Michael Trucano recently discussed in a blog post the case study on checkmyschool.org, A Case Study on Citizens Monitoring of the Education Sector in the Philippines. He wrote regarding checkmyschool.org:
“There is much here that should be of interest to education ministries grappling with challenging issues related to monitoring the extent to which various activities planned at some central level are actually being implemented ‘on the ground’ at the local level. One of the major lessons from the case study is that “innovative ICT-enabled projects are an investment in the future of community monitoring”. At a conceptual level, most people will probably find this to be a rather obvious finding. But just what to do with such an ‘obvious’ lesson may not be so obvious at all. The CMS case study highlights the extent to which non-ICT issues, like the importance of contructive, cooperative relations between civil society groups and government, and that “complementarity with ongoing government projects creates an environment conducive to initiatives”. It especially highlights the fact that, even (or perhaps especially) in ICT-related initiatives, which are attractive because they often can allow for physical distances to be bridged and many things that used to happen in person can be done virtually, an “organized presence on the ground is critical.” In the case of CMS, the use of so-called ‘infomediaries’ (local community leaders and socially active individuals recruited to assist with data collection at the local level and share results online) was seen to be a key ingredient in success, even where most of the actual exchange of project information was happening via the project web site and tools like Facebook.”