Consultative Impact Monitoring of Policy - CoIMPact - Advantages and Limitations

It fills existing gaps in poverty information at the national level. It emphasises the feedback, discussion and actual use of the information generated. It relies on and incorporates information from other monitoring efforts, including statistical exercises. It has a firmly established institutional base in existing national agencies, involving stakeholders and decision-makers at various levels throughout the process. It stresses capacity building and knowledge transfer to organisations at national and decentralised levels to allow them carry out future rounds of the exercise. CoIMPact can be of use in both the formulation and subsequent adaptation and amendment of policy initiatives, and is implemented with the intention that its findings will influence policy. The results of using the method highlights how policies impact on different groups in different ways.

The communities participating in a CoIMPact exercise expect direct “benefits” from their participation (i.e. tangible benefits), namely government projects that address their needs and requirements. Extensive capacity building is required in order to ensure that CoIMpact is successfully used. Active participation of all communities is difficult to organise and CoIMPact requires feedback sessions to be conducted with communities. CoIMPact is relatively expensive compared to PPA-1 exercises, but far cheaper when compared to undertaking a household survey.