacing country reports with annual ‘participatory reviews and reflections'. Creative methods of reporting have been used, such as the use of a video by Action Aid in its reporting to some trustees. There were no fixed guidelines for these reviews, but instead an emphasis on different programmes finding what was most useful for them; methods to promote learning, record the most significant achievements, and look at what worked and why it worked. Feedback on challenges and constraints were also seen as important.

Documentation of the process was still being explored, and Charles gave the example of the Burundi based local newspaper, which also doubled as an assessment tool to look at the way the process was unfolding locally. The October issue of 'IA Exchanges' also provided some useful accounts of the experience to date.

Charles noted that ALPS had been a major challenge for changing the ways of working at ActionAid, including changes at the level of individual attitudes and behaviours - all of which has taken time.

Despite the initial concern to deal with onerous reporting, it was being realised that such a participatory approach actually involves a lot of time and energy. In some ways the ‘traditional’ report written by one person was an 'easier' option, and taking real learning seriously was hard work. At the end of two years experience, some offices had even moved back to the ‘old’ methods of reporting. However, the principles of ALPS, which were adopted more or less across the organisation, were becoming a central reference point for work in country programmes and regions, and the commitment to real participation.

Principal lessons from the first two years experience of ALPS included:

1. A lot of learning goes on at the field level, which is only shared to varying degrees.

2. ALPS has encouraged a 'greater honesty' and more willingness to talk about difficulties.

3. 'Downwards accountability' is hard, particularly finding ways to make budget information accessible to people at the community level, (and dealing with awkward questions about where the money has gone to).

4. ALPS is not just a ‘system’ but is underpinned by commitment to a way of working.

5. ALPS has encouraged more reporting on impact, rather than detail of activities.

6. There is evidence that ALPS’ reviews have linked learning to changing ongoing work.

7. Partners are empowered to challenge ActionAid with their own ways of doing things: "we are not mini-ActionAids".

8. A system like ALPS has impact on the Human Resources of an organisation. Confidence to work in this way takes time to build, and people react differently to the struggle over attitudes, particularly confronting their own.

9. Understandings of change and the impact of work need to recognise that it is not a simple linear process, and that there may be a mixture of positive and negative changes.

10. Countries need to develop their own indicators and use them as a guide, not as set in stone.

11. Aggregation across different indicators is a challenge, but can be approached by looking for common themes.

In relation to this last point about aggregation, Charles noted that rather than have universal indicators there were 'themes' in common which allowed some kind of aggregation across the different sets developed by different programmes.

There was some discussion about the relative merits of using log-frames, which on the whole people agreed could be useful as tools as long as they were not applied too rigidly. However, there was still a danger of losing the richness of actual events when translating them into indicators.

One way of making a log-frame approach more useful was to include indicators that charted the level of community ownership and involvement. Another suggestion was that the log frame could be seen as a ‘social contract’ between the various stakeholders involved. International NGOs could have a role in giving their partners confidence to deal with such planning issues. This might include the demystifying of the log-frame with training in this area, or conversely, supporting partners to do things in their own different ways.

Discussion also touched on the difficult question of finding ways to talk about 'mistakes' and the need to find some kinds of incentives for this. In addition, there needed to be incentives to engage in such a challenging process like ALPS.

Discussion raised the issue of the power relations between stakeholders. Such negotiations include the struggle over what is discussed and how it is discussed. It is particularly difficult to hear the voices of the most vulnerable, and this was one areas that needed strengthening for ALPS. Others were the gender differences in impact of Action Aid's work and more clarity over feedback mechanisms to major stakeholders.

Charles noted that ALPS was having an impact on the nature of partnerships, since partners tended to work more directly with the marginal groups and Action Aid has less direct contact with communities on the ground.

While participants felt that more creative approaches to reporting, such as ALPS were welcome, it was recognised that it was harder to make the case for this kind of reporting to some donors than other, and that Action Aid had some relative independence in this regard, due to the fact that it was not overly reliant on a few donors for income.

Lessons from ALPS: Action Aid's Accountability, Learning and Planning System