The search for a method to unpack urban complexity: Case study of the City of Johannesburg

African Evaluation Journal

 
 
Field Value
 
Title The search for a method to unpack urban complexity: Case study of the City of Johannesburg
 
Creator Ndhlovu, Lewis Smith, Laila Narsoo, Stephen
 
Subject Monitoring & Evaluation Complexity Theory; Monitoring & Evaluation; Capacity Building
Description Background: The City of Johannesburg (COJ) provides services to approximately 5 million people; yet the elements of monitoring and evaluation remain a missing link in the design and implementation of programmes. This was the case even after the introduction of the monitoring and evaluation framework in 2012. This case study is filling an empirical gap.Objectives: The aim of this study was to understand the policies, practices and use of monitoring and evaluation (ME) in tracking the performance of the City towards meeting its long-term developmental plans.Method: A mixed methods approach was used to gather quantitative data from 54 senior ME officials. This was complemented with qualitative data drawn from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions conducted during three workshops with ME officials.Results: The study reveal a number of weaknesses: poor integration of ME practices in planning, budgeting, service delivery and policy development oversight. The inter-governmental institutional environment and various committees and utility boards has resulted in extensive resources being devoted to compliance reporting. Consequently, the foundations for building an evaluation system have been neglected.Conclusion: The five-dimension complexity model was found to be a useful organising framework for effectively evaluating the city’s ME capacity. These findings form the first phase of an intervention that will inform the second phase targeted at building the foundations for a city-wide evaluation system.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor CLEAR-AA and CoJ
Date 2017-07-24
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Diagnostic
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/aej.v5i1.195
 
Source African Evaluation Journal; Vol 5, No 1 (2017); 11 pages 2306-5133 2310-4988
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://aejonline.org/index.php/aej/article/view/195/361 https://aejonline.org/index.php/aej/article/view/195/360 https://aejonline.org/index.php/aej/article/view/195/362 https://aejonline.org/index.php/aej/article/view/195/359
 
Coverage City of Johannesburg New Public Governance See Methodology Section
Rights Copyright (c) 2017 Lewis Ndhlovu, Laila Smith, Stephen Narsoo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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