Project Snapshot

Total Funding:  $10.7 million
Duration:  September 2014 – September 2019
Implementing Partner:  IMPAQ International

The Challenge

USAID is committed to key principles and practices that foster a results-oriented culture within the Agency, and makes every effort to ensure strong oversight of its assistance to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Rigorous monitoring and evaluation (M&E)  is a major focus of USAID reforms to improve transparency, accountability and learning as a part of the Agency’s USAID/Forward effort. Instilling these values into USAID projects in BiH requires a dedicated team of M&E experts. Local companies, however, lack the capacity to fill this role. They, too, need to learn and integrate such values and functions to conduct independent analysis of economic and political challenges and policies in BiH.

Our Program 

The USAID Monitoring and Evaluation Support Activity in BiH (MEASURE-BiH) has two primary objectives. Building USAID capacity to evaluate the impact of development interventions in BiH is the proximal purpose of this activity. The MEASURE project will strengthen USAID/BiH’s results-oriented culture, using M&E to inform current program management and the longer-term strategic direction of our programs in BiH. 

Development projects in BiH, however, will not go on indefinitely. The skills to evaluate development interventions lend themselves to be be transferred into skills to evaluate the impact of public policy, proposed legislation, and organic solutions to the challenges facing the country. Therefore, MEASURE-BiH will also develop local capacity by establishing a new Center of Excellence that can conduct independent, high-quality evaluations and other studies for local organizations, government, USAID and other donors in BiH. The local capacity to conduct objective analysis will be strengthened in order to achieve a culture of results-based and data-driven public policy decision making.

Implementation and Expected Results 

Through the following activities, MEASURE-BiH will address inefficiencies in resource management to enable USAID/BiH to make decisions based on cutting-edge evidence, and will also develop local M&E capacity:

• Strengthen USAID performance management and project M&E by improving its ability to identify, collect and analyze performance data and information;
• Conduct evaluations, surveys, studies and sector assessments of our activities to help USAID deliver results on a meaningful scale; 
• Develop a Geographic Information System to map where we work and what we do there;
• Provide M&E training and technical assistance for USAID/BiH staff and implementing partners; and
• Facilitate one or more partnerships between U.S. and BiH universities, civil society organizations and the private sector, to transfer M&E knowledge, skills and methods to a new Center of Excellence.

By the end of this activity, USAID will have created a sustainable Center of Excellence for social science research and program evaluation in BiH.