Monitoring for Geovernment Agencies

Determining whether program activities are being implemented as planned and whether expected results are occurring are critical links in managing public programs. Yet many government agencies do not have established procedures for obtaining such information in a time frame that will permit remedial actions to be taken when needed. This document identifies the major tasks involved in overcoming this problem and presents procedures that can be utilitzed to establish an effective monitoring system for a diverse set of projects. The authors draw heavily on the experiences of the state planning agencies that are used to allocate funds for criminal justice programs under the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act. To provide further practical guidance to persons given responsibility for developing a monitoring system, points made in the document are demonstrated with examples from several state and local agencies.